Sarabande Supershow

I woke up this morning at 6:15 and accompanied Amy and Dan Grayson (an Admissions Counselor who graduated from Tufts in 2006) on visits to three schools in the Boston suburbs. When we returned to campus nine hours later, Amy immediately set to work interviewing undergraduate tour guide applicants and I went home to collapse on a sofa. She has much more energy than me.

There are a lot of energetic individual on campus, but I'd like to dedicate this entry to hardworking dancers. Tufts students with terpsichorean talents are in abundance. I studied dance for 12 years and was burnt out by the time I reached 9th grade. My close friend Kat, on the other hand, majors in Art History at Tufts, works at the Museum of Fine Arts, and spends 17 hours a week at dance rehearsals--let alone the time she spends choreographing routines for others!Tonight, I went to the Sarabande Supershow to support some of my dancer friends (Maggie, Steph, Kat, Laura, Marissa, Cassie, and Rachel--you were all fantastic!) Sarabande is a repertory dance ensemble that features a variety of dance styles--ballet, pointe, jazz, modern, tap, etc.--and the members choregraph all of their own work.

Sarabande stages a major recital each semester and invites other Tufts performance groups to showcase as well. This year, the following groups performed: Tufts University Bhangra Team; Spirit of Color Performing Arts Troupe; Tae Kwon Do; a Pen, Paint, and Pretzels dramatic soloist; TURBO Breakdancing; Major: Undecided Sketch Comedy; and TDC, the Tufts Dance Collective. Static Noyze, a Boston-based hip hop troupe founded by five male Tufts alums (and former Spirit of Color members), performed their unique mix of innovative and stimulating theatrical dance. Their spectacle tonight was based on Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" and set to tunes by Bright Eyes, Timbaland, Nine Inch Nails, BT, and Justice.

Before they came to Tufts, many of the Sarabande members studied with premier programs like the Boston Ballet School, the Joffrey Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Ballet Academy of Baltimore, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, to name a few. Prior to college, my friend Marissa (pictured at right) was on the USA Rhythmic Gymnastics National and World Championship teams. She even trained at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, NY for a year! Today, in addition to being the President of Sarabande, she's double majoring in Child Development and Spanish and is one of the Head Writing Fellows at the Academic Resource Center.

That's one of the things I love most about Tufts: there are so many talented individuals from diverse backgrounds. Tufts students are involved in a plethora of extracurricular activities and find creative outlets for their many interests. You're always finding out something new about someone else!

You can read more about Sarabande here:
http://ase.tufts.edu/sarabande