Among the bouquets of roses and boxes of chocolates that indicate Valentine’s Day is around the corner, it’s easy to forget the reality of love. But this holiday, a local dance company will put a new twist on the old subject.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, Work Dance Company will showcase its latest project, “Love Game.” The performance serves to remind audiences of the reality of love and all that comes with it — including jealousy, betrayal, lust and passion — while offering
a variety of visually dynamic dance styles.
A year and a half ago Nathan Boozer founded Work Dance Company in hopes of bringing some fresh style to the Eugene dance stage. During its first year, the company focused mainly on hip-hop dance, but this year the studio has transitioned into several styles, including jazz funk, break and even modern.
“My goal was just to bring back raw, honest dancing,” Boozer said. “Things start to get repetitive at a lot of other dance companies, and I just wanted to spice things up and bring some theatrics into the routines as well.”
Kasondra Cowger, who has been dancing since middle school, joined Work Dance Company in October and said this year the company has been focusing on performance and mixing a lot of dance styles together.
“Our choreographer and director, Nate, has a really unique style — it’s not just one genre but a combination of everything together,” Cowger said. “This show really has a lot of themes to it.”
“Love Game” will include multimedia elements like video effects, props and artistic
lighting. After six months of practice and preparation, Boozer hopes the show’s elements of love and its variety of styles will bring Work Dance Company to the top of the Eugene dance scene.
Just as “Love Game” incorporates all aspects of love, good and bad, the performance includes a variety of dance genres to match.
Although the company does not have a lot of members, it focuses on making dance accessible to its members and the audience.
“We are all really good friends and close to each other. Nate doesn’t get paid for this and he doesn’t charge a monthly fee; we don’t think that money should hold people back from dance,” Cowger said.
University junior Samantha Wiggins joined the company two months after it started. After
graduating from an arts and communication high school and taking a few dance classes at the University, Wiggins was looking for something different.
Wiggins said the freedom Work Dance Company gives her has reinvigorated her love of dance.
“We are not always focused on just being clean; there’s a little more improvisation that we do compared to other dance companies. We care more about the individual than the group, I think,” Wiggins said.
Work Dance Company, which is a nonprofit group, sees “Love Game” as an opportunity for audiences to see a company that truly focuses on dance and performance that evokes all types of emotions.
“I think ‘Love Game’ really just shows true, honest love as well as the dark side of love,” Boozer said. “It opens people’s minds to the fact that it’s OK to feel certain things like jealousy, and reminds people to love themselves. We just want to give everyone a true message of what love really is, and it’s not perfect by any means.”
The emotions are so clear that Wiggins said she is moved by watching her peers perform. After watching rehearsals one day, she noticed the emotion on other dancers’ faces while performing and realized that was the difference between this company and many others.
“This performance is just different because we are hitting more kinds of emotions, and this one has a little more jazzy flavor and show in it,” Wiggins said.
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