Performance Critique

This past Thursday, the 13th, I attended the first dance performance of the semester. This performance was put on by the Orchesis Dance Company, which is a student led modern company here at Texas State. I also attended their show last spring and was very impressed with it. I remember last year that the style of dancing that they were doing was exactly what I wanted to do. Well, a lot has changed over the year. Going into this performance I decided I wanted to watch it from a critique point of view, instead of just watching to enjoy it. I did this being I have friends in the company who wanted my honest opinion and because I am currently in a choreography class so I wanted to use some of the aspects that I've learned to try and properly critique. Watching a performance from this perspective was an eye opener. Not only did I really love critiquing it but I also learned that my dance style preferences has changed completely.
So this performance was pretty short, only an hour and a half. And overall I was artistically unsatisfied with it. Some of the dances were aesthetically pleasing though. I wrote notes in my program on every piece and I pretty much wrote the same key words on every piece. From the very first dance I felt like I was watching a high school drill teams Spring Show. Spring shows are not a bad form of dancing but it is usually only nice to watch this style when it is actually on a high school drill team. Spring shows are aesthetically pleasing and have really cool tricks and what not, but to watch this on a college based modern company, is a bit disappointing.
Another huge thing that I noticed was the same motifs were being used for every dance. I also felt like every dance was the same except the movements were just rearranged. I'm not sure how many times I saw a hand rise up with fingers spread open. I very classic So You Think You Can Dance, contemporary, move. Which is a move a saw in 75% of the pieces, if not every one. Which brings me to another point is that every dance looked like it belonged on SYTYCD. Not that this show is bad, but the dances on there are very contemporary and pretty much the same. This company is suppose to be modern and I'm not sure I saw any of that in this show.
I have recently started hating dance performances that use songs with lyrics in them. Sometimes using this kind of music can be very beneficial to the piece in the right setting. But for this show I really hated it. When using popular music, with lyrics, people tend to choreograph the dance to those lyrics. This is also kind of a drill team thing to do and less of an artistic statement. I personally use to love doing that typing of choreography and I am even still guilty of hearing a real popular song and imaging a dance with it. But when I actually watched it on a stage, I now understand why my choreography teacher said it isn't very artistic and should not be done. And I did see this in almost every dance they performed. Movements that matched the lyrics perfectly, they might as well have been acting the song out.
Which brings me to the point of organic movement. In class our teachers are always encouraging us to stay away from the unoriginal movements and find something organic. And me, who is focusing on studying improvisation, is always trying to find the organic movements on myself and others. And to be straight to the point I saw no organic movements in this whole performance.

This whole critique was based from my point of view and from what I am currently learning in school. Yes, I do realize that I may be critiquing from a bias point of view but to be completely unbias about something is near to impossible to do. I was trying to be as unbias as I could. This critique is a study for myself and was not meant to offend any of the artists or performers in the show.