Dancers outside the Tampa Museum of Art, clad only in white, gracefully moved to the music being performed inside Thursday evening at the Arts Nexus collaborative event.
Separated only by the glass wall, the University of Tampa dancers and performers improvised their movements and sounds for an hour-long performance.
You could see the different ensembles that were inside through the glass wall. In each corner of the room musicians were placed with a vocalist.
The instruments being played were two saxophones, guitar, xylophone and flute. When you walk to the middle of the room, the ensembles could be heard in surround sound.
“You feed off of the other people. You feed of the energy of everybody else. It’s really a group effort even though we’ve never danced together before,” Nathalia Pirela, a junior, said.
There were times when she didn’t know what to do, and she said she was trying not to be too repetitive. She was doing ballet, jazz and modern dances for her interpretation.
Pirela also said she has no idea how she kept dancing for the whole hour, but when they got tired they would sit in a corner, or do yoga, anything that didn’t take up much energy.
According to Crenshaw the piece they performed is designed so you can take a break and then come back in again.
The performance was a continuous flow energy that filled the museum’s corridor and the performers couldn’t recognize the time, or at least that’s how Alex Crenshaw, a sophomore, described the hour long performance.
“I actually didn’t feel it. We got to around the 51st pattern out of 53 and I was surprised it was almost over,” Crenshaw said. “I think maybe I got lost in the experience so I didn’t notice.”
Mel Steiner, a UT senior, added to this by saying it’s an ensemble piece but every part is different. Some people are going to be ahead of you, behind you or with you.
Crenshaw and Steiner said that they think that the music was chosen by Assistant Professor of Music Bradford Blackburn, and that Hein Jung, Assistant Professor of Music, helped with pronunciation of words and notes.
According to Steiner, Jung added color to a piece that could be played many different ways.
“This was the University’s first adventure into minimalism and it was different for all of us,” Crenshaw said.
Minimalism is a type of art that is characterized by its extreme simplicity.
Steiner also said there was a high and a low C in the background done by a computer that they had to keep the beat with.
According to Crenshaw the piece was performed in museums like this in the past and was referred to as “Down Town Music.”
“An interesting fact about the piece is that it can be performed for an hour, for a half hour, for a week, for a year without stopping,” said Steiner about minimalism.
The piece they performed was In C by Terry Riley.
According to Professor of Communications Dana Plays, the new Dean of the College of Arts and Letters Haig Mardirosian and the new director of TMA Todd D. Smith decided to collaborate to have this event with students.
“The whole thing came together in about six weeks,” Plays said. “We came to [the name] Art Nexus, it means everything coming together.”
Blackburn came up with the name.
Another part of event was a film by Plays, called Demolition, of the old TMA being torn down.
This was on one of the two TV’s, and on the other was footage put together by students of Plays experimental film class and other students and faculty members of CAL.
Students and faculty members were not the only ones in attendance, Tampa residents like Adam Barbosa and Christine Sanchez were also there and they said they really enjoyed the performances.
“I wish when I got here there was some sort of artist statement. That I had some kind of idea as to the concept of what was going on,” Barbosa said of his only complaint of the event.
Plays believes this will become an annual event if not more frequent because of the outcome of the event.