YOUTH, EXPERIENCE

Student dancers in Hartford, choreographers team up.

Eight young dancers form two lines. The only male dancer breaks from the pack and moves to center stage, where he’s joined by two more dancers, then others. They leap. They strut. They glide. There are weepy gestures, other dramatic moments. The ensemble dances in synch, gracefully and in control.

At a rehearsal for the upcoming 2018 Choreographers’ Showcase at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts on Vernon Street, this dance — choreographed by Susannah Marchese — doesn’t yet have a name. But all eight dancers know it by heart. It is their first performance of it onstage after working for weeks in classrooms and rehearsal studios or practicing to videos at home.

“Before I came to this school, I knew nothing about dance,” says senior Andrew Gannon of Colchester, who has only been dancing for two years and is the only male dancer in the showcase. Gannon switched from musical theater to dance after playing a Jet in “West Side Story” in his freshman year. He now takes ballet classes every day, modern dance twice a week and courses in choreography and composition. He dances in three of the six dances in the showcase, which is Oct. 27 at the academy.

Each dance is created by a different professional choreographer. Any school would be happy to have any one of them putting the students through their paces. But having six, with all the stylistic and directorial variety that implies, is an extraordinary opportunity, and the students know it.

“The biggest takeaway from this,” Gannon says, “is learning how to work in a professional setting. We’re treated how a professional dancer would be treated. We have to pick things up fast.”

“We started in August; the auditions were at the end of the last school year. Some of the choreographers came in with pieces they knew they wanted to do. Others created them after they met the dancers. With Leslie, for instance, there’s more improvisation.”