Antaeus Dance, a Cleveland-based company founded by Allegheny College alumna Joan Meggitt, presented its annual fall concert, Saturday, Sept. 27, in the Montgomery Performance Space.
The themes for this year were addiction and mortality. There were a total of six dance pieces; two of those pieces were performed by Allegheny students who participated in the 2014 Allegheny Summer Dance Intensive. The dance intensive program is sponsored by the Dance and Movement Studies department and ran by Meggitt and Desmond Davis.
Meggitt, ’92, launched Antaeus Dance in 2001 bringing in more than 60 choreographers, musicians visual artists and filmmakers to work. Meggitt is an assistant Professor in the Dance Division of Kent State University’s school of Theatre and Dance.
Meggitt began studying dance at Allegheny College with Jan Hyatt and James Reedy. She earned her M.F.A in Dance from Case Western Reserve University under the instruction of Kathryn Karipides and Kelly Holt.
Through the growth of her genre and style, Meggitt choreographs a lot of her movements close to the ground. She says; “Antaeus is a mythological figure which means, son of mother earth,” exemplifying the type of movement and choreographer Meggitt creates.
Gavrielle Winer, ’18, who has been dancing for 16 years, and Chelsea Contino, ’18, for 5 years, participated in the dance concert and summer dance intensive. According to them, practice started the second day of the dance intensive. They learned Meggitt’s piece in three days. After that they had four days to learn Desmond’s piece. Altogether they had three days and four hours to learn a five to six minute routine.
Teresa Roland, the spouse of a faculty member at Allegheny, really enjoyed the concert.
“I was taken by all of the work and hidden dialogue. The interrelation of the dance art, poetry and theatrics was great,” Roland said. She enjoyed seeing the students and professionals perform together.