LIMA — Dance, along with other artistic expressions, can not only evoke emotion, but it can also offer social commentary, as an event held Wednesday at OSU-Lima’s Reed Hall demonstrated.
The Ohio State University at Lima’s Department of Dance hosted “DaNCe2U” Wednesday, a performance by BalletMet, one of the top ten regional ballet companies touring the U.S.
Wednesday’s dance performance theme, “peace and strife,” tackled not only how individuals engage with one another in daily life and conversations, but also more ambitiously touched on the problems and tactics of how countries might negotiate peace on that world stage.
“George Balanchine’s 1946 ‘Four Temperaments’ deals with the ‘four humors’ in the body and how we engage interpersonally with people and have conversations,” Ohio State dance professor Valerie Williams said in an interview.
Some of the dances performed were even birthed out of reactions to world events, according to Williams.
“Martha Graham choreographed ‘Steps in the Street’ in 1936 in response to Adolph Hitler’s invitation to her company to perform at the 1936 Olympics in fascist Germany. She did not go and furthermore stated that half of her company would not be welcome in Nazi Germany because some of them were Jewish,” she said. In ‘The Wall,” dancers moved side-by-side, as though in unity, toward the downstage area, to indicate a consolidated resistance to fascism.
The events depicted in Wednesday’s DaNCe2U stage performance offered food for thought to students learning to deal with diversity and inclusion while preparing to enter the workplace and become engaged members of society.
“Each century is tackling these problems differently,” said Carmen Cupples, OSU-Lima Bachelor of Science in Social Work Program Coordinator, and lecturer in social work in an interview before the performance.
“We have ongoing dialogues called ‘Connecting through Inclusion,’ which is centered around race relations in the U.S., and this is why the diversity committee was tasked to help bring this performance here,” said Temple Patton, diversity and inclusion manager at OSU-Lima.
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