To review a dance as a once-professional-dancer-aspirer is tricky business. On one hand, while my wonky spine, full legs and hips, and lack of dedication prevented me from moving too far down the path of a professional dancer, I still gained some semblance of dance literacy. On the other hand, the many years since I danced have left the art form more mysterious than known. Thus, I approach dance with a love and a reverence, rather than a scientific scrutiny.

As a non-expert, I measure the success of a dance by two very unscientific measures. One: does it get me out of my head? And the second: my gut reaction. In my opinion, a good dance is transportive and transcendent—it forces me to leave my ruminating mind and shifting body. As a viewer, I become utterly absorbed in the world, myths, rhythms, and narratives of the dance. The music supports, but does not overshadow the dance. The dance seems to breathe, to reverberate, to fill every corner of the space. That’s a good dance.

And there were two such performances in Accelerate: Pedal to the Metal, the New Movement Project’s Fall Concert at Northwestern University. Accelerate: Pedal to the Metal included seven dances in total, each choreographed and performed by students. Of the seven dances, most of them were “just fine.” They were neither offense nor outstanding. In short, they were pleasant.

As the program explained: “This year’s Fall Dance Concert, produced by the Dance Program’s student-led New Movement Project, features unique explorations of change and movement, with choreographers pushing familiar dance elements to new heights.” Each dance in the series blended a variety of traditional dance movement patterns, to varying degrees of success.

The first two dances included a light playfulness—one included a mix of vaudevillian humor played out in the creation of a four-legged animal with the bodies of two dancers with crooning, sensuous sways and the second included a cheeky mini-play that tied together an enthusiastic tap performance. Then, there were a series of interesting dances. Many used pairings and rhyming sequences, exploring the boundaries between dancers when they were in synchronicity and when they were deliberately in juxtaposition.

Two dances broke out of this realm of pleasantries.

The first of these performances, entitled SHIFT, began with pulsing lights. And then, Ta-Ku’s “We Were in Love” began to fill the space, its rhythmic, pulsating breaths punctuating the room. In the brief moments of light, the audience catches a glimpse of a dancer in the back right corner, standing utterly still. Then as the music starts building the lights come on and the dancer moves towards the front of the stage with a mix of machine-like repetition and fluid, supple body rolling. When she reaches about halfway through the stage, another dancer appears, joining in the first dancer’s sequence. Then a third dancer appears from behind the side-curtains. Throughout the rest of the dance, these three dancers, all dressed in various shades of grey, come together in moments of robotic synchronicity and then fragment, riff, and rhyme with each other. In the blackout that marked the end of the performance, the audience cooed signs of approval.

The second stand-out performance, entitled REDUCE, RECOVER, involved just two dancers. While it began with music reminiscent of the Downton Abbey soundtrack, it evolved into an elegant and chilling narrative. Via concentric-circle walks and the manipulation of objects, one dancer infiltrates the other’s safe space. Then, the dominant dancer begins to manipulate the second dancer’s body. Then, shaking rhythmically to the beat, the second dancer fights back, until she returns to a place of strength—sitting in the spotlight staring back at the audience. The power of the dance was heard after the lights went out. A woman next to me exhaled loudly, while others made similar sounds of cathartic release.

In the end, watching one dance after another, it became clear: you can’t fake good dance. I believe that you can fake good art—not great art, but good art. There are a variety of tricks that add superficial layers to an object. But, for better or worse, you cannot fake good dance. A dance unfolds right in front of the viewer—we catch every movement, from a fumbled step to an elegant flick of the wrist. The so-so dances did not have anything particularly bad or offensive about them. But they lacked a certain je ne sais quoi, an element of catharsis and reverberation—the sense that everything is locked into place, like the transcendence that occurs when disparate voices come together in a perfect harmonious note—the kind of experience that unites the audience with the dance and to which there is truly only one satisfying response after it releases us from its hold: a sound of release. Oh, and a bit of applause.