A personal experience came to life last night on the dance floor.
Using a dance to show the plight of working mothers, associate Prof. Jessica Fogel showed feeling through choreography last night.
Upswell, a solo dance, symbolized the different stages of a woman's life while she is expecting a child. Graduate student instructor Terry Wilson acted out the progress from finding out one is pregnant through childbirth to the repercussions on her professional life of being a mother.
In a lecture, Fogel said she believes dance and movement are important because they comprise a different form of communication people may not be accustomed to.
"There is something very special about shaping one's own vocabulary of movement and sharing it with an audience," Fogel said.
Wilson performed the six-minute dance twice - once before Fogel's lecture and once after. The dance included movements counting down the number of months until labor, going through the actual labor and showing a baby's first movements.
Fogel and Wilson used their own pregnancies and children as inspiration.
Because Fogel cannot dance because of a strain incurred while giving birth last year, Wilson danced in her place. However, the mostly female audience said they understood Fogel's personal emotions nonetheless.
"I thought the dance was very informative. By listening to the lecture I got a better perspective of the dance through the choreographer's eyes," said LSA sophomore Deepa Ambekar.
The dance began by showing the joy of finding out one is pregnant and ended with the struggle of trying to juggle being a mother with being a professional.
Abby Stewart, director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, said the performance was a chance for students to witness a professional woman discuss the experience of trying to handle working and being a mother.
"I thought it was an opportunity to hear an example of a professional talk about an experience that every working mother has with a special insight," Stewart said.
One student said she was able to get a clearer understanding of the message Fogel's message through the dance.
"I got a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the problem," said Archana Kella, an LSA sophomore. "You could feel what she was feeling, and it was more beautiful."
Fogel said she wants students to understand her personally, not just as a professor. By using dance as a way to describe her experiences, she said students are able to understand her more fully.
"This sort of dance demystifies the teacher. You can see the personal backdrop of private lives," Fogel said.
Motivated by different experiences in her own life, Fogel uses real-life stories to develop dances as a means of communication.
Fogel told about events in her life that she used as motivation for her choreography, such as getting robbed in New York.
The name "Upswell" came from an article in The New York Times describing the love of a parent for its child, Fogel said.
JONATHAN SUMMER/Daily
Terry Wilson, a University graduate student, rubs her feet as she performs Upswell last night at East Quad. Upswell is part of the creative performance of "Motherhood and Dance: a Choreographer's Perspective," written and narrated by artist Jessica Fogel. The performance was sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.