Everyone views the world around them in their own way, but imagine seeing it through someone else’s eyes. This year’s spring dance concert, How I Know the World, does just that. Put on by the Gustavus Dance Company, the performance is a collaboration between students, staff, and visitors. The concert will be performed in the Anderson Theatre, April 17-19.

Directed by professor of Theatre and Dance, Michele Rusinko, the concert features the work of select students, alumni, and faculty choreographers, as well as nationally and internationally-known choreographers. Some rehearsals for the concert began as far back as September 2014.

Inspiration for the title of the concert stems partially from frustrations about a distorted and superficial understanding of dance presented on television.

“The world of dance that I know and love bears no resemblance to the one so often portrayed on popular television,” Rusinko said. “For me, creating a dance is mode of intellectual, embodied inquiry that strives to give physical form to the ineffable.”

Rusinko is performing a solo created especially for her birthday by nationally-known choreographer Cynthia Gutierrez-Garner. The end of Rusinko’s solo features the entire cast of the concert.

Among the choreographers is first-year Dance and Communication Studies double-Major, Allison Retterath. She is a member of the Aprentice Dance Company at Gustavus. The piece Retterath choreographed, But I Don’t Weep, was chosen to be featured in the Spring Dance Concert after it was presented in the Shared Space concert earlier this school year. She is also dancing in a piece created by alumni choreographer, Katy Becker.

“My favorite thing about dancing is the community that develops,” Retterrath said. “No matter where you go, dancers are amazing at creating a group of people who are very accepting of everyone. They are very welcoming and allow you to be yourself while learning from them and I think that’s a really incredible aspect of dance.”

Kate Schulze, a Senior Biology major and Dance minor, is performing in three pieces in the concert, including the one created by internationally-known choreographer Keith Johnson and the Senior Suite. For Johnson’s piece, Adrift Within the Pale Forest and the Moon, Becker and her fellow performers worked with Johnson in seven-hour rehearsals for two weeks in January. They have continued to rehearse and perfect the dance since.

“It was an amazing experience to work with Keith Johnson,” Becker said. “It was such an honor to work with him. I learned a lot about how to be a choreographer as well as an artistic director. He inspires his dancers.”

Rusinko has enjoyed watching her students progress and improve their skills in preparation for the concert. She met many of them as prospective students visiting Gustavus while they were still in high school and she is pleased to see how far they have come since they first started their college dance careers.

“My students constantly surpass my expectation,” Rusinko said. “You see some students really grow throughout the rehearsal process, and you see others take their understanding, technique and artistry to a higher level during the final days of technical rehearsals. To watch them develop as artists over four years is perhaps the most incredible perk of my job.”

-Kim Krulish