The Sweet Briar College Spring Dance Concert will highlight a variety of dynamic performances from students, professors, and a special guest artist on Friday and Saturday, April 16 and 17 at 8:30 p.m. in Murchison Lane Auditorium of Babcock Fine Arts Center. The concert is free and open to the public.

Artistic directors Mark Magruder and Ella Magruder, SBC professors of dance, have assembled a program comprising pieces by three junior dance majors, a sophomore dance major, a guest alumna, and other students as well as two individual works of their own.

The spring concert is a Sweet Briar tradition, but Mark Magruder said he's never tried to pin it down with a specific title or theme. "We never have a theme," he said. "It's a collection of dances we put together but don't necessarily relate to each other. We put them in an order so they seem harmonious. We like to have variety."

Junior dance majors Samantha Angus (an Amherst native), Jan Jennings, and Casey Poore have come up with three distinctively different pieces. Magruder describes Angus' quartet dance as "very high energy and physically challenging for students [and] an exciting piece for the audience." Jennings' quartet piece evokes isolation through a box that opens to reveal a slowly emerging individual, and Poore's concept is based on sunrise and sunset. "A calm and serene dance," Magruder said.

Jozanne Summerville, a senior dance minor, will lead an ensemble piece with hip-hop influences, and sophomore dance major Sara Coffey leads a trio in "Hope Grows." A reflection of loss and how people cope with death, the piece was conceived to draw awareness to breast cancer.

Mark Franklin, Nelson County High School graduate, will perform in Summerville's piece as well as Magruder's closing ensemble. Local musician David Grimm will play piano throughout the concert. "He made up some of the pieces himself," Magruder said. "It's a really cool score."

Two other area natives - SBC students Jennifer Sirois of Nelson County and Amanda Evans of Amherst County - are also performing in the concert.

First-year students Betty Skeen and Caryn Brissey, who Magruder calls "two very strong upcoming dancers of merit," will perform an "extremely athletic piece. They're pulling out all the stops," he said. "They'll definitely have people on the edge of their seats."

Magruder is particularly excited about the concert's special guest artist, Jill Gavitt '97, who has prepared a solo performance. Gavitt majored in Spanish and minored in dance at Sweet Briar and now teaches Spanish in the Danville, Va., school system.

"Jill's work was always very exciting to watch and is usually very powerful," Magruder said. "I thought, 'Wouldn't it be fun to see what a former student is doing?' She's been keeping up with her technique."

Ella Magruder's quartet piece, "Ocean," is a reflection of timelessness. "It's influenced by Brazil and coral tidepools [there]," Mark Magruder said. "Ella's taken those visual effects and put them into a dance form. The flow of the dance is kind of like the flow of water that happens in tidepools."

Mark Magruder's own work, "Deco Divas" - an exploration of 1920s and '30s art-deco fashion styles - should close the concert with a bang. The 17-strong ensemble will include students in costumes designed in the style of the artist Erte and "at least four or five dogs."

"It has an incredible music score to it," he said. "At the end, we'll have a runway lineup of students in art-deco costumes with dogs walking alongside. The underlying theme is fun - a light happy dance. People should walk away with big smile on their face."

The concert's striking promotional poster was designed by SBC studio art major Brienna McLaughlin from paper she made herself. The BFA candidate will present the work at her honors thesis exhibition called "Dreams."

For information, please contact Mark Magruder at (434) 381-6150 or magruder@sbc.edu.