ArtBeat Dance 2026

Miranda Lawson

“should’ve been a cowboy” should’ve been a cowboy is a dance work that celebrates and reclaims the deep roots of Black contribution to country music while questioning how and why cultural spaces come to center whiteness despite being built from Black artistic innovation. Inspired in part by Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, the piece exists as both homage and interrogation — honoring lineage while challenging dominant narratives of ownership and belonging within the genre. Performed by a cast entirely of Black dancers, the work foregrounds Black presence, joy, and complexity as central rather than peripheral. Using movement, props, theatrical play, and intentional silliness, the choreography balances celebration with critique, inviting audiences into reflection through humor as much as rigor. The movement vocabulary lives in a hybrid space between contemporary dance and house dance, emerging as a third, in-between language that reflects cultural blending, resistance, and reinvention.

Julianne Cerreta

“This is Power” – /Excerpt from This is Ballet/

Be obedient
Respect the tradition
Wear what you’re told
Be quiet
Don’t show the effort
Give everything to your art (including your sanity)
NEVER sit down
Do not question the director
Don’t question anything, actually
Shut up and be grateful. Not everyone gets this opportunity.

 This research was fueled by the question “Who holds power in ballet? And if not us, how do we reclaim our power?”

 The piece critically examines the imbalanced power structures in classical ballet and specifically references Balanchine’s Serenade multiple times, but turns the choreography against the powers that gave it life. Dancers embody grief, rage, and ultimately liberation.  Ballet teaches uniformity, obedience, and subservience. What happens when we speak up? What happens when we force leadership to look at us as human beings instead of just dancing pawns? “This is Ballet” was a work made by dancers, for dancers. You have a voice. Don’t be afraid to use it.

Duets for a Lifetime

“Swim or Sync”

This dance is a fun loving, take on synchronized swimming. We hope its lighthearted mood will elicit much laughter. For the “in the pool” section, the performers will dance inside a large elastic band, allowing them to stretch almost horizontally and give the impression of swimming underwater.

Rebecca McGowan

“Drilling“

This piece is rooted in traditional soft shoe Irish dancing, with a playful lightness. Uptempo, quick footwork, travel in space, and dancers in playful relationship to one another. Using traditional movement vocabulary and expanding that outwards as well, we are exploring a looser movement quality, groundedness, and our relationship to the floor, to express the musicality of the piece (Drilling, Outside Track).

Jenna Gross

“Apply Pressure”

Apply Pressure comments on the use of comedy as a coping mechanism when dealing with inner turmoil and not wanting to burden others with being “negative”. Through high energy contemporary dance with elements of jazz technique, we explore tropes in performative dance cliches, clowning vocabulary, and childlike aggression. Centered around calculated movements and dysfunctional teamwork, the performance comes to a head with eventual burnout from overperformance. Hard hitting movements juxtaposed by fluidity and soft articulation highlight the exertion and effort it takes to maintain a public facing mask.

Emily Jerant-Hendrickson

“Caged”

“Caged” is an 9 minute long contemporary dance theater solo that follows the wide range of reactive states that humans pass through while existing as captives of their own mind. Like caged animals, we stagger through an internal minefield, oscillating between blissful unawareness, panicked awareness that results in feeling frozen or reacting explosively, and the urge to return to captivity even when given the tools to escape because our coping mechanisms prove to feel safer than the sensation of freedom.