Brandeis, I Love You is the culmination of a vision by dancer/choreographer Danielle Zipkin '12, who 10 months ago set upon the daunting task of creating a dance based on the various love stories of students at Brandeis. What then took place was a massive collaboration between the talented performers and musicians of Brandeis, which resulted in the nine-movement performance of Brandeis, I Love You. In conjunction with the opening of the show, JustArts had the chance to sit down with Zipkin and discuss the creation of the show from conception to performance.JustArts: What inspired you to come up with this idea of interpreting students' love stories and turning them into a dance?

Danielle Zipkin: Actually, this idea is based on a movie called Paris Je t'aime and another movie, called New York, I Love You in which there are multiple short films that make up the movie, which have nothing do with each other except that they all take place in the same area, and all have to do with love. So Paris Je t'aime has 18 short films and all have to do with love in Paris, and Brandeis, I Love You has nine vignettes.

JA: And it's all done in the modern dance style?

DZ: Actually, there's modern, jazz, ballet, lyrical, some tap and a little bit of hip-hop in there too. It's a mutt of styles, I guess.

JA: Did you get a lot of submissions for ideas?

DZ: I did. Many of them had names, but most of them were anonymous.

JA: How did you sort through them in terms of picking which ones to use?

DZ: You can't really compare one type of love to another with one being more important or more interesting, so what I basically tried to do was take some stories that showed a variety of the love here. One expresses love between two separate races and how it wasn't accepted, then how ultimately they succeeded. There is a variety of homosexuality versus heterosexuality. There's all different types in there.

JA: So it's not just about love in a romantic sense but love in a much broader sense of the word?

DZ: Definitely. It all culminates in a dance about random acts of kindness and how love can be transferred from the stage to the students.

JA: To take something as broad as an emotion and turn it into a dance or movement is something that seems like it could be a complicated process. How did it work for you in terms of turning those ideas into a dance?

DZ: I actually used to be more interested in dance, and now I'm much more interested in choreography and movement and theatrical gestures, so this show is actually an independent study in choreography and footwork for me. In order to transcribe these stories into movement pieces, I'm not only using dance, but also using everyday inspiration such as a handshake or a wave and then exaggerating that into something further. It's what's behind the movement that you're really trying to show.

JA: As I understand it, you're doing the choreography for the dance pieces, then you have other students writing the music?

DZ: Right, so basically it's like a game of telephone. First I have the students ship the stories to me, and then I ship the stories over to composers. They were composers I had already picked, so I had selected them and assigned each of them a story after they told me which instruments they would be interested in composing for. So I set that up, and then they gave me the compositions over the summer, and then I choreographed to the compositions, which were composed to the story. So it's basically me telling the story the third time around.

JA: Are any of these dances based on your personal stories of love?

DZ: No, I actually thought about writing a story myself, and then I didn't want to get too attached to it, and I also didn't want to be very narcissistic. I originally was not in the dance show--I was just going to direct it and have my ensemble of eight dancers, but I ended up replacing one of the dancers, so I'm trying to be as un-self-centered as possible. I really do want to take a step back, though my flavor of choreography may have subconsciously given my own viewpoint on certain things. But I didn't use any of my own personal experiences in creating it.

JA: How do you think it's all going to turn out?

DZ: I think it's going to turn out really well. I'm a nervous wreck all the time, but my dancers are fabulous. We just put up the set tonight, which turned out really well. There are a lot of near saves: my producer Herbie [Rosen] '12 has been fantastic, my stage manager Kat, my Assistant House Manager, everyone has been totally on board with me 100 percent of the way. So we have a dream team. It's really working out, and I hope everyone comes to see it.