Arts House Dance show opens tonight

The Arts House Dance Company's annual show, titled Fierce, will open tonight at the Harold Prince Theater in the Annenberg Center, featuring tap, modern, classical and funk dancing. Twenty-five dancers will perform in the show, the highlight of the company's year. "There's a lot of variety," said the show's costume director, College senior Christine Enemark. "We think there's something for everyone." "This is a very new company," Enemark added. "For a lot of the dancers, this is their first year. We've been practicing for this since September, so we think it will be very successful." It is the first year the Company has performed in the Annenberg Center's Harold Prince Theatre. "The venue makes a lot of difference" said College senior Stacey Lewis, the Company's artistic director. "Here we can really play out to the audience. At previous shows we've had to dance while looking out at everybody's feet." At rehearsal this week, the dancers ran through their paces with casual grace, all the while smiling and making the dances look easy. They seemed equally at home with the theatrics of a piece from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats and the more frenzied pace of jazz. But all the material was filled with energy and panache. Fierce is an entirely student-produced show. College senior Carlyn Caufield said that although the group has a professional dance teacher, "the direction, choreography, costumes and lighting are all done by students." Tickets to the show, to be performed tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m., have been selling briskly, and the weekend shows are nearly sold out. "We think we're 'extremely vexatious' and 'stylishly sexy,' " Lewis said, referring to a description given in the play's program. "Just say we're hot." "It's called Fierce because we're fabulous," she added.

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