A+C DANCE Stage lights slowly rise, revealing two dancers performing as bugs. Their movements are sharp, a bit creepy, legs clad in deep purple leggings, hair pulled back in tight buns. Opposite them, a group of women sit, dressed in clothes designed for laying in the sun, long legs crossed at the ankles. Their relaxation is brief; these insectoid dancers quickly break up the scene, sliding amongst the seated group to lunge, tease, and attack. An all-too-familiar summer battle between people and the bugs that desire their blood ensues, women versus bugs, all set to a string cover of Coheed and Cambria music. This is ballet quite unlike most. Local dancer, choreographer, and teacher Liz Alford has crafted this story on stage, a Balanchine-style ballet number in celebration of International Insect Week. Many of Alford’s choreographed pieces play out like this. Stylistic, beautiful, but a little bit different. A Christmas performance set to Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal” features dancers clad in bright red shirts playfully moving across the stage. “I always told my students that I get choreography insomnia,” Alford said. She will spend nights up late, steps simply flowing through her mind. She said movement, for her, always begins with music; from there, steps naturally flow.
Patrick Roddy, the head of Creighton University’s dance department, where Alford also teaches, speaks warmly of some playful modifications that she made to a 2021 Creighton performance of The Nutcracker. COVID-19 made it hard to bring in folks outside of Creighton as dancers; so staff decided to have Creighton dancers play the roles of children. Alford and Roddy collaborated on the rework, giving the dancers choreography that would play with the idea that they were supposed to be much younger. They pulled it off; Roddy said he cracked up laughing every night of the performance. “There aren’t that many choreographers that have that skill of finding humor and poignancy and emotion,” Roddy said. “And Liz is one of those people that can really feel all those things and portray them in a dance.” The classically trained dancer has taught ballet at Omaha Academy of Ballet since 2015. She has also choreographed works for OAB, Omaha Dance Project, Nebraska Opera Project, Creighton, and others.
