On Friday, April 22 and Saturday, April 23, Ayaka Moriyama ’22 presented her dance comps ψ( ). Ayaka Moriyama is a double major dance and physics major and a member of the Semaphore Repertory Dance Company, Experimental Dance Board and Jazz and Contemporary Dance Company. Her solo was selected for performance in the conference’s closing Gala Concert. The performance was fully choreographed by Moriyama and contained five pieces which were all centered around different topics. She had the honor of presenting her solo “My Heart, Your Hand, Their Grandma’s Eyebrow” at the American College Dance Association North Central Conference in March 2022. This piece was created under the artistic direction of guest artist Jinza Thayer. Many of the dance pieces were collaborative in nature.

Moriyama’s piece “Story in Process” integrated a physical sculpture, “developing while impaired,” created by Marcel Jimenez Reyes ’22. The music used in this piece, “To Leave,” was also composed by Carleton student Paulina Buchanan ’22 and the choreography was inspired by the poem “First Landscape,” written by Alé Cota ’22. With this piece, Moriyama hoped to “experiment on a collaboration with people outside the dance field.” She hoped to challenge the audience to “think about how different each body is and what expectations we have for bodies on stage.”

Moriyama also hoped to pursue the concept of simplicity and everyday movement, such as walking. She describes her piece, “Walk,” as a result of two things, “my desire to stay away from my tendency to get complicated in general, and my fascination with the idea that simple elements can compost an intricate thing.” The piece challenged the dancers’ conceptions of the action of walking, which, as Moriyama describes, “rarely becomes a topic of conversation in my daily life, yet is an interesting topic.” Moriyama’s piece “Accumulation” featured seven different dancers and explored various styles of dance. She explained, “this is a piece where I pursue the concept of physicality of accumulation with the inspiration from Trisha Brown’s “Accumulation.” I also explore different formations that seven bodies can create on stage.” At the end of the show, Moriyama held a Q&A section in which audience members inquired about her creative process — an insightful way to end an incredible show.