The Arts & Humanities capstones Festival – hosted from April 2 to May 8 – started last week with Amplify, a memorable show directed and choreographed by Hana Almakkawy with the support of lighting designer Tori Mondello, both theater students from the Class of 2022.

In the Arts, capstones provide a unique opportunity for students to develop their artistic projects with the support and guidance of mentors. Capstones also give students a chance to get a taste of what it is like to direct their initiatives, work with larger teams and explore what kinds of projects and fields they would like to lead in the future. Through this year-long project, students can “reflect upon and articulate their projects as expressions of aesthetic theory and practice”. Usually, capstones are done individually, but Amplify was an exception as it was a widely collaborative project involving a joint effort between two seniors and the participation of underclassmen as stage managers and dancers who worked together for about three months to make this performance possible and the whole process more enjoyable.

The show's name goes in line with its objective, which is to amplify women’s stories, journeys and experiences through the art of dance, as Almakkawy stated for The Gazelle. The performance consisted of seven sections, with solo and group performances, where performers would dance mostly to interviews of female-identifying dancers and choreographers from all over the world. Each section focused on a different topic in dance: their relationships to dance, memories, positive and negative experiences and how Covid-19 changed dance for them.

When asked about her experience collaborating with others for her capstone, Almakkawy stated: “I feel like I was very lucky because I had a good group, we worked well together…We understood each other and we knew how to work with one another.”

Almakkawy also elaborated on how working with a group of people helped make her capstone experience more fun and easier to manage.“At the beginning, I wanted to do everything, I wanted to manage everything and be in charge of everything, but I'm so glad that they were a part of this project.”

Another added value of collaborating on an art project like this is learning how to communicate with others who have different areas of expertise. “To collaborate with people and learn how to speak your language in relation to their language, like having that sort of second brain on…and making sure that those ideas are flowing between all of us was such a good learning experience.” highlighted Tori Mondello.

Both Mondello and Almakkawy agreed that collaborating on this capstone taught them many soft skills and prepared them better for a career in their areas of interest, which are lighting design, and choreography and directing respectively. They both hope to see more collaboration among art students in future projects.

Additionally, capstones allow seniors to identify what fields they would like to join after graduation. “This kind of show has definitely prepared me for my future and in terms of the choreography and the directing side of things...this is the field that I definitely want to go into,” added Almakkawy.

For Mondello, this was also a great learning experience that she would not have gotten any other way because, as she mentioned, the opportunities for technical learning in the Theater program are quite limited. Moreover, they both stressed how working on their capstone and leading a big project for the first time helped them develop more confidence in their work and their creative choices.

Their work breaks the boundaries of typical theater capstones, being a dance-based piece with extensive lighting design work, both of which are fields with no specific course offerings in the NYU Abu Dhabi Theater major. Almakkawy and Mondello hope that their project inspires other future theater students to continue to go beyond the usual theater pathways and explore dancing and technical pathways or any other unusual path they love.

“I hope my capstone will inspire future capstone students to pursue more technically motivated or technically focused or design-focused capstone, but I also hope that it motivates underclassmen to see this as a career option,” Mondello stated.

“For me, I really enjoyed the fact that I stuck with my idea and yes, my proposal changed slightly, but I still had that, you know, the same path that I wanted to go for. So that would be another piece of advice is to stick to what you love. Go for what you're passionate about,” said Almakkawy as a final word to future and prospective Theater students.

Another amazing thing about Amplify is that, beyond being a capstone project, there will also be a documentary about the whole process coming up soon directed by film students: Loan Hang and Pu (Nathan) Jia, both part of the Class of 2023.

Finally, Mondello and Almakkawy are both immensely grateful to the Arts Center team — Simon, Stelle, Phillip and Jon — for their valuable input and support on this project.

“I could not be more grateful for the Art Center team… as somebody's [who’s] going into, hopefully, a career… they're [here to] bounce ideas off and like, talk through frustrations and stuff like that, knowing that they are so experienced. So getting their input into this little capstone is really monumental for me,” stated Mondello.

Check out the student portal to attend upcoming exhibitions at the Arts & Humanities Capstone Festival.