Every year, Dance6 brings people together. Dancers and musicians. Faculty and students. Visiting artists and community members.

This year’s production grows out of that tradition. It takes shape through shared work, conversation, and curiosity, with no single voice at the center.

Of Earth and Error asks what it means to live in relationship with the environments that shape us, and what happens when those environments begin to change.

The work of visiting choreographer Yvonne Montoya, founder of Safos Dance Theatre, offers one way into the questions at the heart of Of Earth and Error. Grounded in the movement aesthetics of the Southwest, her choreography draws from land, water, cultural practices, and embodied memory.

Her piece took shape during her Block 5 course, with dance students working closely with Montoya to refine the work.

That process expanded through collaboration with music students in Andres Carrizo’s Block 5 course, who created an original composition for the piece. The work also includes testimonies and dance performances from Chicana community members in Southern Colorado, alongside video designs by CC alum Skye Mahaffie '15, in collaboration with Film and Media students.

What emerges is not a single narrative, but many voices moving together.

Sam Aros-Mitchell brings a different kind of continuity into Of Earth and Error. A Yaqui dance artist enrolled with the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians, Aros-Mitchell performs two works by José Limón, a pioneering Mexican American choreographer who was also of Yaqui heritage.

He performs Indio from Danzas Mexicanas (1939) and the deer solo from The Unsung. These works were restaged in collaboration with Dante Puleio, Director of the Limón Dance Company, and are rooted in breath, clarity, and physical rigor. More than historical works, the dances are carried forward through the body, honoring the shared Yaqui lineage between choreographer and performer and keeping the tradition alive in the present.

Patrizia Herminjard’s contribution to Of Earth and Error begins with a question that quietly threads through the evening: what does it mean to be human? Her piece was created in collaboration with scenic designer Marie Davis and costume designer SB Parks. 

Herminjard describes her work as an exploration of how we are shaped by the environments we move within, both real and imagined.

 “Walls, boundaries, and structures can contain us, direct us, or resist us,” she writes. “What holds us is often unstable, assembled, and continuously renegotiated.”

Through movement, the choreography asks how meaning is made through the body, how loss and joy can be held at the same time, and how internal states are translated into physical decisions such as weight, rhythm, direction, and duration. What emerges is a shared language shaped through movement, touch, and attention, with the hope of understanding and being understood. 

Pallavi Sriram returns to the stage after a year-long sabbatical. A dancer, choreographer, and dance studies scholar, Sriram brings her research and renewed studio practice into the creation of a new work for Of Earth and Error. This will be the first time Colorado Springs audiences experience her in performance.

Taken together, Of Earth and Error is less about presenting a finished statement and more about asking questions. It reflects what can happen when people across campus, our community, and beyond make something together, allowing questions to remain open and inviting audiences to sit with them.

Of Earth and Error is performed at Celeste Theatre in the Cornerstone Arts Center on the following dates:

Friday and Saturday, Feb. 27 and 28, at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 1, at 2 p.m.
Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7, at 7:30 p.m.

Born in the village of Thionk Essyl in the southern Casamance region of Senegal, West Africa, Safietou “Dallo” Goudiaby grew up living a traditional Diola life, fishing in the river, growing rice, and gathering fruit and wild food in the forest. Dance is a central part of her culture, and every major event in the lives of her people is celebrated with dance.

Dallo has taught and performed throughout the Colorado Springs community and at several events on our campus, including the Imagination Celebration and the “What If” Festival.

She loves teaching Senegalese dance and drumming because it allows her to share the beauty of her culture with others. Below is a short film that highlights her remarkable story as well as her approach to teaching her dance adjunct course. She not only teaches her students how to move their bodies, but through drumming and singing, she also teaches them how to survive.

West African Dance and Drumming will be offered during Blocks 7 and 8. Students are encouraged to enroll and experience this dynamic and joyful course.

14 E. Cache La Poudre St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903