Dance professor Adriane Fang performed her piece “Grains” at this year’s faculty dance concert.
The toddler played in the sandbox with her mother, picking up handfuls of sand and putting them into the woman’s skirt until something to her right caught her attention. She ran off, beckoning her mother to follow.
This scene didn’t play out in a park, but onstage from Thursday to Sunday at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s Dance Theatre as part of Adriane Fang’s piece called “Grains,” one of three performances in this year’s faculty dance concert titled “Dance Rhythm/Sound and Space.”
Fang is a dance professor and choreographer in the theatre, dance and performance studies school. Professors Sharon Mansur and Miriam Phillips also directed and performed pieces
While the professors were the driving forces behind their pieces, each of them worked with creative teams to flesh out their ideas.
“I really enjoy seeing whatever comes from the different collaborators working in their own mediums,” Mansur said. “Over time, it adds different contributions.”
Her piece, titled “variation on residue,” took her efforts as a performer, a musician, a costume designer, a lighting designer and a videographer. The presentation was a film projected onto a screen at the back of the stage, while in front of it, different objects from the recording were highlighted with special lighting effects.
Mansur has performed a live solo piece, “residue,” at galleries and festivals across the country, and chose to adapt that piece for a film and stage setting for The Clarice.
Phillips performed after Mansur. She is known in the professional flamenco world as La Miri. Her performance portrayed “repetitive gestures, rhythms and states of mind that weave through our lives,” according to a program summary.
Phillips performed a dance using traditional and contemporary flamenco styles to guitar music played and sung by Marija Temo. The performance was minimalistic, relying on light accents to represent different time periods.
The concert ran for about two hours, including a 15-minute intermission. Fang’s piece was the longest, at about 50 minutes.
“Grains” premiered on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington in September as part of the 2014 Local Dance Commissioning Project.
Fang’s piece included three other dancers, her mother and her 3-year-old daughter.
“It was very striking to see three generations of mothers, daughters bowing together onstage,” said sophomore dance and ecology and evolution major Gabrielle Welsh, who attended the concert at 3 p.m. Sunday.
Fang said while her daughter, Rui Forsberg, recognized she was onstage, her daughter likely did not realize she had an audience because the house is dark for the show. Fang wanted to include her daughter not only because she rarely sees her during show weeks, but also to make a statement.
“I wanted to portray the relationship between art and reality,” Fang said.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this article stated that Mansur’s original piece was longer. The original piece was a live solo performance and adapted for this concert.
