Orchesis, Wilson’s dance company, will host an outdoor community dance concert Friday, April 22, at 6 p.m., featuring amateur and professional dancers from the College and the region. The show is free and open to the public and will take place on the Mistick Quad (rain date Sat., April 23, at 6 p.m.). According to dance professor Megan Mizanty, M.F.A., this is “a celebration of dance throughout the region and the resilience of these dance studios over the past two years.”

Dancers from Hagerstown, Md., Shippensburg, Pa., and Chambersburg, Pa., will join Wilson students to perform “Still, I Rise,” a series of 11 autonomous dances. The dances, some short, others a little longer, connect around the themes of rising and renewal — rising after the difficulties of the pandemic, the phoenix rising, the return of spring, and the ability to overcome challenges. It’s also a celebration of the joy of movement and the power of art to lift us all. 

The performance will introduce the audience to various new and traditional dance forms, including contemporary, jazz, modern, lyrical, ballet, and Bollywoood (a fusion of traditional Indian with hip hop and other pop forms). And it will feature dancers from Chambersburg Ballet, Shippensburg’s Dance Academy XIV, Hagerstown’s KMR Dance Collective, and the College’s Orchesis dance company. The concert will last a little over an hour. For more information, go to https://www.wilson.edu/dance2022.