Dancers, art students team up for gallery show

Photo by Curtis Grayson
Columbia Art Students and members of the Special Dance Company work together to create a unique show for the school’s Domarecki Gallery. The pictured piece shown above is by Ruby Smith.

MAPLEWOOD/SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Columbia High School’s Special Dance Company and a group of art students joined forces to put together a show for the school’s Domarecki Gallery, bringing to life the movement of the dancers while art depicting them hung on the walls.

The collaboration was the brainchild of Dance Company artistic director Kandice Point-Du-Jour and CHS art teacher Curtis Grayson. Grayson assembled an “all-star team” from his Art 1, Art 2, and Drawing classes, as well as his after-school program, to participate in the exhibit.

The artists spent time taking photos of the dancers as they rehearsed for their end of year performances on May 19 and 20 and then chose a photo to recreate in the medium of their choice.

“Some were already comfortable with figure drawing, and some of the younger students were challenged,” Grayson said. “We wanted to capture how the dancers were moving. They really rose to the occasion.”

Members of the Dance Company were at the show’s opening with stage lighting to perform and set the ambience of the show. It was carried over into the grand finale, the company’s final performance of its 52nd season.

Freshman Caroline Shaw’s piece shows a dancer dressed in a flowing dress; she used acrylic paint in shades of blue. She said the dancer’s pose reminded her of wind.

“I wanted to incorporate that, and the dress was a good way to do it,” Shaw said. “Using paint was new for me in doing something like this, because you’re folding paint into layers instead of shading like in drawing. I would like to try to work with models more. Using the picture was interesting, but working directly with a model could be fun.”

The assignment aligned perfectly with Francoise Christensen, who was already interested in fashion. She emphasized the skirt the dancer in her photo was wearing, which flowed out around the hips and reminded Christensen of a waterfall. She used
that inspiration to decide what medium to use and landed on oil pastels.

“I’ve had good experiences with them in the past and I knew they would work when I saw how the photo came out,” the freshman said. “It really shows the movement of the dancer.”
Working in collaboration with the Dance Company was new to Christensen, who also hadn’t done a lot of figure drawing in the past. But she enjoyed it, and like Shaw, is looking forward to using models in person in the future.

“This was two groups of people who were doing different things, but are both still art,” Christensen said. “It was interesting to see how it all came together.”

The dancers put a lot of work into rehearsing for their show, and senior co-captain Olive Kern-Kensler said that she could see where the inspiration in the artists’ work came from.
“We had some dancers be a part of the gallery opening, and the first time we saw their work we could recognize where in the dance it was from,” Kern-Kensler said. “It was interesting to see their interpretation of it and to see the colors they chose.”

Also in the group of figure drawing novices was Anastasia Patti-Aquino. The freshman used acrylic paints to depict a dancer reaching up and posing. Having never drawn people before. Patti-Aquino initially had trouble with getting the proportions right.

“It was difficult to get the proportions of the feet, head and hand right,” she said. “I looked at a mannequin and drew that, and it helped.”

While working on her piece, Patti-Aquino made the decision to not create a literal interpretation of the dancer she took a photo of, instead eschewing painting facial features.
“Whenever I look at art, I find a different meaning than what the artists might have intended,” she said. “So I wanted everyone to find their own meaning when looking at this.”

Pieces like Patti-Aquino’s were exciting to see for the dancers. Dance Company co-captain Ciel Ben-Adi was interested to see what the artists were seeing when they took photos of the dancers because they have completely different perspectives than she has.
“Some were more literal interpretations,” the senior said. “Some others went with how they saw the emotion and drew that.”

Because the artists observed the dancers much earlier in their rehearsal process than they usually have an audience, co-captain Sadie Frank said the SDC got feedback before they usually do at showtime.

“It’s never a complete process,” the senior said. “But we could see how it was coming across in the art. We got a chance to see how the audience might react and what they would see when we were still a couple of weeks out.”

Juniors Allister Ramsey and Leo Brash both used an airbrush for their pieces; it’s a tool that Brash uses frequently but Ramsey has mostly only used to paint physical objects rather than as an artists’ tool. He decided this would be a good time to try something new.

“I sketched it out first and then used the airbrush to paint,” Ramsey said. “It gave it a splatter effect that looked like there were splashes when the dancer’s feet touch the ground or joints are touching.”

Brash didn’t use color, instead choosing to airbrush with only black paint.
“With the airbrush you have a lot of opportunity for shading,” he said. “So I thought it would look better than using a lot of color. With a paint brush, you sometimes can’t control how much paint there is. With the airbrush you can control the air flow and how much paint comes out of it. There are more options.”

Ramsey hasn’t had as much experience using the airbrush as Brash has, and he’s excited to try it again.

“It doesn’t look like anything else I’ve done, and I’m proud of that,” Ramsey said.
Lillian Kyle, who has done figure drawing before, chose to focus on the colors in her piece done with acrylic paint. She chose a dark background in an effort to make the dancer and her clothes stand out.

“I wanted to add emphasis on the face, and a dark background would make her pop,” the freshman said. “The reds in her dress mimic the muscles and the movement of the dancers.”

This is not the first time that Point-Du-Jour and Grayson have had their students collaborate; artists and dancers have worked together before. The performances of the Dance Company and the shows in the gallery work in tandem with each other even though they seem like different art forms.

“There’s a long line of artists that have come out of Columbia High School,” Point-Du-Jour said. “It’s the heart of the school.”