This year’s Department of Dance Faculty Concert will be a rich, varied program that features diverse dance techniques, esteemed guest performers, multimedia presentation and live music.
For the performances, which take place Friday and Saturday, Sept. 15-16, in the Belk Theater in Robinson Hall, the dance faculty will welcome colleagues from the UNC Charlotte departments of Music and Art, as well as members of the local dance and music communities and guest artists that include current and former principal dancers from the Martha Graham and José Limόn Dance Companies.
The program will open with a multimedia presentation funded through a grant from the college’s Digital Arts Center. Conceived and produced by Assistant Professor of Music Jessica Lindsey, Assistant Professor of Art Erik Waterkotte and Music Director for Dance Shamou, “With Signs Following” is a series of improvisational vignettes integrating music, video and movement.
Visiting dance professor Kaustavi Sarkar will perform “Mahari Meenadanda: ‘She is a Bad Dancer,’” an original work in the Indian classical dance style of Odissi. She will be accompanied by sitarist Hans Utter, an ethnomusicologist and Indian music specialist.
Accompanied by Brazilian percussionist Luciano Xavier, Assistant Professor of Dance Tamara Williams will perform “I.RUN.mole,” a contemporary work that she has choreographed using traditional Afro-Brazilian movement vocabulary.
Four works choreographed to new music by local composers make up the second half of the program. Three of the pieces were created in partnership with the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in response to works in the museum’s collection. Accompanied by the Bechtler Ensemble, with conductor Alan Yamamoto, these works will be choreographed and performed by Movement Migration, a new dance collective led by UNC Charlotte Associate Professor Kim Jones. Dancers include Associate Professor E.E Balcos; local dancers Amy Claugus, Jacque White and Dominique Willis; and current Martha Graham principal dancer Abdiel Jacobson, former Graham principal Masha Dashkina Maddux and former José Limόn principal Pablo Francisco Ruvalcaba.
The program ends with “Sacrum Terram,” choreographed by E.E. Balcos to music by Professor of Music John Allemeier and danced by Tamara Williams and Johnson C. Smith University professor Jaclyn O’Toole. The most recent in a series of works that Allemeier and Balcos have created collaboratively, “Sacrum Terram” is scored for a quintet that includes UNC Charlotte music faculty Mira Frisch (cello), Jessica Lindsey (clarinet) and Elizabeth Sullivan (oboe), with guests Anna Cromwell (violin) and Lisa Nelson (viola).
Performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $18, $12 for UNC Charlotte faculty and staff, $10 for seniors and $8 for all students.