Jackson Free Press

For Arianna Marcell, dance was something that was easy to love and have fun with. At the age of 8, Arianna Marcell's mother, Charmione, enrolled her in local dance studios in their hometown, McKinney, Texas. She started out taking mostly ballet and jazz dance styles, but modern dance was where she thrived the most.

As she grew through middle and high school, she says dance became difficult. From then and throughout her college career, she wrestled a lot with what she could do with her skill in a structural manner. Seeing Marcell's frustration, her mother suggested that it was okay to lay dancing to the side, but Marcell refused to quit. "It's the thing that I just never let go (of)," Marcell said.

Belhaven University offered modern dance, as well as ballet, which drew her into their dance department. Through gaining experience, Marcell, 22, says she learned that modern dance allows people to create their own movement vocabulary. After taking dance lessons for popular styles such as house dance, African and the Dunham Technique, which was named after dance creator Kathleen Dunham, who infused Afro-Caribbean styles with classical ballet, Marcell began to realize that was an area worth studying. "There is a unique kind of freedom you find in dance," she says. "I think you find this kind of physical intelligence that I really believe is important for everybody."

When it comes to choreographing her own dances, the moves are either inspired by music or making movements in silence and trying them out on different songs to see what they become. She relies more on improv rather than coming up with a dance number in her mind. Her time for completing a dance can range from one night to up to five months, depending on its purpose.

Marcell also likes to see the movements of others. "I love seeing people dance that don't think that they can dance or are doing it for the first time," she said. One of Marcell's most significant projects at Belhaven is one that was dedicated to her late great-grandmother, Elizabeth Smiley. She was surprised at how vulnerable she felt sharing it with her audience because it was set to an audio recording of Smiley with no background music.

Along with Marcell's dedication project, she, took the opportunity to travel with other dancers to Washington D.C. to dance at the Kennedy Center and also participate in the National Dance Festival.

Idealistically, to Marcell, dancing is movement that communicates, creates community and promotes freedom."It's just a community that you can't quite create anywhere else," she says. "It's a really special thing to get to dance with other people and to move in a space or to interact with an accompanist. I encourage people to boldness because there is an amazing joy to be found in dance."