The red curtains of the Clarice’s Dance Theatre opened to reveal a projection cast on a back wall. Michael Jackson’s young face appeared and “I Want You Back” by The Jackson Five streamed throughout the theater, followed by Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and MC Hammer performing “U Can’t Touch This.”
Christina Collins walked on stage with three other performers, all dressed in bell-bottoms and jumpsuits straight from the 1970s. Part one of Collins’ vision for her thesis piece was coming to life.
From Oct. 25 through Oct. 27, the University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies presented the Fall Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Dance Concert at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, where three graduate students, including 26-year-old Collins, presented their choreographed thesis performances to wrap up the three-year program.
While Collins expressed her excitement about moving on from the program, she also described her sadness in leaving.
“I’m gonna miss just the community, the rigor, the stress,” Collins said. “As much as I hate [the stress] I also love it because it’s, like, transformed me into the person I am today.”
Collins fell in love with dance as a nine year old in Richmond, Va. She followed this love of dance to Virginia Commonwealth University, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance.Â
After graduating from VCU, Collins stayed in Richmond where she taught different dance styles to students from ages two to 18. Her love of teaching pushed her to go to school to get an M.F.A. in Dance.Â
“I would love to be a professor, I would love to teach dance, I would love to collaborate with people, I would love to have my own company so…I’m really interested in the world of dance,” Collins said.
Collins enrolled in the three-year M.F.A. in Dance program at UMD, during which she had the opportunity to take choreography, writing, ballet and jazz classes, teach classes as a graduate assistant and begin thinking about her thesis piece.Â
Collins said that she was able to brainstorm the general idea of her thesis her first year and stuck with her original idea throughout the three years of her program. It culminated in her thesis piece, titled MUVAshiiip: The Voyage.
“I made three subsections, past, present and future, to represent my reimagination of the past, my reimagination of my future, what I imagine it to be and then my current present of how I want to transform myself,” Collins said.Â
She also explained the underlying theme of afrofuturism, which she described as “the reimagination of the African American experience”, as well as her love of pop culture that blossomed at the core of her thesis performance.Â
Collins described her piece as a hybrid of many dance styles from house dance, to hip-hop, to groove, to jazz. It was mainly performed by herself and three other dancers, who explored Collins’ reimagination of the 1970’s and a future in which technology reigns.Â
The third and final part of Collins’ piece was an emotional reflection of her current self and how she is shaped by nostalgia. This third part ended with the three other performers joining Collins onstage, dressed in costumes from the different eras, to show Collins’ vision of the past, present, and future coming together to shape who she is and who she sees herself becoming.
After working on this piece for three years, Collins expressed how hard it would be to completely let this piece go.Â
“I will probably do another reimagined version of this later…I would love to have the time and the space to really, like, open up the thesis,” Collins said.Â
Collins’ fellow graduate students, Daniel Miramontes and Peter Pattengill, also delivered powerful thesis performances through which Miramontes explored the connection between surrounding materials and the human body and Pattengill represented the demonization of queer individuals.Â
“I just love how each of their passion was involved within each performance and…each performance had a form of activism,” freshman theater major and audience member Heidi Lehan, said.
While the presentation of their thesis performances has concluded, these graduate students still have to submit a 50 to 75 page thesis dissertation diving deeper into their performance and its underlying themes. They then need to be able to defend their thesis to a committee and the connection between their thesis performance, its themes, and their dissertation. Only after the defense of their thesis will these graduate students complete the program and officially receive their M.F.A. in Dance.