Dance is easy to watch if it doesn’t rise above superficial entertainment, choreographer Collette Stewart suggests in “Surrendering Discomfortabilities,” one of eight pieces presented Friday in the UW Dance Program’s spring concert. Add a political or social statement, and the audience may squirm in their seats, Stewart goes on. But once past that initial anxiety, they’ll accept the expanded reality and will better appreciate the art, she says.
Time and again Friday night at Lathrop Hall’s Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space, the audience was challenged to see the connection between the movement of dancers and the often profound message they hoped to convey.