by Birdie Keller ’25
Every semester, Macalester’s Theater and Dance department puts together a dance concert on the main stage theater. This concert consists of multiple pieces choreographed by faculty members, guest artists, and students. The concert also always features a variety of different dance styles.
For this month’s Craft Corner, The Words sat down with Cassandra Wright ‘25, a Creative Writing and Biology double major. Cassandra choreographed a dance piece for last fall’s dance concert, Offerings, and has just choreographed another piece for the concert this semester, Shadows and Light.
Read below to hear about the process of choreographing, connecting ideas, and the ways in which creative writing and choreography inform one another for Cassandra!
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Can you tell us a little bit about the process of choreographing for the dance concert?
First I have to think of an idea, and after that I have to talk to the people who are in charge, like Wynn [Fricke, dance faculty member] and Cláudia [Tatinge Nascimento, chair of the THDA department]—and ask them to choreograph. From there, I go to auditions, I cast people in my piece, which is a whole process of negotiating with the other choreographers on who gets who… Then we just rehearse until tech week and dress rehearsals.
So it starts off pretty intense, and then we get into a schedule of two rehearsals every week, then we set the piece, clean it up, polish it… then it gets intense towards the end when we have tech week and [dress] rehearsal.
And I’m also talking with lighting and costumes and working with them in a trio.
How do you come up with ideas for a piece?
I have a lot of ideas all the time. I think the best way to know an idea is actually good is if I’m thinking about it a lot. I usually start with a couple different ideas that I can string together.
For this piece, I had ideas about a theme and a concept that I thought would be cool, while at the same time I had movement that I thought was interesting, then I had the music just kicking around.
And I was able to put all those things together into one piece. It’s actually not that different from how I write things.
That brings me to the question: do you think your interest in creative writing has influenced your approach to choreography? How do you see those things intersecting?
Yeah, definitely. I think the creative process is very similar for both of them, and it helps to have multiple ways that I can get my ideas out, because I have a lot of ideas that I could turn into a story that I couldn’t turn into choreography, and a lot of ideas that I could only turn into choreography, and not into a story.
Tell us a little bit about your piece this semester!
The title that I’m going with is “Reckless and Young.” It’s partially about skateboarding, kind of on the surface, but also partially about the experience of finding new friends at college and finding a group that you really belong with.
It’s definitely inspired by finding friends at Macalester, because I don’t think I’ve ever connected with people as quickly and as easily as I have here.
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The Words thanks Cassandra for her insights into this process!