Eastern University’s Dance department senior recital, titled Kinetic Resolve, will be taking place in McInnis Auditorium on December 5 and 6 featuring Senior Eva Ferguson. Ferguson is a Biology and Dance major with a minor in Biochemistry from Danville, Pennsylvania. She is also part of the Eastern Cheer Dance Team and the Student Athletic Advisory Committee (SAAC).
Professor Stephen Welsh, the Dance Department Director at Eastern, has been choreographing for EU’s talented student dancers for over 25 years. He loves the creative process of choreographing and rehearsing with the performers as well as teaching his full dance repertoire.
This upcoming dance recital will also include a Welsh designed performance based on a painting from the 1961 Salvador Dali surrealist “The Persistence of Memory.” The purpose of Welsh’s dance performance is to create a piece “where the memory is like flipping through times of art history.” Welsh also mentioned a challenge was figuring out “how [to] timelessly capture and collaborate this piece with the four students.”
Welsh wanted “each dancer to be challenged by getting out of their comfort zone.” During preparation for this performance, student dancers Ferguson, Christian Johnson, Maya Merritt and Jahzara Jenkins had to learn their moves alongside rehearsing gymnastics.
Welsh’s dance piece focused on the theme of brokenness through three symbolic props: a shattered clock, a fractured hourglass and a broken pocket watch. Each object represents a barrier or obstacle in life and illustrates how life can be chaotic and unpredictable. The choreography also empathizes with each dancer’s individual struggles and the harsh realities unfolding in the world. Woven throughout the piece is the belief that in time healing and restoration are possible.
The creation of this work began in the early summer of 2025. While Welsh started choreographing the piece months in advance, the rest of the students started rehearsal as soon as the fall semester began in late August. They dedicated roughly three hours a week in the dance department studio. Then later as the performance date approached, rehearsals began to be about six hours on the McInnis Auditorium stage.
In the second part of the performance, senior Dance major Ferguson choregraphs work that represents far more than movement alone. Her piece draws from childhood dreams and represents pure imagination shaped by the fairy tales she once read in storybooks. Her choreography reflects that wonder, beginning with her holding a fairytale book and ultimately bringing its magic to life on stage.
Ferguson’s senior recital features 16 dancers who she cares dearly for and have connected with throughout her journey as student here at Eastern. She selected the music for each dance with care, choosing songs that resonated with the specific dancers performing them. The soundtrack includes a mix of instrumental pieces, electronic selections and songs by pop artists.
Ferguson describes her creative process as deeply intuitive. “It is a matter of feeling what feels right to me,” she explained. This performance is a celebration of that intuition and imagination. Audiences are invited to experience the joy of rediscovering the childlike wonder of storytelling through dreams brought vividly and beautifully to life on the stage.
Wrapping up this festive season of Eastern’s mainstage productions is the Dance department’s premiere of Kinetic Resolve. After a semester’s worth of directing, rehearsing and refining their work, the choreographers are thrilled to share their accomplishments with the community. Please come support them as they deliver thought-provoking performances and share the fine art of still lives captured in balletic form.
