W&L students to dance on side of building

Emily Wallace will be dancing off the wall at Washington and Lee University tomorrow, but it's no college prank.

The 22-year-old senior from Roanoke is one of 12 students who will do leaps, spins and flips off the side of a 40-foot building as the culmination of their aerial dance class.

Their performances, at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday on the exterior of Wilson Hall on the Lexington campus, will demonstrate "a completely new form of dance," said Wallace, an art history major with a dance background.

The students may make it look easy, but that's just an illusion, said their professor, Jenefer Davies.

In fact, she said, "it's mind-blowingly hard."

The dancers need to be physically strong -- dancing in the air is especially tough on the abdominals. They also need an understanding of their body in space, she said, "and a certain amount of bravery."

The students, who will wear ropes and mountain-climbing harnesses, will be lowered from the roof by a professional rigging company. The company is the same one that did the rigging for Broadway shows such as "Peter Pan," Davies said.

Davies choreographed one of the routines, but the others were done by the students in her six-week course.

Some of the dance routines are slow and lyrical, she said. "Others are like karate in the air. They're all very different."

A $7,000 Mellon Grant from the Associated Colleges of the South financed the project. Davies believes the performances, which are open to the public at no charge, are the first for a college campus.

She said she hopes they will draw attention to Washington and Lee's fledgling minor in dance as well as to aerial dancing, which is still so new that it has no established technique yet.

Her class attracted students from a variety of disciplines who weren't all dancers.

"I took tap dancing in kindergarten, but I don't think that counts," said David Doobin, a 20-year-old neuroscience major from New Jersey.

He will be performing a martial-arts dance in the style of the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Doobin, who is a high jumper and sprinter on the varsity track team, thought he was in good shape. But he said he found the class "very taxing."

"It still took a lot of physical training to get ready for this," he said.

For Wallace, it also took getting over her "slight fear of heights."

Yesterday was the first day the class was able to rehearse on the exterior wall, but they had practiced inside and also received coaching in rappelling and mountain-climbing techniques.

"I think we're all prepared," Wallace said. "Even I don't have the fear now."

Contact Karin Kapsidelis at (804) 649-6119 or .