november 15, 2022
Irena rosenberg: Connecting through choreography
STORY BY Olivia mckeon / Copyedited by Kay hibbert
Irena Rosenberg ('23) is a dancer from Ithaca, who is grateful to have found a community in the dance companies she's a part of. She's studying to become a Doctor of Physical Therapy and one day hopes to practice in Cambodia, the country she was adopted from. She studied abroad in South Korea and knows how to play the violin and drums.
Olivia McKeon spoke with Irena Rosenberg in October to discuss her passion for performing, the invaluable connections she's made through dance, and how isolation fueled her choreography.
OM: How did you start dancing?
IR: I started dancing when I was two or three years old. I feel like I have a classic dancer story. My mom took me to the Nutcracker, which is a three hour long performance, and I was just a two year old. She was assuming that we would stay for the first half, and then at intermission we'd go home because I was really small, but the whole time I was fascinated. I stayed through the whole thing, and then I was like, "Can we come back tomorrow?" So, it was kind of immediate that she knew that I'd be really engaged and wanted to dance, and yeah, the rest is history.
OM: So, I imagine you took dance classes growing up.
IR: Yeah, I went to one studio first that was ballet, tap, jazz. And then I transferred to another studio in the area that did all of the above and hip hop and point. We would go to conventions, so that [gave us] more exposure to contemporary and different styles of dance than our one sole dance teacher.
OM: Do you have a favorite style of dance?
IR: I really enjoy hip hop. On campus, I'm co-president of Pulse Hip Hop, so that's just been a style that's always been really fun. I feel like it's like the most dynamic and speaks to how I like to move and how I like to express myself.
OM: Are there any choreographers or dancers in particular that you look up to?
IR: Yeah, there's a choreographer named Ysabelle Capitulé in California. She has really dynamic movement. I took one of her classes during COVID, and there were people all over the world on the Zoom taking the class. Parris Goebel who's the choreographer for Jennifer Lopez and all the famous artists. Also, just watching the dance shows that actually have amazing choreographers like So You Think You Can Dance that show the interaction between [the choreographers] and the dancers, trying to reproduce their image and what they want for the movement.
OM: Do you have a favorite moment from performing?
IR: There's a lot. In college, being a part of IC Unbound and Pulse. Having friends and people who support you witness your art or the stuff that you dedicate yourself to is so rewarding. So, during the shows there are moments when you're dancing and you see the crowd or you hear the crowd, and that's one of the most rewarding feelings—getting completely lost in the moment.
OM: When I looked through your videos, I saw a mix of ones where you were just dancing alone and then also in groups, so I was wondering what you prefer. How does that experience change?
IR: It's really fun to dance with other people, so that's what I prefer and that's also how I grew up. In my studio it was all group dances. We were influenced by the Rockettes so very precision-oriented and wanting to match the same picture. But I feel like now, in college, there's this contrast where we take charge of our own images and art, so we look at a dance and we want it to look like everybody's doing something different at the same time. I think you can do a lot with a group to have your image and movement come to light.
When I'm dancing on my own, it's more so a brainstorming moment for freestyling or getting to a point where I could reproduce it for a whole group. So yeah, preferably I like to dance with people.
OM: Your video dancing to "Candy" was reposted by Madison Beer. What was that like? Were you surprised?
IR: I did not know that she was going to repost that. I was just kind of goofing around and wanted to film something over the summer. I had envisioned doing choreography to that song for so long, so I really worked on it, and it was an objective to film something and have fun with it. And then she reposted it, and it was funny because beforehand, I wouldn't say I was a Madison Beer fan. But it was a really cool experience, and also rewarding in a sense because sometimes from your dance teacher or from your friends you get an "oh that's so cool!" but with becoming a professional choreographer, or something like that, you get the actual recognition when it's taken seriously. So that was just a really cool, rewarding moment and a little highlight.
OM: The dance that you choreographed to "All of This" by Jorja Smith was inspired by your time studying abroad in South Korea. Could you talk a little bit about that?
IR: For that piece, I started out just listening to the song. I came back from Korea, which was a super hard time because it was over COVID. It was super isolating. When I first went to Korea, I had to quarantine by myself for two weeks in a hotel room that didn't have windows, so I couldn't even adjust to the time difference or anything. When I came back, I was still working through it. I actually came home early because I could finish my schooling online. All my classes were online, so I wasn't really making any connections with students there or other international students. So, that was super hard.
Coming back, it was definitely a huge transition of life in general because spring semester everything was normal. IC was already going back to everything in person with the same expectations of academics. So, then there was that stress and all of the normal stressors from the dance clubs I was involved in.
I felt like some of the lyrics spoke to wanting to have everything together, but then admitting to the fact that going abroad was so chaotic, going through COVID was so chaotic, and then going through the motions of life and how easy it can be sometimes and then how extremely hard it can be. I feel like it encapsulated everything we've been through. And just trying to find the dynamic movement back into a better way of life than isolating from each other and not having connections with people.
OM: The opening to the Pulse Hip Hop showcase was full of such great energy. I love the camaraderie it seems to portray. What went into choreographing this performance?
IR: That one I started choreographing while in Korea. There was a time where I would go to a studio space in the basement [of my apartment complex]. And at that point I was also really homesick and missing dancing with my friends because I went to this studio called 1 million, which is similar to Millennium in LA. It's a really famous dance studio, famous choreographers, and I went and took some classes there. That was super fun, but I still felt like I was dancing by myself because I wasn't making any connections with anybody.
So, in that way, [I was] missing feeling like I was actually dancing with people and working together while dancing. I was missing my squad, so the song "Same Squad" [by P-Lo] in my head was like I can't wait to be back and show them this piece that I wanted to make for all of us coming together.
The first lyric of the song was "if the squad ain't with me, then it ain't right," and for me, it wasn't right that I wasn't with the people that I wanted to dance with and made me feel more at home, sharing and doing the art that we all love. So, that was the deeper message of a really fun opener piece.
OM: Is there any song that you'd love to choreograph a dance to that you haven't had the opportunity to yet?
IR: I have playlists of random ones, but I think there are some songs that I listened to while in Korea that I still want to work through and maybe also choreograph to, which will help me personally process more of what I went through and make it into a piece of art to share and have more closure with my abroad experience in general.
I feel like it's so fun to listen to the song and then after you choreograph to it, you get so sick of it. Like love the song "Same Squad," never want to hear that song again. But one of the coolest things is seeing movement to music, it's one of my favorite parts of choreographing stuff. I feel like the opportunities are endless.