Students came together from different artistic disciplines on Saturday to perform original dances and songs inspired by artwork in the Rose Art Museum.

As part of the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts, students from Prof. Susan Dibble's (THA) movement and dance class and Prof. Seth Coluzzi's (MUS) songwriting class staged a show in the Lois Foster Gallery of the Rose. 

Two groups from Dibble's class performed dance pieces and four students from Coluzzi's class performed original songs and the links between the artwork and their performances were clear. 

One group from Dibble's class, consisting of Tara Loeber '14, Bethany Adam '15, Chris Knight '14 and Rachel Benjamin '14, choreographed a dance that had highly mechanized gestures as well as mirror-image movements, drawing on the metal bridges on exhibit by Chris Burden and the cracked mirrors from an exhibit by Walead Beshty, respectively, according to the show's program. 

Dibble explained that she was both a choreographer and a painter, allowing for the two fields to meet in her artistic endeavors. 

For her class, the assignment emphasized themes of both symmetry and asymmetry. "I had seen this exhibit before I gave the assignment, and I thought it was great because all the exhibits here have either one or the other as part of their work," Dibble said. 

"[Choreography works] in a way to move from one to the other so you are mixing between the two opposites, and ultimately that's the way to catch an audience." 

In Coluzzi's class, Ernest Ling '15 wrote a song inspired by "Tsss," a work by Mika Rottenberg, currently on view at the Rose. Rottenberg's piece features an air conditioner above a heated hot plate, causing water leaking from the air conditioner to sizzle upon contact with the plate. 

Ling discussed how the artwork and the consistency of its sound reminded him of childhood memories with his grandmother. He played the guitar and sang along with his own lyrics.

Coluzzi briefly compared the act of songwriting based on a painting to using a Ouija board. "You're still controlling it, but you don't really know it," he said. 

"You're just getting compelled around the board in directions that you can't anticipate."

But what really made the performances significant was the centrality of the Rose in their development. By linking the inspiration of each individual act to a work of art in the museum, it solidified the importance of the Rose across artistic disciplines at the University; the Rose is not just for art historians. 

It can be used as a point of departure for a variety of pieces of art and underscore the rather cross-disciplinary nature of art that often proves to be unappreciated. 

Additionally, the fact that the performances took place in the Lois Foster Gallery of the Rose was notable. As Student Committee for the Rose Art Museum member and emcee Daniela Dimitrova '16 said at the beginning of the performances, "this is our museum, so it's supposed to be our home as well." 

Together with the inspiration from the paintings, the show allowed students to take ownership of the Rose. They utilized the entire museum to their advantage, performing in the gallery, setting up chairs, moving about the room and making music.