In my junior year of high school, my lifelong dance teacher told me that she hoped there was a strong dance program wherever I chose to go to college, because she was sure I would miss it. I nodded politely, sure she was wrong. During my college search, I barely considered dance — and yet, I spent much of my first semester at Oberlin rapturously watching dance, writing about dance, and fangirling over the pieces being created here and the amazing dancers doing the creating. When I began to...

Amidst Monday’s rehearsal for Oberlin Dance Company’s upcoming show, College sophomore Georgie Johnson ran up to College junior Gabrielle Ment. Both made a show of a common exercise for starting out lifts in contact improvisation — breathing the arms up and then sweeping them down for momentum — before Johnson launched onto Ment’s shoulders and spiraled in the air, lifted by her partner, spreading her limbs wide and grinning even wider. They spun like a human top. Smiles like that are one striking aspect of the Varsity Contact class performance in “One Breath: An Evening of Stillness and Motion.” It makes sense that this would punctuate the practice — contact is wordless, while also completely improvise...

It’s hard to believe that Oberlin’s Student Dance Showcase first appeared only six years ago, given the campus staple it has since become. Now one of the most well-attended student dance performances each semester, the showcase — which will present its spring 2018 iteration this weekend — is a space for student dance groups of any and every type to spotlight their hard work, talent, and enthusiastic energy for friends, family, and other students and faculty. Previous to the 2012 creation of Student Dance Showcase, student dancers and choreographers were limited to auditioning for Dance department-sponsored performances Spring Back and Fall Forward, which required dance faculty approval, or participation in t...

In the history of Western ballet, some characters stick out as emblematic of the genre — Giselle, Odette and Odile, the nutcracker, to name a few. Then again, some roles — like Hiccup, Toothless, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, and Green Death — have likely never been performed in a ballet until this weekend, when Ballet Oberlin’s production of How to Train Your Dragon: The Ballet opened in Wilder Main Space. The show ran on Friday and Saturday, debuting an original choreography in an adaptation of the...