Las Vegas’s Lasting Glow: Reminiscing on Semaphore Repertory Dance Company’s Spring Break

Over spring break, members of Carleton’s Semaphore Repertory Dance Company had the opportunity to leave Northfield, Minnesota (and its blizzards) and enter the casino-ridden, theme-park-emulating, heat-warning-embued Las Vegas, Nevada. There was over a 100-degree difference in temperature on our travel day between Northfield and Las Vegas! There, at the University of Nevada, we participated in the 2026 American College Dance Association (ACDA) Northwest Conference. 

For the week, as one of my teammates eloquently put it, all we did was “eat, sleep, and breathe dance.” On each day of the conference, we took almost five hours of dance classes with faculty from the participating schools. The opportunity to take classes familiar and unfamiliar (anyone taken a dance endurance class where you weren’t allowed to stand still?) was joyous. With the option to take ballet technique classes, “Upside Down and All Around” (which is exactly as the name suggests), and Ethiopian dance, to name a few, a teammate noted that the “opportunity to do what [they] love the most in a wide variety of ways” was “fulfilling, inspiring, and motivating.” And it really was.

Each day, after being drenched in sweat from nonstop dancing and the Vegas heat, we had the opportunity to watch faculty- and student-choreographed pieces from the 38 participating schools across the country. With several concerts each day, the amount of artistry and talent we were surrounded by in such a concentrated amount of time was incredible. As we left each concert, we couldn’t stop talking about our favourite pieces, replicating the most iconic movements ourselves (even just for an audience of palm trees or rental cars).

What made this whole experience so special, however, was the community we got to have this experience with. I loved that Vegas gave us the space beyond the walls of Weitz 165 to really spend time with each other. I have to say, the experience of witnessing your first Elvis impersonator in the flesh bonded us for life. 

But even outside of just the Semaphore company, we got to make so many new friends from so many different universities. It was lovely to connect with the like-minded dancers we started to see repeatedly throughout the classes we registered for each day. For example, I was partnered with strangers during an improvisation class on the first day; from there, bumping into them in later classes, cheering on their performances, and chatting with them in the hallways about why they love dance just as much as I do brought me unbelievable joy. 

The experience didn’t even end when we flew back to Carleton. Physically and mentally, we’ve brought pieces of ACDA back with us. Whether it’s bruises, leftover Liquid IV, or inspiration for our own choreography (reserve your tickets to see that at our Spring Dance Concert and the student-run JCO concert later this term), ACDA has been a life-changing experience. Even our warm-ups this term have incorporated songs we heard in ACDA pieces! For each member of the company, everything Las Vegas had to offer — from the gallery exhibit on choreographer Erick Hawkins to specialised classes with ACDA adjudicators — left a meaningful impression beyond just a tan line.

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Semaphore performed at the ACDA Northwest Conference with the full company — Lizzie Applebaum ’28, Amelia Carson ’27, Jules Flanagan ’26, Kellissa Gray ’27, Erin Miller ’27, Elsie Newburg ’27, Melissa Rachofsky ’28, Sophia Reiner ’28, Joella Shearer ’26, Anya Sytenkova ’26, Natalie Tatar ’26, and Anya Tetzeli ’28 — in the work of Elayna Waxse, Dayton Hudson Visiting Artist/Teacher at Carleton. Waxse and the company received invaluable feedback through a professional peer review, which was greatly appreciated by everyone, including the other Carleton faculty in attendance at the conference: Judith Howard, Rae Schupack Nathan Professor of Dance, and Daphne McCoy, lecturer in dance.