By Nina Hutchins
As the lights slowly fade and darkness fills the stage, Julia Merk sharply hits her final mark of the show and exhales a deep sigh of relief. She had just danced her heart out in a performance that, only days earlier, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to perform in at all.
After months of intense rehearsals, exhaustive work weeks and a relentless push towards perfection, Merk received devastating news. The doctors believed she had an unstable spine, requiring Merk to stop dancing until it was treated. The thought of missing the Spring performance, something she had worked towards and looked forward to all semester, was crushing.
“There was a chance that I spent all of those months working on these pieces, and then the week of the show finding out I couldn’t perform,” Merk shared.
As luck would have it, further appointments changed everything when tests revealed it was a bulging disc. Pursuing a passion so focused on body movement, any injury was not ideal. Yet, it was enough to get her back on stage in time for the performance.
The curtains opening that night represented something much bigger than just a show. Not only did Merk overcome the mental challenge that her week of health scares brought, but she also watched her choreography come to life under the warmth of the stage lights for the first time at Springfield College.
Though Fuller Arts Center certainly feels like home now, Merk grew up locally in Massachusetts. While many toddlers practiced walking, eating solid food or saying words, Merk found herself in dance classes at the age of two years old. Now, as a dual Early Education and Dance major, she is combining her passion for teaching with performing, and is working towards landing a job in the school system. Her teaching philosophy is a mosaic of all that she has learned from, specifically highlighting a multidimensional approach that emphasizes kinesthetic and tactile learning.
For many years, Merk’s thoughts have been consumed by self-critiques and impossibly high standards.
Similar to many college students, she faces the challenge of preventing burnout while pursuing something she deeply loves. Over the years, frustration has been at the core of this and for Merk, there is nothing more therapeutic for her than writing about these emotions and leaving them behind on paper to start fresh in a new headspace.
Her journals are filled with pages upon pages of handwritten notes, reflections written as she spends hours reviewing rehearsal footage, always looking for ways to refine her craft. Most nights, Merk studies every lift, turn, transition and extension, replaying each slight movement to pinpoint what can be fixed before the next rehearsal.
“The videos are posted, and then just watching those and being like, ‘I wasn’t in full alignment there’, or ‘this is why the lift might have felt funny,’” said Merk. “So then continuing to watch those and asking, ‘where can I improve?’”
This artistic process is not only rooted in perfection, but also reflection. For Merk, the stories she tells through her choreography draw from real, raw emotions she has experienced. Each piece is a balance of turning her own memories into tangible motion.
“How can I take those experiences and translate them into movement?” she asks herself. “There’s always the light at the end of the tunnel. It was our motto we said going through freshman and sophomore year.”
This light has become a guiding theme for Merk as she crafts her work to carry this message throughout. Her presence on stage embodies the trust she places in her peers, each lift and lean a reflection of the community she has found here at Springfield College.
In a discipline that is often viewed as purely physical, Merk values the additional layers that dance brings to her life, including the intellectual and spiritual challenges that shape each dance and artist.
“One of the biggest things with dance is everyone thinks it’s so physical, which it is,” she said. “But then there’s the aspect of the community that helps shape who we are outside of the muscular strength and everything… and there’s also that ancestral spirit aspect with what we’re learning. Then there’s the intellectual side from all the assignments and research we’re doing. It all ties together.”
The blend of spirit, mind and body is the most visible leading up to a show. Before every performance, the dancers gather to reflect on their gratitude and purpose. Merk describes the laps she does backstage, talking to any and everybody she can in the final moments of strengthening their bond and trust before leaving everything they have on the floor.
“We always try and build the energy so that everyone’s ready to go… It’s a look at how far we’ve come. That always feels nice being able to take September us compared to our performance in December… to embrace all the challenges that happen, but also celebrate the successes”
In the pre-show huddle, tradition takes over. Seniors pass down their wisdom before stepping on the stage for one last time. Soon, Merk will be on the other side of this, offering her advice surrounded by those who have shaped her collegiate journey.
Beyond the stage, Springfield provides tools that extend far beyond dance. Professor Sarah Zehnder, who has witnessed Merk’s growth over the past four years, describes her as a bold and dynamic artist who has learned to approach creative problem solving with openness and empathy.
“Dance forces one to be fully present and be in our bodies in relationship with one another,” Zehnder shares. “[It’s a] unique opportunity for understanding perspectives different from our own as well as cultivating community. There is no technology to hide behind or rely on.”
As Merk prepares to take her final bow, she will carry that lesson with her, constantly maintaining a balance of strength and vulnerability, discipline and emotion. For Julia Merk, dance is more than just a performance. It is proof that even in the hardest moments, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.
(Photo courtesy of Julia Merk)