CBC fall production keeps student ballerinas on their toes

Hordes of people crowded into Barnard’s Streng Studio on Friday night for the opening performance of the Columbia Ballet Collaborative’s fall production. Audience members even clambered onto the barres lining the back of the room in order to see over the rows of heads, apparently aware that it was a show that was not to be missed.

Featuring 26 talented ballerinas from Columbia and five guest artists, three of whom are members of the professional dance companies Armitage Gone and New York City Ballet, the production was composed of eight numbers, with a wide variety of music, ranging from live accompaniment to Radiohead.

Choreographer Amanda Kostreva’s piece “Side/Walk” illuminated the flirtatious aspect of ballet, featuring nine dancers dressed in short, ruffled, polka-dotted skirts dancing to the rap song “Can I Kick It?” by A Tribe Called Quest.

Later on in the performance, Phillip Askew and Lydia Walker performed their self-choreographed piece titled “Weather Patterns,” which involved using each other as human balance boards and rolling off each other’s backs, much like rolling clouds in the sky. The difference between actual weather patterns and the piece was the degree of tension in the room, as the two performed fearless acrobatics while the audience waited with bated breath, hoping that no harm would come to either dancer.

Lauren Birnbaum’s “Aube” featured eight dancers, including Barnard first-year Megan Wright, who described what it was like to work on the piece. Birnbaum “was working a lot with the contrast in movement from very small, twitchy movement to big, flowy dancing movement, and in the middle, pedestrian, very rhythmic movement,” Wright said.

The time commitments of the dancers to the collaborative vary based on how many pieces they are cast in. According to Wright, the standard time commitment for each piece averages two hours per week.

Established in 2007 by five professional ballet dancers at Columbia, the company is now made up of dancers from all four undergraduate programs at Columbia and various graduate programs, as well. Originally started as an outlet for professional ballerinas to continue with dance while at school, it now also includes dancers who have no professional experience.

“It has expanded to people who have had really strong training,” Wright said. “The core group of people who run it are still largely post-professional dancers, and then there’s the group of pre-professional dancers as well.”

Wright reflected on her first, and for the time being, last experience working with the collaborative. Over fall break, Wright flew to San Francisco and auditioned for Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet. “As a first-year, it’s been really great to see people who have done what I want to do and have worked their way back to school or have taken time off,” she said.

Next semester, Wright plans to withdraw from Barnard and move to San Francisco to pursue a professional dance career.

“I am withdrawing—I’m not taking a leave of absence,” Wright said. “But if I do come back to school, and I have an inkling that I probably will, I would want to come back to a place like Columbia because of the CBC.”