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Project Aria
THE LONG TIME AGO QUARTET AT FLAT ROCK PARK
Three CSU departments collaborate to create unique masterpieces during the COVID pandemic.
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rts students everywhere have struggled to find ways to perform and display their work since traditional venues have been closed or limited, and performance opportunities have been cancelled. However, classes have continued, and professors and students alike have had to come up with creative ways to display progress in their performance-based classes. Over the summer, Dr. Joshua May viewed several student projects from the College of the Arts and was fascinated by what professors were still able to do with their students despite the pandemic. He opened a dialogue with Assistant Professor of Dance Amy Taylor and Assistant Professor of Art and Animation Demetrius Dukes about how they could combine their creative endeavors to bring their students together to produce something beautiful and unique for the community. These meetings birthed Project Aria. Each professor selected one of their upper level classes to participate. These students were broken into groups, and each group received an aria to bring to life using their art form.
12 | The Saber | FALL 2020
“I envision it as an artistic narrative that shares all of the disciplines in a really unique fashion,” explained Dr. May. “We’re going to feel the sense of liveliness and core of the heart of each aria through the designers, dancers, and singers.” Dr. May arranged for several meetings in which the students assigned to each aria were able to share the work they had been doing individually and have group discussions about how those elements would fit into their final work. These meetings included opportunities for Opera students to share the translation of their pieces. Professor Taylor mentioned that these meetings “really helped move along the choreography and overall choreographic process.” “We created movement to express how we felt and to show a story through dance,” commented sophomore Theatre student Micah Courtland on the dance element of the project. Professor Taylor distributed arias to dance composition students based on how long they were. Longer arias were assigned to two dancers. “I just randomly paired people together that I thought would be
good collaborators,” commented Professor Taylor when asked about how she chose who would work together. “I wanted to challenge the students to work with a genre of music that they may not have been naturally drawn to and may not have worked with before.” Junior Nursing student Silvia Beltran noted that being assigned a piece was difficult for her. “We’re usually the ones that choose our own music, so it’s usually one that inspires us or what we’re driven to, and it was very challenging to find an inspiration in something that you’re not used to dancing… but I ended up really enjoying it.” When dance composition students encounter creative blocks or need some inspiration, they are encouraged to listen to songs in another genre of music. Cortland commented, “For me it was a hip hop song or something like that to get in my mind something fresh, some new movements… and then translating that back into the aria." Animation students were tasked with providing the backdrop for two of the arias. “Our contribution to the music project was to bring the music MACY FRAZIER
