Inside the Colby Dancer’s Final Performance
by Zachary Bergman
Colby Dancers, a student-run dance club, is having its spring performance on Friday, May 10.
The club will host two shows, one at 7 p.m. and one at 9 p.m. With a total of 21 dances, this will be the largest show Colby Dancers has ever put on. Each show is expected to last approximately one hour and 20 minutes. A majority of the dances will be featured in both the 7 p.m. and the 9 p.m. show, though a few will only appear in one of the performances.
At the beginning of every semester, Colby Dancers reaches out to all of its members to recruit choreographers for its dances. Members of the club then have the opportunity to sign up for dances that interest them. Most groups rehearse for about an hour per week, but the amount of time spent preparing is at the discretion of the choreographer, according to Julia Warnock ’19, who is one of the club’s senior officers. The club then puts on a show at the end of each semester for everyone to perform their dances.
“I’m really excited because I think it’s really engaging for the entire length of the show,” Warnock said in an interview with the Echo. “There’s no lulls really, it’s just dance after dance that’s super engaging and exciting, and I think that will really excite the audience.”
“ I’m psyched to watch everyone else, because I know how much hard work goes into choreographing and practicing and staging a dance,” Colby Dancers member Steph Fawell ’21 said in an interview with the Echo. “I just love watching dance in general, and to watch all my friends do something that I love is really exciting. And, I’m excited to show everybody all the hard work that I’ve been doing all semester with my groups.”
Fawell is performing in three dances, one of which she choreographed for the varsity swim and dive team.
“It’s water and swimming and diving themed, which is really fun and silly,” she explained. In addition to the swim and dive dance, there will be three other dances by either sports teams or different majors. The swim and dive dance is at 9 p.m., while the other three are at 7 p.m.
“Colby Chemistry has a dance this year, which I believe is including some of their professors, which is definitely a new element to Colby Dancers that I’m really excited about,” Warnock said. “We also have the Spanish department this semester, which has put on a Latin-American dance class, so they’re performing one of their routines.”
Colby Dancers has grown into one of the largest clubs on campus over the past several years. When Warnock, now a senior, joined the club her first year, “there were only about 60 or so students, and now we have hundreds and hundreds of students that are involved, which is so awesome to see.”
One of the reasons for the club’s growth, according to Warnock, is how accessible it is to anyone who wants to join.
“The cool part about Colby Dancers is that I think it’s incredibly inclusive, and it’s open to students who have all different levels of dance experience,” she explained. “We have students choreographing that were in their dance troupes in high school and danced really competitively all their life and are looking to continue their passion for dance by choreographing for Colby dancers, and then you also have people who have never danced before who are just looking to get involved with what I think is a super fun and engaging and inviting club.”
When asked why he joined Colby Dancers, Charlie Allen ’21 said, “I was born to dance. Dancing is my life. And Colby Dancers gives me the opportunity to live my dream and speak my truth.”
Fawell said she is looking forward to the large variety of dances that will be performed on Friday. “Stylistically, most of the dances are pretty different,” she said. “We have a lot of different genres of dance, from hip-hop, to tap, to contemporary, to interpretive, to modern… So I’m excited for the variety.”
“I think it is an incredibly engaging performance,” Warnock said. “Each dance is its own special performance in itself, and Colby Dancers and the choreographers have worked so hard throughout the whole semester to make this happen, and I think it’s just something that’s going to really engage and captivate people.”
