When you think of the Chrysalis show, one of the most memorable moments was the intense choreography made by Emma Wicker, who is in this year’s graduating class. Emma, who is the senior coordinator of the Chrysalis dance company this year, joined St. Stephen’s in her junior year and has already made a massive impact in the dance environment. With her creative ideas, insane jumps, beautiful turns, and her eye-catching presence on the stage, Emma is able to do it all with ease and an aura that makes everyone’s attention naturally gravitate towards her.

With the emotion and love that has been put into the choreography, Emma is naturally gravitated towards competition dance and the concept of incorporating teamwork into every aspect of her dancing life. “I was originally inspired by the Dance teams at nationals that utilize counterpart and layer movement using different groups at the same time,” Emma said when asked about the piece she had choreographed. Emma’s goal was to “center [her] choreography on the messages of a bittersweet symphony: struggle, searching for connection, and authenticity as well as personal meaning.” To achieve this, Emma highlighted specific dancers to illustrate people looking for purpose in a monochrome, repetitive lifestyle. To also highlight this, Emma “chose movements that seemed a little unusual to demonstrate that search for authenticity and originality in our world.” With such a detailed understanding of what she wanted to portray and with her mindset of incorporating community, Emma made the dance in a way that everyone had a moment to shine while achieving her goal of conveying a yearning for genuinity throughout the performance.

With Emma’s attachment to dance, she’s excited to say that she will continue to dance in university. She will continue to attend jazz and contemporary dance classes along with many workshops outside of university. Emma will be continuing her dance career in the University of California San Diego, and she is elated to say that she will continue to carry the lessons of Chrysalis and from dance overall, with some of the lessons learned throughout being to know the importance of leaning on a community of people, the necessity of bringing her 100 percent consistently to the team, to grow more out of her comfort zone, and to continue to persist and persevere despite difficulties.

All in all, Emma is bringing her values of dance, along with the hard work, rigor, appreciation for the arts, and her life lessons with her beyond the Hill, and it’s best to say that Emma will dance to greater heights and achieve nothing but the best.