Professors and students gathered to watch experimental dance performances across the Lafayette College arts campus last weekend, kicking off the school’s first Fringe Fest in a decade.

“A lot of cities now have Fringe Festivals, which are places where experimental theater, performance, dance can take place where it’s less tied to it being a successful product, and more about experimentation,” said assistant theater professor Courtney Ryan. “Fringe is a space where you can get back to the origins of performance.”

Last weekend’s showcase — part of a series taking place throughout April — focused on dance, showcasing two works choreographed by professors and one by a Lafayette senior.

Math professor Sahana Balasubramanya performed “Nature Heals,” looking to represent the restorative powers of enjoying nature.

“I really wanted to talk about mental health,” she said. “We’re so easy with expressing happiness, but with grief and tension and anxiety everyone’s always like ‘Oh, I’m OK.’”

Balasubramanya’s focus in her second performance was to help people discover their own agency and show students that there’s more to them than what happens in the classroom. To get this across, she dug into mythology, performing the story of a man who had lost his agency, having his grief stripped away to paint him as a deity-like figure.

Film and Media Studies professor Nandini Sikand also performed what she wrote in an email was a “meditation, offering and embodiment” of the Hindu deity Shiva with Odissi, a classical Indian dance. The goal of the performance was to show different forms of Shiva and his relationship to other deities, gender and meditative practice.

The student performer, Laura Coffey ‘26, choreographed a unique aerial dance performance, using fabric to move through the air. Coffey’s experience with this type of dance began young with encouragement from her elementary school art teacher, who was also a professional trapeze artist.

“It’s an addiction, I just fell in love with it, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” she said. “I love aerial as an art and as a style of dance, and I just want to share it with more people.”

Her piece was called “Out of Time,” inspired by college stress and her imminent graduation.

“There’s a lot of pressure, oh my gosh, my college years are almost over,” she said. “What am I going to do after that?”

In her piece, she wanted to convey the “idea of knowing you have to do something, feeling like you’re running out of time and that pressure getting to you.”

Coffey noted that this performance was an especially exciting opportunity for her.

“I haven’t really done anything of my own in terms of dancing choreo,” she said.

Fringe Fest will offer other activities this month, including improv shows and poetry readings.

A correction was made on April 19, 2026: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of professor Nandini Sikand.

A correction was made on May 6, 2026: A previous version of this article misrepresented professor and performer Nandini Sikand’s dance and the goal of her performance.