Festival of the Creative Arts: Magnetic Dances is opportunity for English faculty member, several graduate students to shine

By Emma Jowers

For the third year in a row, the Florida State University Office of Research is putting on its annual Festival of the Creative Arts. Faculty members and students from several departments across campus will collaborate to showcase their skills, and this year’s festival should be nothing short of spectacular.

“We want the next generation to be inspired and engaged by the creativity they experience,” says College of Music Professor Iain Quinn, who also is director of the festival. “To watch young minds immersed in the work of the campus is really wonderful.”

The FoCA is a campus-wide event that involves the cooperation of many departments to showcase the breadth of talent, knowledge, and creativity present at FSU. The event started Jan. 26 and ends Feb. 23.

This year, one of the more engaging events on the schedule is the Magnetic Dances performance. Distinguished University Scholar of English Barbara Hamby directs this show as an ode to FSU’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory’s 30th anniversary and the stage presentation combines poetry, music, and dance.

“I have been involved in a lot of different performances, but one with poetry, music, dance, and a MagLab is like a spontaneous combustion that explodes into something super beautiful,” Hamby says. “This is like ‘It shouldn’t go together, but it does.’” The cross-departmental work among members of various campus communities—in science, English, dance, and music—is sure to leave a lasting impression on audience members.

Hamby and a group of English-Creative Writing graduate students—Yusuf Akman, Kyle Flak, Landis Grenville, Haley Laningham, and Chloe Rodriguez—recently toured the MagLab; they all then wrote poems inspired by what they experienced. Graduate students in the College of Music then wrote compositions based on the poems, and graduate students in the School of Dance choreographed pieces to the music.

The result is one creative, cohesive accomplishment: Magnetic Dances.

“This event includes the best and brightest of our graduate students in poetry, music, and dance,” Hamby says. These connections are seen in all the events throughout the festival.

“Interdisciplinary research is very important, but so, too, is the exchange of ideas and knowledge across the disciplines,” Quinn says.

Magnetic Dances is Friday, Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre. Admission is free for everyone.

Emma Jowers is an English major on the editing, writing, and media track, with a minor in communications.

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