DANCER IN PREMIER UNH SHOW
By Amanda J. Mantone/ Staff Writer

Medfield Press, MA
March 30 2006

One Medfield High School alumna will dance her way through the
roaring twenties this weekend, as a soloist in the University of New
Hampshire’s most prestigious ballet performance of the year.

Niari Keverian, a senior at UNH, has been in the school’s ballet
company for four years, and has been a dancer since the age of one –
but this is her college soloist debut, and it’s in the biggest show
of the school year, called “Intrigues.”

“Dance has been a huge part of my life. I auditioned every year
(at UNH) and I was accepted every year, but this is the first year
I’m one of the actual soloists,” she said in a recent telephone
interview. “We actually start rehearsing in September and I didn’t
get the solo part until January, so I’ve been rehearsing half the
time of everyone else. It’s a huge production and a great show.”

The show, which features ballet and jazz, is set in the 1920s in a New
Year’s Eve hotel party. Each soloist presents a different situation,
all of them intertwining in a leaping, twirling spectacle that keeps
audience members in suspense until the very end.

“They all come to a party, and all their situations come out to
play. I play the role of a sexy assassin, you could say,” Niari said.

“The suspense is that you never know what happens.”

She said the jazz component includes aerial trapezes, and there’s
also a tap dance show. There are only three soloists in the show,
which also features some duets.

Keverian is minoring in dance and majoring in marketing, a field
she hopes to enter upon graduation this year. She also dances in an
Armenian folk dance troupe based in Watertown, and as a member of that
company she and her younger brother Jack will tour Armenia this summer.

She also choreographed a student dance showcase in December at UNH,
and she’ll be in a student showcase come May, where she can show off
her individual talent and areas of expertise in ballet.

“I’m so thankful to be able to still dance in college. It’s something
I’ve been doing my whole life, and the thing that makes me the most
happy,” Niari said. “I plan on doing it until I can’t walk anymore.”

Show times are 7 p.m. nightly from Wednesday, March 29 through
Saturday, April 1, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 2.