Muhlenberg Dancers: Faculty And Guest Artists Choreograph
The Spring 2005 Muhlenberg Dancers Concert features professional choreographers whose works traverse a wide spectrum of concert dance forms from ballet to tap to contemporary.Tuesday, February 1, 2005 10:13 AM
The Spring 2005 Muhlenberg Dancers Concert features professional choreographers whose works traverse a wide spectrum of concert dance forms from ballet to tap to contemporary. The extraordinary quality and variety of this concert performance remains unique in the Lehigh Valley. Audiences experience the diversity of the national dance scene through the work of choreographers recognized for their outstanding work in major cities around the country. Muhlenberg Dancers, who have been recognized nationally by the American College Dance Festival for their excellence in dance choreography and performance, provide the creative raw material for developing new work and for staging important dance repertoire. The experience gives students the opportunity to model the professional dance artists and investigate their contrasting styles, genres and approaches to choreography.
Staged in the Empie Theatre in the Baker Center for the Arts for four performances February 10 through 12, the annual concert is shaped by faculty of the Muhlenberg College dance program and visiting guest artists. Artistic director is Karen Dearborn. The seven choreographers featured in the 2005 concert of the Muhlenberg Dancers include Charles O. Anderson, Pat Catterson, Karen Dearborn, Robert LaFosse, Tiffany Mills, Shelley Oliver and Cathy Young.
Assistant Professor Charles O. Anderson in conjunction with his Philadelphia-based company dance theatre X has choreographed "Parables of Mutants and Madmen" with the Muhlenberg Dancers. "Parables" aims to illuminate universal themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, enslavement and freedom, and separation and community in American cultural history within an 'Africanist sci-fi fantasy' context. It is a community work that embodies Mr. Anderson's cross-cultural style of kinetic storytelling. The work fosters culturally inclusive community using a movement vocabulary that finds ways to evocatively marry western and non-western dance forms and traditions. This project provides Muhlenberg students and the professional members of dance theatre X the opportunity to engage in a meaningful, creative, and directed discourse on cultural identity. They work together to make something "meaningful to their distinct communities while also broadening their understanding of what community is." "Parables" will premiere at Dance Boom as a work-in-progress at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia in late January. Over the past ten years, Anderson's choreography has been presented through such venues as Mulberry Street Theatre, Danspace at St. Mark's Church, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
Associate Professor Karen Dearborn has created, "Scenes," a new contemporary ballet for 13 women and three men, including faculty member Edward Choi Augustyn. Augustyn's professional dance experience includes ten years of service with the companies of Boston Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Ohio Ballet, and San Francisco Opera. Associate Professor Dearborn is Founder and Head of the Dance Program at Muhlenberg. Dearborn's piece for this concert is performed to music by Michael Galasso and features Joseph Elliott's photography of Bethlehem Steel. Elliott, a professor of photography at Muhlenberg College, is an industrial/architectural photographer known for his detailed black and white images of architectural and industrial subjects.
Guest Artist Tiffany Mills established her own company, the New York City-based Tiffany Mills Company, to build dances through collaborations with contemporary composers, designers, and filmmakers. For this concert, she has created "Godard", a dance inspired by the films of Jean Luc-Godard, which probe the complexities of relationships in the episodic style of Godard's films. Miss Mills has been called "one of the real talents of the emerging generation" by the Village Voice and "smart, fresh, and accomplished" by The New York Times. Mills' choreography has been produced at a variety of venues in NYC, including Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Joyce SoHo, Performance Space 122 and the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center.
Guest Artist Pat Catterson is a multi-faceted dance artist, trained in modern dance, tap, ballet and ballroom dancing and the recipient of several NEA choreography grants. She has restaged an excerpt from Tian an Men (Peaceful Gate) to music by Philip Glass, a dance inspired by the tragic events surrounding the Student Democracy Movement in Beijing China in June 1989. Formerly on the faculties at Sarah Lawrence College, UCLA and the Merce Cunningham Studio, she currently teaches composition at the Juilliard School and at LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts.
Baker Artist-in-Residence, Robert LaFosse, who directed and choreographed "Pippin" for Muhlenberg last semester, has made an original piece for four men and four women. Using the branches and roots of trees as an inspirational metaphor, the piece shows the interconnected nature of mankind and the complications of relationship between men and women. In addition to his 16-year performance career with American Ballet Theater and the New York City Ballet, LaFosse has choreographed for NYCB, the School of American Ballet, Baryshnikov and Company, and Atlanta Ballet, among others.
Faculty member Shelley Oliver has created another jazz tap dance finale for 14 dancers entitled "It's About Time." The work is performed to " Sunrise" composed by David Leonhardt and David "Fathead" Newman. Performing live for the concert are David Leonhardt, piano, Matthew Parish, bass, and Taro Okamoto, drums. Director of the Muhlenberg Tap Ensemble, Oliver has over twenty years experience as a professional tap dancer, in which time she has appeared internationally with some of the legends of the tap world. Leonhardt has established himself as an international performing artist, touring for four years as pianist for jazz legend Jon Hendricks and six years as a member of the "Fathead" Newman Quintet.
Guest Artist Cathy Young studied postmodern dance and laughingly calls her choreography "post-jazz." She has restaged "Above and Below" to the recorded music of Leon Parker, the colorful drummer who performed regularly at the Village Gate in New York City and has toured and recorded with David Sanchez, among others. An assistant professor of dance and choreography at Ursinus College and independent choreographer, Young draws from her career with Danny Buraczeski Jazz Dance and her own love of the passionate rhythms of jazz to create choreography that is exceptionally rich both musically and visually.
Bringing the professional edge to the visual aspects of the concert are costume designer Constance Case and lighting designer Susan Hamburger. Case has recently designed costumes for the Muhlenberg productions of The Seagull, Pippin, and Godspell among many others. Her work has also been seen in Washington, D.C. at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The National Archives, Washington Opera, and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Hamburger is a guest artist from New York City and has also designed Muhlenberg productions of Little Shop of Horrors and West Side Story.
Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 PM and Saturday at 2 PM and 8 PM. Tickets may be reserved and purchased by calling 484-664-3333. The box office in the Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance is open Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 6 PM. For interviews or photographs, call Marilyn Roberts at 484-664-3693 or email [email protected] for more information.
