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Dance company offers students professional experience
UB students had an opportunity to perform at a noted festival in Massachusetts.
The students—Elliott Keller, Kelly Halvorsen, Melissa Hunt, Ashley Peters, Sara Wolf and Susan Kranz—joined Melanie Aceto Contemporary Dance (MACD) as guest artists for the company’s performance July 21 at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass. The company performed as part of the festival’s “Inside/Out” series, which features free performances by emerging and established dance companies on an outdoor stage with a panoramic vista of the Berkshires.
MACD is a “pick-up company”—its members are hired on a project-by-project basis—established in 2003 by Melanie Aceto, assistant professor of theatre and dance.
The students performed a dance titled “Portage,” choreographed by Aceto. The company’s presentation at Jacob’s Pillow also included dances titled “Knit,” a duet featuring Aceto and Buffalo dancer Jenna Delmonte; “Dancer Mad,” a solo piece performed by Aceto; and “Resemblance,” a duet with Aceto and UB dance alumnus and former Aceto student Claire Jacob-Zysman.
Aceto says she had been working with the student dancers since January; she created “Portage” for last spring’s Zodiaque dance concert at UB. She explains that she originally put together two separate casts that worked simultaneously on the piece, an experience she calls “challenging.”
“It takes more time to make a new piece and rehearse with a double cast, but there is also the benefit of having more bodies to try things out on,” she says. “If one cast can do something that I am asking for, then we know it is possible and just a matter of rehearsal for the other cast.”
The cast that performed at Jacob’s Pillow is a combination of the original two casts, Aceto notes. “This creates more challenges because some of the dancers had to learn different roles. The dancers have been wonderful to work with in the creation of the piece, the rehearsals and the re-casting of roles,” she says. “They are eager and love to be challenged. This piece, as with most pieces, would not be possible without the creative and physical input of the dancers.”
Aceto says the strength of UB’s dance program has allowed her to use current students and recent graduates in her professional performances. In addition to Jacob’s Pillow, she took UB students to New York City last fall to perform in the American Dance Guild concert at the Ailey Theater.
“It is such a valuable opportunity for students to be able to perform professionally while still in school,” she notes. “There is a different energy and heightened awareness when performing outside the university. Students have extra rehearsals and have to keep repertory in their bodies longer when there are more outside performances,” she says.
“I have the advantage of working with students in my technique classes, training them in a style that supports both my work and versatility, and then working with them in the rehearsal process here at the university—a non-threatening and supportive environment.”
There is a downside, though. “The difficulty in working with these talented dance students is that they graduate,” she points out.
A modern dancer and choreographer, Aceto has been a UB faculty member since 2006. She earned an MFA in dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has worked with such New York-based contemporary choreographers as Barry Blumenfeld, Ellis Wood, Monica Bill Barnes, Hilary Easton and Guta Hedewig.
Her own work has been performed in Guatemala, Toronto, New York (REVERB, Cool NY and D.U.M.B.O Dance Festivals, American Dance Guild, Uptown Performance Series, Underexposed Festival and Hatch), Ohio (Heidelberg New Music Festival and at Wittenberg University) and in Rochester (ImageMovementSound Festival), among other locales.
She directs UB’s Zodiaque Studio Dance Ensemble.
MACD also will perform Aug. 18 and Aug. 21 as part of the Dance 2 Danse Festival in Toronto, and Aug. 29 at the Jan Jus Presbyterian Church in New York. For more details, click here
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