[Ithaca Inspired🍂] Creativity at Cornell: A Quick Club Guide
Looking to join any creative clubs at Cornell or go to a student-led performance sometime soon? Check out this article!
We all know Cornell is full of clubs that you need to apply to and interview for, but we also have loads of creative clubs that just inspire you to be yourself and make something cool! There are so many clubs in the arts – from dance to standup comedy to singing – that it’s hard not to know about creative events going on around campus. To learn more about some of these creative clubs, and to give you guys the lo-down on what they do, I interviewed a member of the Pandora Dance Troupe and a member of the Glee Club. I’ll also give you some insight from my own experience with a creative club so you have a fuller picture.
🎶Pandora Dance Troupe:
Pandora is a student-run dance troupe where dancers from diverse backgrounds come together to do all types of dance – jazz, ballet, contemporary, tap – and choreograph pieces for each other. They have shows every semester that are open to students. Noah Gray, a junior in the Hotel School, is in Pandora, and he told me about the overwhelmingly positive social experience he’s had with the community at Pandora.
“It’s such a great support group,” he said. “It has a great combination of social events and a team of really strong dancers that allow you to express your creativity by choreographing yourself. And you can choose to challenge yourself by doing styles that you haven’t necessarily done before.”
Pandora is a club that lets you choose your level of commitment, so you can learn and choreograph however many dances you want for each show.
Noah is really excited for the show Pandora has this November: “I’m doing different styles than I normally would do, which is good because I think it’s really important to continue to push yourself as a dancer. It’s also the first semester since Covid that we’ve been doing in-person events, so it’s so great to see everybody and feel the positive energy when you’re in the room dancing.”
Noah’s favorite piece that he’s worked on with Pandora was the song “Run the World.” He talked about how one of his good friends was the choreographer, and that it was a piece that really allowed each dancer to show off their strengths.
“It was just a really good, challenging dance,” he said. “There was a trick section at the end that I loved. It was really fun, and you could just feel everybody’s energy while you were dancing, and that’s a great feeling.”
🎤Glee Club:
Before I even had the chance to ask Isaac Herzog, a junior who recently joined the Glee Club, a question he exclaimed, “I can’t wait to talk about this!” This comment alone should tell you all you need to know about Glee Club: it’s for people who love what they do and love who they do it with.
More specifically, Isaac said that these were his reasons for joining Glee Club: “I did it because I love music, and I wanted to do something more with my time. Music was such a large part of my life before I came to Cornell, and for the first two years here I just didn’t do it. So, a lot of what Glee Club means to me is getting back to my roots and getting back to doing something I like and care about.”
Like Pandora, Glee Club offers its members an opportunity to sing and perform songs they love for themselves and other students who enjoy music. Throughout my interview with Isaac, he kept talking about how positive the energy is within the community of Glee Club, and how it’s very interconnected with Chorus, another singing club on campus. Glee Club does activities and social events with Chorus, because these clubs are very similar: they’re both for students who are passionate about singing and sharing beautiful art (the only difference being that Glee Club is for tenor-bass singers and Chorus is for soprano-alto singers).
In response to my question of how he would describe the Glee Club community, Isaac said, “It’s a group of people who are collectively passionate about what they do, and I love being surrounded by that. It’s being part of a community that is unreservedly fantastic.”
Even if you’re not a singer, I highly recommend you check out one of Glee Club’s performances to see what people doing what they love and creating something together looks like.
😆My own little anecdote: standup comedy!
When I first came to Cornell, I was looking for a creative club that was writing-oriented that I could be a part of. I was on a bit of a standup comedy kick at the time, so I sought out Cornell’s Pun Intended, a club meant for budding standup comedians or students who just want to have a good laugh. Pun Intended is a great example of what creative clubs at Cornell are like, because you can choose your level of involvement and commitment, and you get to make something for your own and other people’s enjoyment.
I loved going to meetings every week and seeing what new bits students had written. The club leaders would have an “open mic” session every meeting for people to test out new material and get some feedback from fellow standup lovers. This club was very new when I first joined, and now they’ve developed to have standup performance nights throughout the semester. The fact that this club exists is a testament to how diverse the creative groups on campus are, and how if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you should start a club yourself!
I hope this guide to Cornell’s creative clubs has been helpful, and that you’ll seek out a new creative project soon!
By Abby Cohen
CC Content Writer
Hello! My name is Abby and I’m a junior in Arts and Sciences studying English and French. I love language and words, and in my free time, you can find me reading books, working on puzzles, and listening to music.
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