Pretty Girls takes its name from the Britney Spears/Iggy Azalea song of the same name:

"All around the world, pretty girls
Jump the line, to the front
Do what we like, get what we want
We're just so pretty"

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Barring any physical beauty ties to the idea of "pretty girls," the energy of this song is what I believe we need to have moving forward. My source of inspiration for the piece was the idea of female empowerment - like the song says, girls should be able to go out and have a good time without worrying about being shamed for doing any of it. I wanted this piece to embody the freedom and fun of a young woman, with the mixture of compositions representing the wide variety of personality that is expressed by women today. 

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The story is a “girl’s night out:” the dancers are a group of girls who get ready, go out to a club, and dance with a guy; when the music changes, however, they realize he was dancing with all of them and dump him for being a player, ending the night in celebration of female empowerment. While it may seem juvenile, I think this is a timeless situation, and forces the audience to consider what their expectations might be - what would it say if the gender roles were reversed? Instead, the dancers are comfortable with their sexuality and face no shame for taking control of their own bodies, rejecting traditional narratives of shame or stigmas regarding casual sex. The music provides an emphasis on the female voice to convey the female experience, and the mirroring of the beginning and ending poses implies a cyclical nature to these events - those women are going to go out and do it all over again tomorrow.

 

Further analysis of this piece was presented as "Pretty Girls: Taking Back Women’s Roles in Dance" at the 2019 King’s College Women and Gender Studies Conference (King's College, Wilkes-Barre, PA).