What Elliot learned that he didn’t know before dancing with the company
Edited and Produced by Alexis Iammarino and Dorothy Williams, Spring 2011.
Elliot Rosen, Interviewee
Dorothy Williams, Interviewer
Alexis Iammarino, Audio Production
ELLIOT: I did not appreciate the emotional content and intellectual content of the dance. I had been to the ballet a little bit as a kid and I had seen some modern dance growing up and whatnot. But I never experienced dance as having this kind of significant emotional content and effect on audience. And that it's not just about nice movement on stage but it's about telling a real story that might not be a nice story. And it might be beautiful to look at but the content can be really hard. That was really eye-opening for me and I think that's quite unique in dance, the real content that dance can have.
I have been a strong proponent of the work of the Dance Exchange because I have seen over the years what the Dance Exchange work does to people. People go to a performance and they come out different…they come out having experienced something that makes them have an 'a-ha!' moment or gives them pause that makes them think about something differently and I don't know of other dance companies that do that, month after month, year after year, creating real learning opportunities for an audience while watching something beautiful happening on stage.
