MOST OUTSTANDING DANCE PERFORMANCE NOMINEE
xavier university of louisiana vietnamese association
XULAVA DANCE PERFORMANCE
List of everyone involved in this performance. Please include: first and last names, whether or not they attended your school during the time of the dance, and their roles for the performance.
Choreographer:
Derrien Lewis
Dancers:
Elizabeth Tran, Johnathan Tran, Lauryn Shipp, Cai Starrm, Annice Mcfarland, Gabrielle Esquivel
Please describe the purpose of this dance, including your intention, goals, and creative process.
Warning: I honestly cannot write this in short, as this dance has had a bigger effect on me than imaginable. This dance was my love letter and passion project to VSA, so please bare with me.
The start: This dance was something that I have been planing since my very first date auction (2022)! When I was there, I noticed that all the school-dances were hip-hop based which is fine, but not really my forte as I am a contemporary dancer. I was actually hoping to see another dance-style being performed but didn't sadly. It was still fun nonetheless. Our school's dance that year was ok, but our club and board was just reviving at that point, so we were a little everywhere and couldn't really focus on it too much. I didn't really think much about it that much after Date Auction ended....until GCA's came along! There I found out that the best dance could actually win an award, and I was sold! It was then that I was determined to not only try and gain some light for one of the smaller organizations, but to show people that not only one type of dance had to be done and not only big schools could stand a winning chance!
I consider myself to be a very artistic person. I come from a theatre and dance background, and I knew that I could potentially utilize that in our dance. I decided early on before even getting our theme, that I would want our dance to tell a story. I wanted the audience to be captivated. The method I chose to convey this, would be by having the skit lead into the dance! I noticed that not many schools had ever done this and I was excited to be one of the first to try! (as you'll continue reading, you'll come to realize that risk taking was a common theme of mine). When our school got League of Legends, I knew that this would be more than possible!
The skit: I feel the need to mention the skit bc it is a crucial part of the dance. The skit was completely written, conceptualized, blocked, and costumed (the dance as well) by me. I wanted to play into the lore side of league of legends. I was inspired by the Arcane series, specifically the sibling dynamic between the two leads Jinx and Vi. I wanted to play into the sibling rivalry aspect that was in the show, but still be able to put forth an original piece of work. I was a big fan of all things magic growing up, and I realized that league contained mage characters. That combined with siblings?.....My plot was born! I decided to tell the story of two twin mage siblings, each leaders of their respective clans and their fight for power. All to end in a fight between blood. Not only did I think this was a good story, but it was something that I could definitely use for my dance!
The dance: The dance was far from easy. Honestly, even that statement is an understatement. The first hard part came with finding the dancers. As I mentioned before, my school's VSA is one of the smaller ones and it's always a struggle to find participants for events like these. The good thing however, was that I envisioned the dance only containing 7 dancers. I scrambled to find each and everyone of my dancers on my own. I say this not in an attempt to be vain, but to highlight the amount of stress in which I was dealing with. Some were not even general members but instead friends of friends at the school. After finding the dancers, I realized that only two of them (Lauryn and John) were trained...in hip-hop! The rest were inexperienced dancers. That's right none of the other dancers were trained in contemporary/ballet besides me! On top of that, they didn't even know each other! I had no idea if they would even be able to dance together. But that didn't matter to me, as I had faith in them. We began training 1 and 1/2 months in advance.
The choreo: I had the end of the dance planned before the beginning! I knew that I wanted there to be only one victor left standing. Not only would it be dramatic, exciting, and tie the dance altogether, but it would be a perfect reflection of the war aspect of League. I specifically placed the dance in three stages: The encounter, The duet, and The Fight. I single handedly taught all of the dancers their choreography, technique, emotional execution, and timing. I do have to admit that I did get stuck in the beginning however! I just couldn't come up with a perfect opener to save my life! To solve this, I referenced the moves of a contemporary dance from a dance moms number that I remembered performing with my friend in high school. This was only the first few seconds of the dance however and the rest was entirely from me! After getting over that hurdle that was the opening, the rest of the dance came easily. I tried to incorporate movements that I felt told the story. I also paid extreme attention to the synchronization and emotional portrayal as well.
The Performance: I was incredibly nervous about our performance. It didn't help that right before we went on, I noticed that our skit experienced a technical glitch that caused it to loop. I was honestly mentally thrown off and didn't know what to expect. When I saw the results however, I couldn't be happier! The audience did exactly what I wanted them to....nothing. They were quiet. Most people might mistake this for a negative thing, but this is the sign of any great contemporary dance. Quiet means that everyone is hyper fixated on the dancers while simultaneously trying to understand the story. The applause and cheers at the special moves were signs that we still had their attention. The ensemble and lead dancers were completely synched from the start and there were no visible mess-ups. The emotional execution was spot-on. The crowd erupting in cheers at the end was the icing on the cake!
The doubt: Although I write about having complete faith in my vision, myself, and my dancers...that is not completely the truth I guess. There were many times that I actually contemplated just giving up. I faced so much push back from some of the dancers who were concerned that a contemporary number would be ill-received. I also faced a bit of push back from my president, who kind of wanted me to manage audience expectations a bit as everyone would be expecting a KDA song/number. The stress of also being emcee, a member of the collab dance, a lead dancer in my school dance, skit writer/director, and choreographer were all catching up to me. All of these things got to me at one point, but I still managed to persist because I was set on making a difference. I earned the trust of my dancers, learned to trust my vision, and was able to effectively multi-task!
Why: So, with all that being said, why should we be nominated? Sure I could say it was because of the hard work, but I believe that every school worked hard! I could say that it was because we were good, but again that applies to many other schools as well. So then what? I honestly believe it is because we dared to be different! Despite the risk and challenges faced in the process, XULAVA took a step forward from what appeared to be the status-quo of schools performing hip-hop dances and embodied not only the way of art, but the way of change. We did a dance that was only contemporary and expanded the palettes of the audience. It also formed bonds between people who were all once strangers. But this dance was bigger than just me, my dancers, and my organization...
It is a love letter to the future VSA's that dare to create, challenge, and venture into the unknown!