Breaking Boundaries, Forging Bonds Through Dance

“Modern [dance] is kind of like a catch-all,” says Julia K. Cataldo ’15, co-director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company. The group, which according to its website is the longest-running student dance company on campus, promotes inventive performances and numerous dance styles.

Through its focus on modern dance, the company synthesizes performances that include everything from classical dance to hip-hop. “While we’re based in very quantified dance techniques, there’s an element of innovation and creative freedom,” past co-director Jun Shepard ’14 says.

“[Modern dance] gives you the freedom to move in new ways and use a toolbox of things from ballet and other styles to…do things that are different,” Cataldo says. In the case of the HRMDC, experimentation comes not only from the dancers’ chosen form but also from the characters of the dancers themselves. The group is diverse, attracting people with different levels of past experience and including a few graduate and fellowship students in addition to the undergraduates who compose most of the company.

Even the current co-directors represent the company’s variety. Cataldo is a former competition dancer who never participated in a dance company before joining the HRMDC. Co-director Hannah S. Firestone ’16 started dance in high school and had little training. “We’re not looking for technique, but if [the dancer] can offer something to the company, that is what we’re looking for,” Shepard says.

“The modern dance company is really open-minded, welcoming, [and] encouraging,” Firestone says. Company events reinforce this open environment—members participate in weekly company classes taught by well-established dancers, including Johnny McMillan from the acclaimed Chicago-based company Hubbard Street Dance. The classes are a chance to learn new techniques and also to explore and grow as a group.

“You just get a group of people in a room together with music…and that’s a very liberating thing,” says company member and choreographer Elizabeth A. Melampy ’16. Cataldo agrees: “Seeing how someone else moves informs you how you’d move,” she says.

Beyond company classes, HRMDC spends the majority of the semester preparing a performance. Each term’s show consists of pieces choreographed by guests and students and serves as an opportunity to showcase members’ talents. “A lot of our members don’t have extensive dance training, but when they’re given the opportunity to choreograph, they have more creative ideas than anyone who has had extensive training,” Shepard says.

“For me, personally, [choreography] is very music-based,” Melampy says. “Then through a process of seeing my dancers in the room, listening to the song, and envisioning the piece conceptually, it blossoms up from there.”

Through the choreographers’ thought and precision, the shows become a forum of unrestricted expression—everything that the group represents. Firestone describes one performance from “Mosaic,” the company’s most recent show. “We had a piece that used a video of these geometric shapes and the video playing in background as the piece was happening,” she says. “So the dancers were doing movement that was kind of geometric to communicate with the video…. It was also about the dancers interacting with each other, using each other’s bodies to…respond to one another.”

This semester’s main performance is titled “Enough Space.” The new venue, Farkas Hall, is significantly larger than the Loeb Experimental Theater where “Mosaic” was performed, providing the choreographers the opportunity to work on a new stage with an interesting concept. “The theme is more conceptual than literal,” Melampy says. Whereas in “Mosaic,” the choreographers and dancers drew inspiration from tangible artwork, “Enough Space” deals with the performers’ manipulation and perception of the space around them.

Beyond performance, the company hopes to reinforce its current goals of free expression and exploration of unique concepts. “I would really like to continue to push the company to experiment with some more of these themes…just as an experiment to see how that pushes the choreography and the dancing,” Firestone says. “We can give shows more cohesiveness and hopefully in so doing make it even more of a closer community.” Shepard is confident about the direction the company is taking. “There’s a lot of power that is just starting to emerge from this community,” she says. “There’s a lot of potential.”

To its members, the company has a significant place in their personal lives as well as their artistic ones. Many members express the strength of the friendships formed and the support they have found. “Everybody in the company shares this common bond and love of dance,” Cataldo says. “It’s something I was really looking for in college, to find that thing outside of academics that would really give meaning to other things.”