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...

Every year, Oberlin’s Dance department hosts two faculty-directed shows: Fall Forward and Spring Back, which usually play out in a more-or-less traditional program in Warner Main Space. This year’s Spring Back breaks from this mold, as it will have no set stage. Instead, guides will lead audience members all through Warner Gymnasium. Beginning in Warner Main Space, where three of the concert’s pieces will be performed, the show will bring audiences to three pieces on the first floor, two more in the basement, and back again. There are only 50 tickets sold per night due to these restricted and innovative spaces, and upon arrival, viewers will be split into three groups, each of which will have a different experience of...

“Good Talk,” Oberlin’s live talk show, made a triumphant return to the ’Sco Monday night to begin its third season, to the delight of comedy fans on campus. At the start of Monday’s show, co-hosts Victoria Liebetrau, College sophomore, and College senior Owen Harrington proclaimed to a packed house, “‘Good Talk’ is back, and we’re a normal talk show now.” Being a “normal talk show” constituted a series of skits involving a set of two bodyguards named Butchy and Muscles, a car salesman gone rogue, and the promotion of a new product — SC4RK or “Shitty Clothes 4 Rich Kids,” a device bearing a remarkable likeness to a fork with which you can quickly shred your designer clothes. According t...

Nusha Martynuk has taught at Oberlin since 1988, when she and her husband, Carter McAdams, joined the dance faculty. She completed her undergraduate degree at Temple University and was a member of Zero Moving Company, the CETA-funded Artists’ Project in NYC, and the Nikolais Dance Theatre. She and McAdams founded Partners Dance Company together. As listed in the program for CHANT — her upcoming and final show at Oberlin with her husband before their retirement — Martynuk has received nume...