Category Archives: Dance

Student Dance Concert 12/7 & 12/8

The Swarthmore College Dance Program (Department of Music and Dance) presents the 2012 Fall  Student Dance Concert at 8PM on 12/7 and 12/8 in the LPAC Pearson-Hall Theatre.  Ballet, Taiko, Tap,  and Drum & Dance performances will be included this year.  Come celebrate the end of Fall semester and the hard work of all our dance students and faculty.  The concert, which is appropriate for all ages, is free and open to the public.

Kyle Abraham.in.Motion at Swarthmore 11/6 – 11/11

The Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College and the William J. Cooper Foundation present Kyle Abraham’s PAVEMENT on Friday November 9, 2012 at 8PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center’s Pearson-Hall Theater.  Abraham’s latest piece of work, PAVEMENT, pays homage to the bold, 1990’s backward-jeans-and-high-top-fade era in hip-hop, while examining a culture with a history plagued by discrimination, genocide, and a constant quest for a way out.

Inspired by John Singleton’s groundbreaking film Boyz N The Hood (1991) and essays of W.E.B DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Abraham’s PAVEMENT tells the story of a group of friends struggling to stay together while their community is being torn apart.  Set in the historically black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, PAVEMENT depicts scenes of violence, love, male bonding, arrests, physical and emotional pain, all combined with sound bites from the film and operatic music.

Kyle Abraham — the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and 2010 Bessie Award-winning choreographer — first discovered his love of performance at the Civic Light Opera Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He then went on to receive his BFA from SUNY Purchase and MFA from New York University Tisch School for the Arts. Abraham has collaborated with David Dorfman Dance, Mimi Garrard Dance Theater, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and is currently choreographing for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion will also be involved in several residency activities during the week with Swarthmore students and the public.  These activities include a screening and discussion of Singleton’s film Boyz N the Hood on November 6 at 7PM, a Lecture/Demonstration on November 7 at 7PM, a Dance as Identity workshop on November 11 at 1PM.

For further information about these events, contact Tara Webb at 610-328-8260 or lpacevents@swarthmore.edu. The performance is free and open to the public without reservations.

 

 

Making Moves with idiosynCrazy

Making Moves

This fall Swarthmore College’s Dance Program continues an exciting partnership with Philadelphia dance/theater company, idiosynCrazy productions.  Performers from idiosynCrazy productions will work collaboratively with Swarthmore students in the exploration and discussion of methodology, performance, practice, and creation of dance.  This year, the focus will be on the process of dance creation and rigorous performance tools.  The project will culminate in a Spring semester showing/sharing in Troy Dance Studio.

Beginning in November 2012, this project will span both the Fall and Spring semesters. The process will create an opportunity for involved Swarthmore dancers to: develop meaningful relationships with professionals in the city, experiment with dance and performance collaboratively in a concentrated environment, and deepen understanding of what it means to be a professional dance artist.

Credit is available for those who are involved in this unique repertory opportunity.  A dance technique course should be taken concurrently.

Participants should expect rigorous creation and practice of movement material and compositional structures, utilization of vocal techniques in relation to movement practices, use of both set and improvised material within performance structures, and engagement of theatrical sensibilities.  Several directed sessions/workshops will be included with professional choreographers from Philadelphia and NYC, including Kyle Abraham of Abraham.In.Motion and Jane Comfort of Jane Comfort and Company.

All dancers are invited to join the Dance Program and idiosynCrazy productions for a conversation about the project on Monday, October 8th, at 9pm in Troy Dance Studio.  You may also consult dance faculty member Jumatatu Poe at jpoe1@swarthmore.edu for more information.

Window on the Work: Lela Aisha Jones/Flyground on 10/22/2012 at 6PM

Join the dance program for a showing with Lela Aisha Jones and Flyground in the Troy Dance Lab on October 22, at 6PM.

The dancers will be featuring some excerpted work from the STREET GRACE SERIES. This Flyground Series is a contemporary collection of movement performance works that cleverly blur textual and bodily memories as they are uncovered in the histories of African/Afro/Black diasporic shared experiences in the US.  Currently the Series includes Native Portals of Lynching and Love, which is an abstract cultural narrative that transforms our relationship with the noose as an active agent in lynching through jolts of comedy and intensity.  It puts the image of the noose front and center for everyone to work through in their bodies and systems.  It starts internal and external conversations based on what has been missing or excluded as a part of our historical education in theUS—namely visibility, accountability, and healing.

*Lela Aisha Jones* is a native of Tallahassee, Florida and is at home when creating.  While in movement she found her entry point as an artist, she cannot be defined by one discipline or practice; her experiences have lead to a more nomadic existence. She is the founder of FlyGround—her creative home, co-founder of The Requisite Movers, and development coordinator as well as member of Mascher Space Co-op. Lela walks with her transitioned as well as living family; she is humbled and so thankful for all those who have nurtured her, especially her grandfather, mom, dad, and sister.

*FlyGround* experiences are in a genre of their own but never too far from home. Since 2009, it is a movement performance company that artistically archives and rethinks the intersecting lineages of the African/Afro/Black diaspora and US black lived experiences through abstract, physical and cultural narrative.  The work is a spiritual sanctuary that asks hard questions in safe spaces and honors the body and embodied experience as real landscapes that know life.  We walk coherently through cultures and traditions meeting where we can and realizing where we are varied.  We are grounded in native US vibes.  We are home grown traces of many.  We are consciously here.

Tavia Odinak ’09 in NYC with “Meaning Irregular Volumes: Study III”

Tavia Odinak ’09 will be showing some of her new, in process material Measuring Irregular Volumes: Study III on Friday, September 28, 2012 @ 8PM at 100 Grand St., New York, NY. The evening will also include the work of three other choreographers: Gemma Peramiquel Borjas, Lindsey Drury, and Megan Byrne.

Tavia writes, “This Study is a taste of my work in it’s research stage. I would love to hear feedback, so if you are able to come and have thoughts or questions after the showing, please feel free to share them with me. I hope you will join me! ”

www.taviagrace.com

Katia Lom ’06 in London at the Art Cellar

If you’re in London, check out Katia Lom ’06 in a group show: http://www.theartcellar.co.uk/

Staged by a pop-up gallery that will include a mix of artists but also chefs, mixologists and musicians, the show will run next week from Wednesd

ay 3rd October to Friday 5th October everyday from 6pm to 11pm at:

“The Art Cellar”
41a Farringdon Street
London EC4A 4AN

Tickets are £9 and include one free drink. Food and drinks inside are £5 or under. The majority of artwork will be priced between £100 and £2000.