The Washington and Lee University Department of Theatre, Dance and Film Studies presents Vertical Dance, a free performance for the community, on May 22 at 12p.m. and 9 p.m. and May 23 at 12 a.m. The concert will be held outside on the wall of Wilson Hall at W&L. You are welcome to bring blankets or chairs and a picnic for lawn seating across from the performance wall.

Aerial dance is an emerging form of modern dance, in which dancers are suspended 50 feet in the air in harnesses, tethered to steel cables that allow them to perform against the vertical surface of a wall. Rotating the dance “floor” 90 degrees in this manner creates new relationships to gravity for the artists and introduces the illusion of flight into their choreography.

This concert of 10 student works is the culmination of the four-week spring term aerial dance class. Directed by Professor Jenefer Davies, the aerial dance program at Washington and Lee is one of the first academic programs in aerial dance in the country. Student choreographers Elise McPherson, Madison Lilly, Rebecca Bundrant, Morgan Stoudt, Hayden Myer, Georgia Busbee, Barclay McGinley, Skyler Hollins, Olesia Soukhoveev, Emmie Rose, and Virginia Newmann spent spring term learning aerial dance vocabulary, elements of composition, performance techniques and technical, production and artistic components of performance. They created new pieces of aerial dance choreography for themselves and in collaboration with their classmates.