DAVID D. MAHFOUDA ’05

David D. Mahfouda ’05 is the second recipient of the Office for the Arts at Harvard’s Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. Mahfouda, a Dudley House-affiliated Visual and Environmental Studies concentrator, has been an innovator in performance art through projects such as “The Human Aquarium,” “The Cube,” “Dance Conspiracy,” and “Frozen Ghost Project.”

Mahfouda declined an interview.

—Emer C. M. Vaughn

REBECCA J. ALALY ’05

Rebecca J. Alaly ’04-’05 advertises her latest choreography work in “The Oresteia” as having “severed heads, dirt, blood, and meat.” The Loeb Mainstage Production, based on the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, tells a tale of murderous revenge within a single family.

Alaly’s work, however, doesn’t depend on shock value to draw audiences. She has contributed to the Harvard dance community as a dancer, choreographer, and administrator. She serves as choreographer and rehearsal director for the Harvard Ballet Company, and she is also a performing member of the Harvard Contemporary Dance ensemble, the touring company of Harvard’s Dance Program.

This year the Office for the Arts (OFA) at Harvard is recognizing Alaly’s string of achievements by awarding her the first annual Suzanne Farrell Dance Prize, given in honor of an acclaimed

dancer and former prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet.

Alaly, who has been dancing since age three and choreographing since high school, says dance provides an outlet for her emotions, which are, in turn, the jumping-off points for many of her productions.

“I often start with a personal event or emotion, something that strikes me,” she says. “I experience something and think about what emotion that brings out in me…what’s on my mind that I want to get at, what I can work on or gnaw on in my mind.”

Though trained in ballet, Alaly’s current focus is modern dance, which she finds “more free, more pertinent to everyday life.” She often incorporates her own life into her dance. As a super-senior, Alaly has seen many of her friends graduate, and her struggle with long-distance relationships affected a production in which she choreographed the parting of the dancers.