This special 10th anniversary celebration featured 10 works by nine different choreographers, and that’s not including the four youth performances that preceded the rest of the program. The sight of so many young people onstage — there were more than 40 dancers in the opening number alone — got the evening off to a wonderfully lighthearted start.
Emily Tatomer’s “Snapshots,” which premiered at Center Stage in September of 2012, looked great with eight new dancers and one very special holdover from the original, Devyn Duex, who is the founder and creative force behind all things Nebula. With the additional help of dancers Ashley Kohler-Reynolds, Tara McAninch, Lauren Serrano, Daisy Mohrmann, Chloe Roberts, Meredith Cabaniss, Megan Ciarlo, and Monique Nadeau, Tatomer turned this suite of songs by the great Nina Simone into a cinematic tour de force for the company.
The first act concluded with “My touch, our dance,” a beautiful quartet by Gianna Burright that received its world premiere from dancers Daisy Mohrmann, Ashley Kohler-Reynolds, Shelby Caputo, and Lauren Serrano. The second act featured works by Edgar Zendejas and Erin Martinez leading up to an ambitious, multilayered work by Duex called “Sand into Glass.”
Two more world premieres followed the second intermission: “I Don’t Existing Anymore” by Weslie Ching and “Air” by Shelby Caputo. Ching’s moody, off-center musical sensibility left a lingering impact, while “Air” was a breath of exactly that, with the added enticement of dance appearances by Gianna Burright and SBCC’s Tracy R. Kofford alongside Katie Evans.