5, 6, 7, 8
Vivian Bennardo and Robert Abbott both graduated from Lehigh University with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. As though they were playing out a fairytale, Vivian and Robert fell in love, got married, drove off into the sunset (they moved to New Jersey) and on June 3rd, 1996, Vivian gave birth to their first child. Upon the birth of their new daughter, the Abbotts had aspirations for her to inherit both of their scientific and mathematic genes, to create the ultimate engineering genius. Needless to say, the result of this experiment was not what they hypothesized.
This baby developed into the person I am today: Ashley Lauren Abbott, soon-to-be Elon University graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance and Choreography. Neither Vivian nor Robert had any knowledge of dance or even performing before I came along, and never expected to have a daughter who would be so invested as to dedicate her life and career to the performing arts. However, one trait that I did inherit from their engineering-inclined genetics was their skill and enjoyment of mathematics. Growing up, I took accelerated math classes and breezed through first-year of college calculus with a 100% final average.
During the beginning stages of college, I tried to find ways to fuse my skills in mathematics with my passion for dance. I discovered that Elon offered a major that I had never heard of before called Arts Administration, which focuses on the business side of the arts world. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I declared a double major in Dance and Arts Administration, and picked up a minor in Business Administration as well. This enabled me to focus on increasing my strengths separately in both areas, as well as join them together in Arts Admin. I used the skills that I learned through Arts Admin and my business minor as the Treasurer of synaesthetic dance company. As Treasurer, I manage all of the finances of the company. This involves creating a budget for our productions, fundraising, marketing, post-production, etc. I tracked our cash flow by creating a monthly chart that accounted for deposits and withdrawals in different categories. I am also responsible for holding the cash, collecting invoices, and making reimbursements on behalf of the company. I also gained real-life experience by opening and managing a bank account for the company, as well as a Venmo account for online money sharing. I also came up with reasonable prices for us to sell our fundraising merchandise in order to gain a sufficient profit.
In addition to operating the finances of the arts company, I also fuse mathematics and dance by utilizing mathematic strategies and organizational skills when it comes to the creative aspect of my work. Because of the nature of my mind, I make spreadsheets excessively. This allows me to see my thoughts laid out in the clearest way. When creating the film that I directed and choreographed for synaesthetic, I created four phrases of original choreography that I taught my dancers, and then had them each come up with a unique phrase of their own to highlight their strengths as a dancer, while also incorporating elements from the choreography that gave them. I then took these five phrases and organized them into a spreadsheet, where I had a column for each dancer and rows that broke down the song I was using into different sections that I labeled with time stamps. My film is heavily edited using a split screen technique, which allowed me to play with choreography in post-production by having dancers do different things at the same time. I visualized which phrases of my choreography would look best happening simultaneously, and which particular dancer could deliver the strongest performance of each phrase. I filled the spreadsheet so that each dancer was assigned a phrase or a hold that accounted for the entire song down to the second. I worked with communications student, Ali Broadbridge, in the editing process. She helped me take my systematic approach and translate it from the spreadsheet and onto the screen. We utilized it as the skeleton of the film, and broke it up by adding more free-flowing shots. My title is AuRA, in relation to the atmosphere created by the dancers in a nondescript space and the scientific symbol of gold, Au, which is a common theme throughout my film. Adding elements like this into my work remind me that I am a scholar and an artist. I am so proud of the result of my film, as I believe it captures the essence of my mathematically organized brain as well as my artistry as a choreographer.
