This year’s Senior Dance Capstone showcases the culmination of years of study for seven Dance majors. As choreographers, the cohort has developed unique voices through research, creative exploration, and movement, transforming ideas into compelling performances that explore a variety of human experiences.

Meet these rising choreographers and learn about their works below.  

The Senior Dance Capstone with Guest Artist Kris Harris will be held on Friday, November 15, and Saturday, November 16, at 7:30 p.m. at the Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre. Tickets are free for AU students, $10 for faculty, staff, alumni, seniors (55+), children (under 18), and $15 for the general public.

Devi Dutta-Sultan

I am a student of the Fakirs, or the “insane ones.” It is my purpose to humbly find my home in their dance; to play a part in healing my community through the prayer of dance.

Devi's work explores her Indian and Bangladeshi heritage in communion with traditions and practices from across the world, and she is especially interested in researching dance as a form of prayer. Her choreographed work “Fakir” references the Sufi Muslim and Hindu ascetics who live on alms and devote their lives to worship. 

Kate Henry

I choose the moving body as my medium for critical inquiry. It is honest, sophisticated, and total, an agent of discovery and analysis.

Kate’s work “Prosodic Contact(s)” explores the acoustics of the human voice and how it affects the human body physically and psychologically.  

Genevieve Skinner

I believe in the art of dance. I believe that a theater can be a magical place. And I believe audiences have power.

Genevieve’s work “Self Refraction” explores the employment of different storytelling techniques in an effort to be attentive to the audience’s relationship with the work.

Abbie Branda

I create art so that I can discover more about what it means to be human, develop the connections I have with the people around me, and find new ways to relate to the audience with what we made.

Abbie's work “Can you see me?" explores how humans perform their own selfhood, and how that performance is shaped by connections to other people.

Juliana Pironti

My work explores the physical dimensions of emotion, uncovering how movement can manifest the intangible and reveal the depth of human experience.

Juliana’s work “Will You/What I Wouldn’t” investigates the intersection of gender performativity, autonomy, and expectations. By positioning gender as a fluid and creative state of being, Pironti explores the shifting nature of identity.

Myra Schoengold

I invite my audience to experience dance as the true universal language – a form of communication that goes beyond words to connect us all. Our bodies carry memories, sensations, and truths that emerge through the limitless vocabulary of dance.

Schoengold’s work “IF THAT MAKES SENSE” delves into the emotional struggles experienced by individuals with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), particularly the weight of negative self-perception and societal judgment.  

Samantha Short

As an artist, I find myself branching out to the space where anthropology and dance meet and inform one other, making room for me to interrogate the imagined boundaries between art and science.

Samantha’s work “Latticework: Wynter°N, the first rain°E, colere°S, s.d.l.°W,” employs the body’s movement and Jamaican novelist and philosopher Sylvia Wynter’s theories on the human to consider places as encounters between power, narratives, and the self.  

Photos: Lauren Brown