UCSB Students Enjoy a Choreography Class with Janet Wong, Associate Artistic Director for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company

Janet Wong, the Associate Artistic Director for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company taught a choreography class for UCSB dance students. The class was attended by 16 junior dance majors who are currently working on choreography. They were divided into four groups of four, and each group collaborated to create a short movement sequence that was based on eight group shapes. They performed this movement sequence in conjunction with a randomly selected one minute story from Story/Time (which Janet provided and read out loud). First, they were challenged to dance without responding to the words/story – allowing the movement and spoken words to simply coexist. Later on in the class they developed their movement sequences to correlate with the story that was being told, creating a more dramatic effect. For the last 30 minutes of class, 23 freshman dance majors and faculty members came in to observe the final products, and the class had a brief discussion about choreographic tools moving forward. All of the students in the class attended the performance of Story/Time by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company the following night at the Granada Theatre..

Photos by David Bazemore