Genevieve Schmidt

This was a dance that I choreographed to be performed in a student choreography showcase performance.

Out of the 7 dances, mine was one of 3 to be featured in a bigger dance performance in Feb. 2024.

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Concept: This dance tells the story of a painter painting a portrait of the muses until the painting magically comes to life. As the muses do their own dance, the painter slowly allows them to let their true colors shine.

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Process: I started out with the concept and storyline that I wanted to portray. From there, I spent every week coming up with choreography to teach the dancers, and spending time with each dancer individually so that I could get a sense of each of their individual styles of dance. I played the painter, and I cast each dancer to represent their own muse based on their own unique personalities and dance styles. (For example, one of my dancers always made me laugh and smile, and she always had mischievous facial expressions when she danced, so I cast her as Thalia, Muse of Comedy.) We performed after 7 weeks of rehearsals.

I also designed and sewed the top sections of each muse costume, building a quick-change mechanism for the middle of the dance, where the muses literally show their true colors by suddenly revealing a colorful sash.

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To see more about my process, see my blog post titled "Musing Around"