In the dimly lit Bale Theater at Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design Building, four students stand piling maps in the corner of a stage. From the dark, a voice calls out the names of different places in the world, and so begins “Mapping the Border: A dance event for letting go,” Blake Beckham’s final project for her Master of Fine Arts.

“I chose the cities and places I name because of a simple curiosity with places that are other places,” said Beckham, a third year graduate student whose concentration is choreography. “There are 25 cities in America named Peru, and there’s a Key West, Minn. It’s all about dislocation and disorientation.”

Throughout the 40-minute dance program dancers Boris Willis, Amiti Perry, Michael Estanich and Noelle Stiles test each other’s physical strength and mental focus. Beckham is mostly responsible for the creativity of the piece. It is her concept and project, but part of her goal for the project was letting dancers improvise their performances.

“Letting go is a personal letting go, me taking my hands off of the work,” Beckham said. “I’m letting go of my own voice and habits and inviting others to become a part of something bigger than me.”

Beckham said she would begin certain rehearsals with a question or idea, and allow the dancers to involve their own emotions and ideas for movement. For instance, one day she asked, “What games do we play that make us spatially disoriented?” and from that discussion, a game of Marco Polo made its way into the show. One aspect of the performance, “Border Patrol,” gave Estanich structural rules and an objective, but his movement and the length of time it takes him to achieve his goal on stage is different every time.

“[The dancers] are brilliant, mature performers and intelligent people,” Beckham said. “I thought for a long time about who I would cast, and how I would be able to find a cast I would trust. I am relying on them to make the piece.”

The dancers were not the only outside resources who had an impact on the final result. Beckham collaborated with two of her friends, Katherine Dunn and Adam Overton.

“I approached Dunn and Overton with a vague proposal, discussing my ideas around borders and disclosing as few details as possible about my own studio developments. I asked them to give me something – anything – for the piece and agreed to include whatever creative offering they bestowed upon me,” Beckham said.

What the artists offered was a movement score, which is performed under the title “you.are.already.dancing” and a text “fixed point,” which Beckham reads to close the show.

Beckham received the Alumni Grant for Graduate Research, which has provided the majority of her funding.

The grant has offered Beckham the chance to build and arrange seating for her performance venue as well as create her own lighting system.

“Mapping the Borders: a dance event for letting go” will be performed on Oct. 14 and 15 at 8 p.m. in the Experimental Media and Movement Arts Lab at ACCAD, 1224 Kinnear Rd. No admission will be charged for the performance.