The Panther

Media Credit: David Butler

It's time to open the curtain. The Classic Dance Ensemble is preparing for their bi-annual production, and director Danyale Taylor has her eye on the prize for a superb show.

Mocha Nights, a night of dance, poetry, and fun, will have the audience fixed in a ball of lyrical movement. Monday night's practice was filled with a full run through of the show, and brushed up technique. The ensemble swayed and jerked their bodies to a full Monty of timid songs and short lyrical masterpieces. The thing that makes this show different from many is the incorporation of spoken word with their eight counts.

Senior mathematics major, Jenna Moore, said, "I feel practice could've went better because we know what we are capable of, but dancing to spoken word is fun. It gives you the freedom to move however you feel."

A few snaps and bobbing heads will be joined with dilated pupils as the dancers leap across the stage. The auditorium will be filled with a love jones aura… The love for these art forms. Even though spoken word has been around forever, it seems as if this poetry thing is a new trend.

"Everyone is into spoken word. The people are just catching on to it, and they are realizing it is one thing to see someone speak, but to see the movements and dance is another," Taylor said of their production.

The company of about twelve is focused for the task of entertaining a willing crowd while embodying the words and passion of some superb poets.

Taylor even went through the fire to find PVs Productive Poets to help her in the show. Popular poets Nine, OutSPOKEN, and other poet members respectively stopped in the dance studio while the ensemble practiced. They watched and observed the dancers moves as they sought inspiration. They wrote lyrics to the pieces they witnessed, and a family of poetry and dance was born.

"You have to utilize the talent that is on this campus. There is a lot of it and I wish there was more," said Taylor when she spoke of the poets she added to the show.

Next Friday, Nov. 16, the auditorium will be filled with attentive eyes and ears as the Classic Dance Ensemble display their newest masterpiece.

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