VHHS Dance troupe takes on politics

Politics may be a topic of conversation some avoid, but one group of Vestavia Hills High School students is taking the big issues head-on.

The Impulse Dance Company, a new class for second- and third-year dance students, used its first performance to interpret the big issues of the 2016 presidential election.

Faith Lenhart, chair of the performing arts and dance departments, said the company class gives the students the chance to be involved in a dance project from the concept stage to the performance — from composition and staging to costumes, production, music editing and critiques.

The class is for junior and senior students and has 19 dancers this year.

For the political performance Oct. 17, the students were required to go home and ask adults what issues they were considering as Election Day drew near.

“After a few days of collecting the responses, we discussed all the topics that were listed and how they would translate in a dance performance,” Lenhart said.

Of the issues, she said the class narrowed it down to three: terrorism, abortion and police brutality.

“The dancers were allowed to select the topics that they were most interested in creating a dance around,” she said. 

As a large group, Lenhart said the class discussed how the issues could be boiled down into a single word or phrase as a starting point for creating the choreography.

Lenhart said the dancers were required to show both sides of the argument, which she said was challenging at times.

Once they determined how to handle the theme, the dancers created their compositions, going through multiple critique sessions with one another, self-assessing and making adjustments. The dancers also had to select their costumes as well as find and edit their music.

The goal, Lenhart said, was to introduce the dance students to all aspects of the art, and in this case, challenge them to take a difficult topic and incorporate it into a performance, rather than just choreographing to a particular piece of music.

“They’ve really enjoyed it,” she said, and added that the dancers even worked outside of class to practice for the performance, and they are really proud of their work.

The Impulse Dance Company will have two more projects, one for the holidays in December, and then one focusing on film after returning from the break.