School of Dance pushes boundaries with fall performance
The School of Dance will present the work of four internationally acclaimed choreographers Oct. 3-5 and 17-19 as the Performing Dance Company takes to the stage in the Marriott Center for Dance. Through these works the choreographers illuminate not only the richness of the creative process, but also comment on the world in which we live and the fragility of life itself. The evening is visually powerful, emotionally engaging and encourages the audience to reexamine the world around us.
Omar Carrum hails from Mexico City, while his performance, teaching and choreography projects take him around the world, including four months a year teaching in Prague. He has created, with the dancers in his cast, a visually engaging work that draws from the dancers’ individual stories to create a contemplative world before our very eyes. "Alchemy of the 7 Elements" presents an elegant journey through these dancers’ memories and beliefs that invites the audience to follow along and simultaneously forge their own path. The choreographer and performers invite us to contemplate “how do we understand this life and what may come after it?”
"(Re)current Unrest: We Are The People" is an excerpt of Charles O. Anderson/dance theatre X's latest touring work "(Re)current Unrest." Professor Anderson is currently the Director of Dance at University of Texas at Austin, where he also serves as Associate Professor of African Diaspora Dance. He is also the Artistic Director of his own company "dance theatre x." For the reconstruction of this excerpt, Mr. Anderson selected a cast of 15 performers, which includes students majoring in both ballet and modern dance. "(Re)current Unrest" is an evening length immersive performance ‘ritual’ built upon the sonic foundation of Steve Reich’s three earliest works: The larger project began as an investigation of legacy, authorship and citizenship and protest through the lens of the erasure of the Africanist presence inside of Reich’s compositions. This excerpted version is a meditation on the increase in racially motivated violence and what it means to be an American.
"CLEANSLATE," from choreographer and faculty member Satu Hummasti, imagines a Utopia, but does not aim to represent one. Björk, the Icelandic Goddess who sings for this piece, imagines a utopia led by women and children and plants and animals who practice kindness, unthought of worlds of creativity, “radical softness,” love and generosity. This utopian world was the inspiration for what we were thinking about when we worked, when we created and when we dance.
Choreographer and faculty member Daniel Clifton bring us "Art and rat use the same letters"…, a playful exploration of the creative process. Clifton states, “Sometimes we exist in life structures that can feel like they repeat and repeat and repeat until they don’t.” His cast of five dancers bring this concept to reality before our eyes as they create, repeat and then create some more—including the score for the dance itself.
The concert also features the creative work of Lighting Designer, Cole Adams; Costume Designer, Christopher Larson; and additional props from Technical Director, Isaac Taylor. Benjamin Sandberg further enhances the evening through his craft as audio engineer. These amazing technical “wizards" help immerse the audience in a provocative world of visual and auditory invention and discovery.
