The University Record, April 17, 1995
Dance Works presents 10th-year concert April 23
From the Department of Dance
Ann Arbor Dance Works, the resident professional company of the Department of Dance, will present a 10th-year anniversary concert at 4 p.m. Sunday (April 23), featuring premieres and recent repertory by company members.
Ann Arbor Dance Works is a collective of four choreographers and a music director who have been presenting their works in Michigan, New York City, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Greece, France, India, and Costa Rica for the past decade. Dedicated to the collaborative process in performance, the company members all joined the U-M dance faculty after extensive professional careers as dancers/choreographers in New York City.
Performances on the program:
Choreographer Gay Delanghe will premiere a new work to the music of 20th-century Polish composer Henry Gorecki. The final movement of Quasis una Fantasia, String Quartet No. 2, Op. 64 (1990-91), recorded by the Kronos Quartet, serves as inspiration for a quartet of dancers composed of David Genson, Amanda Stanger, Scott Read and Terry Wilson. The dance takes its title from the composer’s title, Sempre Con Grand Passione.
Choreographer Jessica Fogel will present two works. The first, Mondrian Boogie, has been commissioned by the School of Art for a symposium and an exhibit of Piet Mondrian’s New York studio. Mondrian, a leading 20th-century abstract painter, is known for his rigorously energized and pristine paintings that emphasize relationships between horizontal and vertical lines and rectangles. The dance features dancers Kelly Crandall, William Crowley, Tara Munger, Darby Wilde and Josef Woodson. The company’s music director, Stephen Rush, is composing a new score and will also be the pianist for the work. Set design is by David Cruz.
Fogel also will present her recent work, Save Changes Before Quitting. Choreographed to a striking electronic score by Rush, the work is for 10 dancers and is based on a collage of ideas about the Internet and the computing world. Interested in the Internet as a predominantly verbal space, the choreographer has worked with a list of generic terms describing cyberspace activities as a way of generating movement materials for the dance. Many of these words or phrases are pregnant with verbal and visual puns. In the context of this dance, for example, the human body becomes the “portable software”–something with a soft texture which can be carried through space.
Dancer/choreographer Sandra Torijano-DeYoung and Rush will perform two collaborative works they recently created for solo dancer and piano. The first, Esperanza (Hope) was commissioned by the St. Cecilia Music Society of Grand Rapids in 1993. A commentary on world hunger, poverty and suffering, the work begins with an image of a hungry Somalian mother with her baby and weaves a fabric in motion and sound of mourning, struggle, and finally hope.
The second work they will produce is Testigo (Witness). The two collaborators once again portray inner strength, this time through the eyes of an imprisoned political prisoner. The principal inspiration for the solo dancer’s role was found in Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchu. By using extensive prepared piano techniques and simple set pieces, Rush and Torijano-DeYoung create a rich interior world where global hope and revolution coincide with feelings of loneliness, survival and redemption.
The concert will take place in the Betty Pease Studio Theater, Dance Building (adjacent to the Central Campus Recreation Building). Tickets are $6 for students and senior citizens, $10 general admission. For ticket reservations and further information, call 763-5460.
