Broadway sashays into CU halftime show
Collaboration highlights 50th anniversary of Theatre and Dance Department
Football fans attending the next two home games at the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field will see an unprecedented collaborative show: The Golden Buffalo Marching Band and a group of dance students will perform a medley from the Broadway musical “Rent.”
The performances will occur at halftime during the Oct. 16 game between CU and Baylor and during the Oct. 23 contest with Texas Tech.
The idea came from Erika Randall, assistant professor of dance, who credits her “great love of college football” and “absolute nostalgic and emotional devotion to marching bands.” She admits to being an Ohio State Buckeye fan at heart but still loves the Buffs.
“My dad marched for OSU, and growing up, my whole family would always go to hear the band practice before the games,” Randall recalls.
This year, CU’s Department of Theatre and Dance is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and Randall says the department wanted to do something “splashy” to highlight the milestone and celebrate with the university and Boulder communities. She adds, “what better way than to do it than at halftime with 50,000 other folks!”
For the department’s spring musical, Randall is choreographing “Rent” alongside the directorial leadership of Bud Coleman, associate professor and department chair. She thought a “Rent” medley for the marching band would be “amazing, and it is!”
This is the first-ever collaboration between athletics and theatre and dance. Randall says it would not have been possible without Matthew Roeder, director of the marching band.
“His excitement, approachability and openness have led the way in this new path of cross-campus fusion,” she says. “As soon as I proposed the idea, he dove into it with gusto, celebrating us as partners along the way.”
For many of the student dancers, this will be the first time they perform with live music and perhaps the only time they perform for such a large audience, Randall observes.
Randall says “Rent” was “hugely important to me as a dancer living in New York in the early ‘90s, when the story of the play takes place.” At the time, the AIDS epidemic was looming large, “defining so much of the world around us, especially in the theatre and dance communities, where we lost vital members of our communities right and left to the disease.”
Now that “Rent” has been released as a film, Randall says the musical has been adopted by today’s college students. “What thrills me most about this generation’s response to ‘Rent’ is their ability to be open to the gender and sexuality issues. These kids are much more fluid and accepting, singing ‘Take Me or Leave Me’ at the top of their lungs through the halls without a care that it is a song sung by two women for each other.”
Randall adds that theatre, music and dance can literally move people into new places of awareness and comfort zones through the “kinesthetic intelligences and joys of our forms.” That is how “folks who haven't walked in someone else's shoes are now dancing in them—learning, transformation and acceptance becomes powerfully possible and vital.”
Randall has been working with dancers from her jazz-fusion class since the first day of school, creating different “movement phrases” and spatial groupings.
“It has been spectacular for the students to weave their classroom learning with a performance of this caliber and scope,” she adds. “We are using giant red squares of fabric that transform from ‘bed,’ to billow, adding a dynamic splash to the activities of the field. With so much energy already in place on the field, we wanted to make certain that we didn't compete, but also didn't disappear.”
The red sheets, created by the costume of team Markas Henry, assistant professor, and Ted Stark, senior instructor, “add to the pageantry and playfulness of this event, offsetting our dancers while also giving a nod to the different themes of the musical.”
Football fans attending the next two home games at the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field will see an unprecedented collaborative show: The Golden Buffalo Marching Band and a group of dance students will perform a medley from the Broadway musical “Rent.”
The performances will occur at halftime during the Oct. 16 game between CU and Baylor and during the Oct. 23 contest with Texas Tech.
The idea came from Erika Randall, assistant professor of dance, who credits her “great love of college football” and “absolute nostalgic and emotional devotion to marching bands.” She admits to being an Ohio State Buckeye fan at heart but still loves the Buffs.
“My dad marched for OSU, and growing up, my whole family would always go to hear the band practice before the games,” Randall recalls.
This year, CU’s Department of Theatre and Dance is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and Randall says the department wanted to do something “splashy” to highlight the milestone and celebrate with the university and Boulder communities. She adds, “what better way than to do it than at halftime with 50,000 other folks!”
For the department’s spring musical, Randall is choreographing “Rent” alongside the directorial leadership of Bud Coleman, associate professor and department chair. She thought a “Rent” medley for the marching band would be “amazing, and it is!”
This is the first-ever collaboration between athletics and theatre and dance. Randall says it would not have been possible without Matthew Roeder, director of the marching band.
“His excitement, approachability and openness have led the way in this new path of cross-campus fusion,” she says. “As soon as I proposed the idea, he dove into it with gusto, celebrating us as partners along the way.”
For many of the student dancers, this will be the first time they perform with live music and perhaps the only time they perform for such a large audience, Randall observes.
Randall says “Rent” was “hugely important to me as a dancer living in New York in the early ‘90s, when the story of the play takes place.” At the time, the AIDS epidemic was looming large, “defining so much of the world around us, especially in the theatre and dance communities, where we lost vital members of our communities right and left to the disease.”
Now that “Rent” has been released as a film, Randall says the musical has been adopted by today’s college students. “What thrills me most about this generation’s response to ‘Rent’ is their ability to be open to the gender and sexuality issues. These kids are much more fluid and accepting, singing ‘Take Me or Leave Me’ at the top of their lungs through the halls without a care that it is a song sung by two women for each other.”
Randall adds that theatre, music and dance can literally move people into new places of awareness and comfort zones through the “kinesthetic intelligences and joys of our forms.” That is how “folks who haven't walked in someone else's shoes are now dancing in them—learning, transformation and acceptance becomes powerfully possible and vital.”
Randall has been working with dancers from her jazz-fusion class since the first day of school, creating different “movement phrases” and spatial groupings.
“It has been spectacular for the students to weave their classroom learning with a performance of this caliber and scope,” she adds. “We are using giant red squares of fabric that transform from ‘bed,’ to billow, adding a dynamic splash to the activities of the field. With so much energy already in place on the field, we wanted to make certain that we didn't compete, but also didn't disappear.”
The red sheets, created by the costume of team Markas Henry, assistant professor, and Ted Stark, senior instructor, “add to the pageantry and playfulness of this event, offsetting our dancers while also giving a nod to the different themes of the musical.”