The Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College presents A Window on the Work: Lisa Kraus and Cynthia Lee ’02 on Sunday, April 5 at 4 pm in Troy Dance Lab, Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC). During this informal showing, Kraus and Lee will present works developed while taking part in the Swarthmore Project Residency in Dance this past summer, and will speak about their work and answer questions from the audience.
Lisa Kraus will present excerpts from Red Thread, an intergenerational work inspired by a model of women artists’ sustainability – quilting circles – created in collaboration with two long-time colleagues: Eva Karczag and Guggenheim Fellow Vicky Shick. The three women met while company members in The Trisha Brown Dance Company in the 1970s. They have each gone on to have successful careers in the contemporary dance field, and now in their fifties, come together again, full circle, to dance and reflect on their lives in movement.
Cynthia Lee ’02 returns to Swarthmore to show two works-in-progress. Kat-tarang is a contemporary kathak piece created in collaboration with tabla player Lenny Seidman that brings new cross-rhythmic possibilities to Hindustani (North Indian classical) music.
Lee will begin the afternoon with darshan, an outdoor ritual dance installation drawing connections between butoh and the fluid, reciprocal gaze of Indian aesthetic theory. Performers Lee, Liza Clark ’03 and Rebecca Patek will each dance for an audience passing by in a natural wooded setting.
Lisa Kraus is a Philadelphia-based dance artist whose career has included performing in the Trisha Brown Dance Company; choreographing and performing extensively with her own company and as an independent artist; teaching at universities, arts centers and the Paris Opera Ballet; and writing reviews, features and essays on dance for internet and print publication. Critic Sally Sommer wrote in Dance Magazine: “her voluptuousness reminds us that dancing can be a luxurious experience.”
Based in Los Angeles, Cynthia Lee holds an MFA in choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures and a BA in English Literature from Swarthmore College. She has studied extensively with masters of contemporary avant-garde dance Simone Forti and Eiko & Koma, and has been a practitioner of contact improvisation for the past ten years. Her style of Kathak reflects studies with renowned gurus Bandana Sen and Kumudini Lakhia in India and Anjani Ambegaokar in Los Angeles. Lee was awarded a year-long Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study religious dance in Thailand (Thai classical dance), Brazil (Candomble), and India (Kathak) from 2002-3.
The performance is free and open to the public without advance reservations. For further information, contact Liza Clark at lclark1@swarthmore.edu or call 610-328-8260.