After darkness loomed into Miller Concert Hall, a performer carried a single drum on stage. As his hand tapped into it, the lights revealed numerous dancers next to him.

FEAST, a collaboration between Danish choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen’s dance company NOW-ID, Wichita Contemporary Dance Theatre and the WSU Percussion Ensemble, materialized Friday and Saturday night the Kansas Dance Festival.

Boye-Christensen, who choreographed the show, expressed her satisfaction with the performance.

“We’re mixing multiple art forms,” she said. “There are so many elements that made it challenging. It’s so inspiring when various artists come together and actually create something together.”

The choreographer said the audience’s interpretation of the show is as important as what she intended it to be.

“That’s part of the beauty of dance,” she said. “It’s an art form similar to music that has no narrative. You come to it with whatever your experiences are, and that’s what you project onto the performance. In many ways, there’s a generosity within this art form that allows for that.”

Nick Johnson, director of FEAST, noted the differences between the presentation and contemporary dance performances.

“Tonight was an experiment and a seamless experience of dance,” he said. “The conventional presentation of dance in a dance concert generally runs in the fashion of doing a 15-minute piece, taking a five-minute pause, doing a 10-minute piece, then followed by maybe another ten-minute piece, then intermission and then three more pieces after the intermission.”

The WSU Professor of Mime, Choreography and Art of Dance remarked the necessary features for an exhibition of contemporary dance.

“I think when you have contemporary dance at this level of sophistication of vocabulary and technique in the body of the dancer, you have to engage at a visceral level the poetic moment that’s being expressed by the dancers,” he said. “There’s a combination of qualities that go into that poetic moment — some of them are athleticism, aesthetics, emotion. These are things that are hard to describe with language, but then dance and physical theater are beyond language.”

Johnson also spoke about the audience’s reaction to the dance piece and explained the meaning (or lack thereof) within FEAST.

“The dance is what’s important,” he said. “The dance is the poetry. It’s not necessarily about what’s being said. This was a feast of the senses, this was an aural celebration along with a physical celebration with an emotional impact if you follow the music and the choreography together.

After the show, I talked to fathers and boyfriends and all these people kind of don’t get it. They want the story that they’re used to. I told them they were listening with the wrong senses.”

Sunday night, the Impulse Percussion Group presented  “Sticks, Steps & Rock and Roll,” which shared some of the same dance pieces as FEAST, yet focused more on the instrumental aspect.

Senior Aaron Craven, one of the featured dancers, said the combination of all three artistic ideas was exciting and commented on the audience’s response to it.

“Tonight went exceptionally well,” he said. “Charlotte’s choreography was very exciting and I think that everybody was really satisfied with it. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback.

“What we were doing tonight was just trying to be as honest to the movement that Charlotte gave us as possible and create a visually exciting experience for our audience.”