2025 M.F.A. Dance Concert

NORTHAMPTON, MA — The Smith College Department of Dance presents the 2025 M.F.A. Dance Concert featuring choreography by 2nd year M.F.A. candidates Caitlin Canty, Gabby Carmichael, Niki Farahani, and Yun Lee. Performances will take place on February 6, 7, 8 at 8 p.m. in Theatre 14. Yun Lee’s piece will be shown once on February 8 at 6:30 p.m. in Acting Studio 1. Both venues are in Smith’s Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts. Reservations are required for both performances.

The four contemporary pieces explore themes of loss, memory, collective histories, horror tropes, and generational storytelling. The dances range from a solo performance to an eight-person ensemble and feature student and professional dancers. Sets are a collaboration between the choreographers and Technical Director Amy Putnam, with costumes by Emily Justice Dunn, and lights by Kathy Couch. Chris Aiken is the faculty adviser.

In The Hot Spits, Caitlin Canty examines the choreography of the female body used in the Horror genre. The contemporary piece for six dancers is an exploration of common horror tropes in popular visual media through abstract dance. The Hot Spits interrogates the central question: what makes movement scary? Canty aims to create a visceral experience with choreography that is at times designed to elicit a response, much like the genre it is exploring. Caitlin Canty is the Director of the Eventual Dance Company where she makes dances for the stage and screen that explore how the collective experience of popular culture takes root in our bodies, shaping the way we move and perceive ourselves within current American society. Her work has been shown in venues across New England, including The Dance Complex, Cambridge Community Television, The Foundry, School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, The Somerville Theater, The Salem Arts Festival, and others.

In The View from Here, Gabby Carmichael explores memory, absence, and the ways personal and collective histories shape our understanding of time and selfhood. The contemporary piece for 8 dancers is based on historical research of the aids epidemic and post-modern dance of the 1980s–90s. By reflecting on collective queer mourning and the politics of grief, Carmichael invites audiences to consider the ongoing presence of loss and how we come to know ourselves. Gabby Carmichael (she/they) works to facilitate discourse and imagine new forms of individual and collective care through rigorous movement and choreographic practices. She has been in residence at Leimay, Gibney, The Floor on Atlantic, MOtiVE Brooklyn, The Field Center, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and her work has been presented at Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts Center, Brooklyn Ballet, Center for Performance Research, Mark Morris Dance Center, and Dixon Place. Additionally, she is a yoga teacher and arts administrator.

Niki Farahani presents a contemporary work for two dancers, tersetwo. The duet is a playful characterization of two people trying to communicate and perform for one another across generational differences. Bound to a middle space created by the scenic design, the two dancers present the equivalent of a series of short stories. Farahani is an Iranian-American whose research explores the desire to dissect the pigments of loss and the misconceptions of formality/civility. She has performed in NYC Festivals such as The White Wave Festival and INSITU-LIC, and notably was a past member of VESSELS and Heath In Progress as a principal member. In the fall of 2022, Farahani participated in the New Museum’s (LES) Summer Residency in collaboration with Ilya Vidrin.

Yun Lee creates pieces that eliminate the proscenium and challenge the traditional relationship between performer, audience, and the work. Yun’s M.F.A. presentation is a 40-minute solo performed once on Saturday, February 8 at 6:30 p.m. in Acting Studio 1, a small black box studio space. The piece channels family memory, history, and remnants of past acts, real and imagined. Yun Lee (she/they) is a performer and choreographer from Seoul whose work interweaves fragments of family history, cultural heritage, and archival text, processing and reimagining the material with feeling bodies through a postcolonial, queer, feminist lens. In 2025, they will present work at Movement Research, visual artist Gyun Hur’s project in Atlanta commissioned by Flux Projects, and for What's a Dancework in Seoul.

Tickets range from $5–10 and can be purchased online at smitharts.ludus.com or by emailing boxoffice@smith.edu.