This semester the RWU dance club show was titled ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’, a title that seemed a bit ironic after I walked away from the show. Truth is I still haven’t seen much of anything. The stage for the show, which is located in the field house, is not really a stage at all, just a black mat demarking where the dancers will be performing. This becomes a problem since the seats are set up in a crescent shape meaning if you weren’t in the front two rows a significant amount of your view would be blocked. They did have a TV screen set up but only on the left side, meaning if you were sitting on the far right you would have trouble even seeing that.
I was not the only one disappointed with my lack of view as a group of 10 or so had decided to sit on the floor, blocking walkways to get a look. Another group of 20 or more stood near the doors, probably getting a better view than me. The woman sitting next to me, whose son is a dancer for another school, said she had never seen a stage set up like this before and didn’t understand it at all. Even the people in the bleachers had difficulty seeing the show.
The poor sightlines were not helped by how packed together the seats were. I’ve heard from people involved that the show had reached ticket sales capacity, and you could feel that sitting there. I was quite literally shoulder to shoulder with the strangers next to me, and the lack of legroom led to my legs starting to hurt halfway through. I found myself having to leave halfway through the final presentation as I physically couldn’t bear sitting in that cramped space any longer.
The space wasn’t the only problem; there were considerable gaps between each song during which the audience just had to sit there in the dark. The worst of these gaps was between the final dance and the bows. This gap lasted around 3 minutes and most of the crowd was left confused as to what was happening next. One guy behind me even wondered if this was a social experiment meant to see how long we stayed. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people left during this break thinking it was over. And there were definitely some people who left, about halfway through I noticed a group of about 20, all of who seemed unaffiliated with each other, leave.
I do want to make it clear that none of my issues have to do with the dancers, from what I could see, all of them did an amazing job. If anything, the reason the seating made me so annoyed was that I wanted to see the amazing work they were doing. If I were to place the blame on someone it would be the university itself. The administrators have shown over and over again that they do not value the performing arts. The dance club show is clearly a popular event yet they are not given the proper space or equipment to make it as good as the dancers deserve.
