As a company, our main focus thus far has been learning previous repertoire by Monique Haley and August Tye. This has been quite a challenge with five new company members, but thankfully our rehearsal assistant and fellow company member, Shannon, has come to our rescue. We’ve been learning choreography from her as she references past video footage of the choreography for details and refinement.

The two pieces could not be further from each other in quality and dynamic. Monique’s piece, Soul Power, is grounded, intense, and requires extreme athletic stamina. There are multiple solos throughout the piece that allow each person to be seen, but there are also many interactions and crossing of paths throughout the work. One of my favorite parts of performing is making eye contact while dancing – not only does it fuel my fire, but it gives me that sense of community and belonging I’ve spoken of before. This piece allows so many opportunities for eye contact that serve as a little reminder between us company members to keep the energy up!

On the other hand, Danza De La Cervatas by August Tye is just a physically demanding, but requires so much poise, grace, and ease. The ballet dance is solely the four women company members, but I mean it when I tell you we never stop jumping. From an audience perspective, the dance looks effortless and composed as it should. From a dancers’ perspective, it’s a calf cramp waiting to happen. We’ve all been embracing the challenge and increasing our stamina through this piece (reminder: we are masked while dancing, so there’s some bonus stamina work).

SCDT is proving itself to be a diverse repertory company with this season’s choreography. Feel free to look into our Season’s Choreographers and their background under the “Our Team” tab in the “About” section. More to come – we are always growing, improving, and working to be the most well-rounded dancers we can be!