Friends of Brockport Dance

Recent Brockport Dance MFA accepts post at University of Southern Mississippi

2008-08-09T14:40:49-04:00

Department of Dance Chair and Graduate Dance Program Director, Darwin Prioleau forward the news that Brockport Dance student Kelly Ferris, who received her MFA from Brockport in Spring 2008, has accepted a position as a full-time Instructor of Dance at the University of Southern Mississippi. The dance program at USM, housed in the Theatre and Dance Department in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, offers a BFA in performance and choreography and a BA in dance education to approximately 70 dance majors. Ferris will teach modern, jazz, choreographic research and dance appreciation.

While in this area, Kelly performed as a member of the BIODANCE company and with the Kista Tucker Dance Company. She also served as the Eastwest Somatics Network treasurer, membership coordinator, and conference chair. Kelly was the Founder/Chair of the Brockport NDEO Student Chapter and was awarded the Elsa Posey Student Scholarship for Organizational Leadership in 2006. Originally from Tennessee, she co-founded and directed Metal Velvet Dance Project in Memphis, Tennessee from 2000 to 2004. Kelly taught at SUNY Brockport as an adjunct professor, and also at the University of Mississippi, the University of Memphis, the Hochstein School of Music and Dance in Rochester, the Center for Arts Education for the Memphis Arts Council, and the Theatre for Youth Program at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis, TN.

Limn Dance Company in residence at SUNY Brockport

2008-07-19T14:19:44-04:00

The Limón Dance Company will be in residence at SUNY College at Brockport again this year form July 21 through August 8, 2008. In addition to the educational activities during the day, the Company there will also be evening activities, including:

Monday, July 21st: Film Showing and Discussion: “Limon: A Life Beyond Words” with Carla Maxwell
Wednesday, July 23rd: Anna Sokolow and José Limón, Colleagues ,Friends and Humanists – join a discussion of these two giants of American Modern Dance with Jim May, Artistic Director of Sokolow Theater Dance Ensemble and Carla Maxwell, Artistic Director of the Limón Dance Company, as they share their experiences working with these seminal artists of the 20th century.
Thursday and Friday, July 24th and 25th: Preview Performances of Anna Sokolow’s riveting masterwork, Rooms, performed by the Limón Dance Company. Discussion to follow the performance.
Monday, July 28th: Introduction to Columbian Folklore #1 masterclass with Daniel Fetecua
Wednesday, July 30 – Introduction to Columbian Folklore #2 masterclass with Daniel Fetecua
Thursday, July 31: Lecture/Performance by Daystar/Rosalie Jones, founder of Daystar: Contemporary Dance Drama of Indian America, which has been acknowledged as a pioneer of “native modern dance”. She will share her experiences of being coached as a choreographer by Mr. Limón, and speak about the developments in “Indigenous contemporary dance” now taking place in Canada, driven by a new generation of Indigenous First Nations peoples. She will conclude her presentation with “The Spirits Dance”, a mime/dance story about the origin of the healing “Jingle Dress” of the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes.
Monday, August 4th: Contemporary Jazz dance masterclass with Ashley Lindsey
Thursday, August 7: The Limón Dance Company, open showing of a new work in progress by Clay Taliaferro.
Friday, August 8th: Final Day at 1:15: a final showing of all repertory classes and composition (no charge).

Unless otherwise noted, all activities at 7pm and with a $15 admission (free for workshop students). All events will be held in Studio 152 of Harwell Hall, unless ventilation requires moving to the Hartman Theater.

The Friends are meeting on July 13th. Please join us!

2008-07-07T08:00:00-04:00

Just another reminder that the first annual meeting of the Friends of Brockport Dance will held on Sunday, July 13, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in the Hartwell Dance Theatre at The College at Brockport. We're hoping for a large turnout of the membership to guide the Board as we chart a course for next year and fill some vacancies on the Board and its Officers. Please try to attend!

The meeting will begin with a brief lecture demonstration on the art of choreography, with dancers performing an excerpt of Bill Evans' choreography, after which Bill will talk about his process and answer questions. Next, Dance Department Chair Dr. Darwin Prioleau will speak to the "State of the Department", describing briefly what has happened over the past academic year and what we are planning for next year. We'll then move into the meeting itself, at which we hope to elect new officers as needed and bring several new people onto the Board, adopt necessary changes to the organizations bylaws, and handle any other business. If you would like to serve on the FOBD Board or as an officer, or know someone else who could fill those roles and bring a passion for dance and helping student artists meet their potential, then contact the FOBD through this site.

We encourage you to come out and join us for an exciting program and to hear about the plans we have for the 2008-2009 season. If you're not yet a member of the Friends of Brockport Dance, send us an email through the site so we can get you on board in time for the meeting.

Bill Evans & Friends to dance on July 11th

2008-07-06T13:50:29-04:00

Internationally-renowned choreographer and dancer, Bill Evans, who is a visiting professor/guest artist in the Department of Dance at SUNY College at Brockport, will be giving a concert of contemporary dance by Rochester-area professional dancers in Bill Evans & Friends, which will be performed in Hartwell Hall, Kenyon Street, Brockport, New York, on Friday, July 11, at 8:00 p.m.

The diverse program of dance at this concert will culminate a week-long Dancers Intensive Workshop, and include new and reconstructed work by Evans and other leading western New York professional choreographers—Don Halquist, Suzanne Oliver, Heather Roffe, Kista Tucker and Anne Harris Wilcox. Performers include some of the most skilled and expressive contemporary dance artists in western New York. The featured work of the program will be a revival of Hard Times, choreographed under a choreographic fellowship awarded to Bill Evans by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973. It is one of the works that launched his international career as a choreographer and was performed throughout the country in numerous national tours by the Bill Evans Dance Company between 1975 and 1983. The work takes its title from a depression-era ballad of the same name, one of a suite of five traditional songs recorded by the Deseret String Band to which the work is performed. This modern dance work graphically depicts the struggles and triumphs of the impoverished and disenfranchised. It is compelling in its powerful physicality and usually ignites controversy among audience members during intermission discussions. It will be performed by Anne Harris Wilcox, Don Halquist and Jenny Showalter. Other works that will be performed include:

Bohemian Stroll, a fun and spirit-lifting piece for 10 dancers by Kista Tucker, artistic director of Kista Tucker, Inc.;
Let’s Go Out to Lunch, a duet choreographed by Anne Harris Wilcox, artistic director of the non-profit dance company, Present Tense Dance, and inspired by Patricia Wilcox’s book A Public and Private Hearth;
Swan Song, a solo that explores loss, mourning, memory and facing the unknown, choreographed and performed by College of Brockport dance faculty artist, Suzanne Oliver;
Excerpts from SIDE(S), a series of vignettes, brief tastes of various facets of life, from paranoia to playfulness, and acts that befriend vs. acts that destroy, by Heather Roffe, adjunct faculty artist at both Brockport and Hobart William Smith;
Kilter, by Brockport faculty artist and 18-year member of the Bill Evans Dance Company, Don Halquist, a virtuosic solo in which the dancer reveals powerful three-dimensional spatial pulls; and
Three Preludes, a solo fusing rhythm tap dance and modern dance to music by George Gershwin, choreographed and performed by Bill Evans.

Tickets will be available only at the door, beginning at 7:00 p.m. $10 general, $6 students, $20 patrons. Email billevansdance@hotmail.com for more information.

Somadances Comes to Hartwell Dance Theatre

2008-06-18T19:42:46-04:00

On June 21, 2008, FOBD Faculty Liaison/Visiting Professor/Guest Artist Bill Evans and Professor Emeritus Sondra Fraleigh will host Somadances, a performance presented as part of the international conference, "Invention-in: Dance, Somatics, and Movement Analysis." The performance will begin at 8:00 p.m. in Hartwell Dance Theater at SUNY Brockport. Admission for non-conference participants is $5 at the door.

Invention-in will be held at SUNY Brockport on June 20-22, 2008. In addition, SUNY Brockport Department of Dance faculty members Anne Burnidge, Suzanne Oliver and Kelly Ferris will be presenting/conducting workshops at the conference.

Also, after the close of the Invention-in conference, Professor Fraleigh will conduct a week-long (June 23-July 1) somatics certification workshop at SUNY Brockport. See http://www.eastwestsomatics.com for additional information.

2008 Bill Evans-Brockport Dancers' Intensive

2008-06-02T19:45:51-04:00

Bill Evans and SUNY Brockport Department of Dance are hosting a Dancers Intensive for gigh-intermediate and advanced contemporary dancers from July 7 to 11, 2008, at the State University of New York College at Brockport. Faculty will include Bill Evans, Don Halquist and Suzanne Oliver.

Bill Evans and Don Halquist have devoted much of their professional lives to developing educational methods and materials that allow dancers of all ages to become healthier, more articulate, more expressive and more well-rounded artists and human beings. The Bill Evans Dancers’ Intensive provides a learning environment that generates trust, self-esteem, peer support and physical, mental and spiritual regeneration. Overarching themes and underlying concepts unify all courses, so that students have multiple opportunities each day to experience transformative ideas in different dance and movement forms, allowing them to make quantum leaps of understanding and embodiment in a short time. Participants develop relationships with peers that provide networks of support throughout the year.

Brockport is a charming Victorian village located on the historic Erie Canal, 20 minutes from the Rochester International Airport. The park-like College campus, the world-class dance studios, and the genuine warmth of the faculty and returning participants all contribute positively to the regenerative qualities of the total experience for participants in this unique intensive workshop.

The daily schedule will include:

8:30 – 10:00, Bartenieff Fundamentals as Preparation for Dance Technique, Bill Evans
10:15 – noon, The Bill Evans Method/Laban-Based Modern Dance Technique, Bill Evans/Don Halquist
1:30 – 2:30, Laban-Based Dance Improvisation, Bill Evans
2:45 – 4:45, Evans Modern Dance Repertory, Don Halquist
6:45 – 8:15 (Monday – Thursday), Alexander Technique Lab, Suzanne Oliver
7:30 – 9:30 (Friday, July 11), an informal performance by faculty and invited artists, followed by a workshop party

To register for the Intensive there is a non-refundable registration deposit of $50. You can attend the entire workshop for $300, with options for morning courses only for $200, morning and afternoon courses for $275, and evening course and performance for only $75. This workshop can also be taken for three graduate or undergraduate credits. In enrolling, tuition payment for three credits would be required in addition to the non-refundable registration deposit of $50. Other fees shown above would be waived. Moderately-priced housing will be available in a College at Brockport Residence Hall. For more information, email Bill Evans.

Doug Varone & Dancers performs at Brockport during 3-week residency

2008-05-31T16:41:51-04:00

During a three-week residency, Doug Varone and Dancers will be performing on Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 7:30 pm at The College at Brockport’s Hartwell Dance Theater on the College’s campus. Three works from the the group's repertoire will be shown: “Victorious,” “Lux” and “Polonaise.” Of “Victorious,” The New York Times said, “Both the choreography and the score for ‘Victorious’ represent the two creators in a winter mindset ... They come into relative, then perfect, melodic harmony and pull away again continually.” Check out their MySpace page as well.

Tickets for this performance are $20 for general public, $10 for seniors and students. They are available by phone at (585) 395-ARTS or at the Tower Fine Arts Center Box Office, 180 Holley Street, Brockport, from Monday, June 2–7, from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Remaining tickets may also be available at the Box Office in Hartwell Hall one hour prior to the performance.

In addition to the ticketed performance on June 7th, the Doug Varone company will hold several other evening events, under the banner “Behind the Performance,” which is a look into the dance making process and choreography of Doug Varone. All of the following showings are free and open to the public and take place in the Rose L. Strasser Studio in Hartwell Hall at 7:30 pm. No reservations are necessary. The extra events are as follows (unfortunately, we've missed a couple from last week):

Monday, June 2nd: Exploring Repertory II
Tuesday, June 10th: Open Rehearsal
Friday, June 13th: Work-In-Progress Showing

Annual meeting of the Friends of Brockport Dance

2008-05-25T20:19:33-04:00

It's been awhile since we have posted, but this is an important one, so please read on. The first annual meeting of the Friends of Brockport Dance organization will held on Sunday, July 13, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in the Hartwell Dance Theatre at The College at Brockport. We're letting you all know early to get it in your schedules as we're hoping for a large turnout of the membership to guide the Board as we chart a course for next year and fill some vacancies on the Board and its Officers. Put it on your calendar!

The meeting will begin with a brief, entertaining lecture demonstration on the art of choreography. Dancers will perform an excerpt of Bill Evans' choreography, after which Bill will talk about his process and answer questions. It is likely that one of our wonderful MFA candidates, Lyndsey Vader, will also be available to show part of her new work and discuss it. Next, Dance Department Chair Dr. Darwin Prioleau will speak to the "State of the Department" message, describing briefly what has happened over the past academic year and what we are planning for next year. By then we hope to have the second issue of the Friends of Brockport Dance Newsletter out, so many of our membership should know a lot about the past year already. We'll then move into the meeting itself, at which we hope to elect a new Vice President and bring several new people onto the Board, adopt necessary changes to the organizations bylaws, and handle any other business. If you would like to serve on the FOBD Board or as Vice President, or know someone else who could fill those roles and bring a passion for dance and helping student artists meet their potential, then contact the FOBD through this site.

Watch here and in your mail for a letter of invitation. We encourage you to come out and join us for an exciting program and to hear about the plans we have for the 2008-2009 season. If you're not yet a member of the Friends of Brockport Dance, send us an email through the site so we can get you on Board in time for the meeting.

Westward Ho (from Rochester, that is...not from Brockport): Garth Fagan Dance's Spring Season coming May 2-3

2008-04-26T18:19:09-04:00

Garth Fagan Dance is again presenting a Spring Season on the West Side. As you may remember, last year's Spring Season was the first time I'd seen Garth Fagan Dance perform and I was in awe of their artistry.

There will only be three performances—May 2nd at 8:00 pm and May 3rd at 2:00 and 8:00 pm. The performances are again being presented at the Athena Performing Arts Center, 800 Long Pond Rd, Rochester, NY 14612. Tickets are $30 adult and $20 seniors and students ($35/$25 at the door), and are available at all Wegmans "That's T.H.E. Ticket" locations up to three hours prior to curtain. The matinée on May 3rd features performance by Greece Athena Show Choir students and Garth Fagan Dance School students. If you pre-purchase you can get one child in free for the price of one ticket on the May 3rd 2:00 pm performance.

If you go and would like to write a review, contact me through this site and we'll get your thoughts published.

Come see, hear and FEEL Sankofa! African dance at its best

2008-04-18T21:21:46-04:00

With color, rhythm and energy, the Sankofa African Dance and Drum Ensemble will be exploding onto the the stage at Hartwell Dance Theater in performances, beginning Thursday, April 24th through Saturday, April 25th at 7:30 pm. There is also a matinee performance on Sunday, April 27th at 2 pm. Hartwell Dance Theater is located in Hartwell Hall, Kenyon Street, on the campus of The College at Brockport, State University of New York.

This year, Sankofa has Habib Iddrisu as the guest artist. Iddrisu is currently completing his doctorate at Northwestern University. His contributions to the concert include:

“The Village of Batiti,” a choreographic vision of tribal celebrations and rituals in a West African village.
“Gumboot Dance” strives to see the aesthetic qualities in what was once the only means of communication amongst those forced to toil in South African mines. Gumboots were the rubber overshoes worn by the miners, in which they would embed links of chain or discarded bottlecaps, with which they would tap out messages—or just their proximity to one another—in the stifling, pitch-black mines where they were forbidden to speak.
“Fumè Fumè” recreates a religious celebration of life amongst the Ga sect, found in southern Ghana.

Iddrisu’s time on the Brockport campus, serving as an adjunct during the fall 2007 semester, exceeded his expectations. “I had heard of the Sankofa program, and knew it was one of very few programs of its type on a college campus, but when I got here, I felt lucky to be a part of it.” When he returned to the campus for additional rehearsals, he found that the “support and enthusiasm was even greater than when I was teaching in the fall.” Visiting professor/guest artist Bill Evans has choreographed “Nubia,” along with his dancers. Reflecting on the piece, Evans said that “as I began to work on this piece, I shared a rhythmic sound and movement language I had generated with the dancers, and asked each of them to participate in creating the dance. In handing these sounds over to them, I drew upon my knowledge of rhythm tap and my studies with the great African-American choreographer Donald McKayle, who was strongly influenced by the dances of Caribbean cultures. He fused these influences with mainstream modern dance techniques to create a fluid, grounded and rhythmic style of contemporary dance.”

The capstone of the concert is, as always, “Ijexa,” which brilliantly weaves the chanting, drumming and dancing that make a Sankofa concert what it is. The boisterous finale ensures that cultures that may be unfamiliar to Brockport audiences are honored. Clyde Alafiju Morgan, associate professor and artistic director of Sankofa, feels that “without ‘Ijexa,’ without ‘Sankofa’—which literally means that there is no going forward without looking past—without these things, we would have no idea how we got to where we are today, or how we can move on to tomorrow.”

Links to you. . . .

2008-04-10T08:00:00-04:00

I added a number of links to the left panel Dance Sites & Media links a long time ago, but many of them never made it live onto the site as I had not configured the display right. They are there now, in addition to a new one Dance Help, which caused me to discover my earlier error. Hope you find these "new" resources helpful.

The Raw and the Cooked: Brockport Dance grad students hold a tasting at the University of Rochester

2008-04-07T20:04:24-04:00

Graduate students candidates for MFAs from SUNY Brockport’s Department of Dance will be presenting a selection of their "raw and cooked" choreographic works at the University of Rochester on Thursday, April 17, 2008. The evening will include an array of dances created both in and outside of the graduate choreography class; some have been previously performed, other are still works in progress as well as a discussion with the choreographers on the process of creating their work.

The choreographers highlighted are currently exploring various compositional devices under the artistic direction of Assistant Professor of Dance Maura Keefe and include Heather Acomb, Madia Cooper, Kathy Diehl, Kristi Faulkner, Kirstin Howard, Crystal Malone, Melinda Planey, Rebecca Sproul and Lyndsey Vader. Several of the Brockport students attended a lecture/demonstration at the UofR last month by guest artist Sean Curran. The enthusiastic audience and great performance space sparked an interest in sharing more dance with students in the University of Rochester's Program of Movement & Dance and the University of Rochester community. It also gives the wider Rochester community an opportunity to see the talent coming out of the SUNY Brockport Department of Dance firsthand.

The performance will be held at 7:45 pm in the Dance Studio in Spurrier Hall at the University of Rochester. The event is free and open to the public. For additional information, contact either Maura Keefe or Lyndsey Vader at lvade1 AT brockport DOT edu.

Dance/Hartwell returns April 3-5 to showcase new Brockport choreography

2008-03-26T20:09:37-04:00

It's time again for DANCE/Hartwell, presented by the Department of Dance on April 3rd-5th, featuring three exciting new choreographic works by Molly Christie, Cynthia Hermann, and Mark Schmidt—who are each candidates for a Master of Fine Arts degree in dance. The "students have crafted an impressive display of new choreography, brought to life by the most skilled and expressive young artists, from one of the country’s leading departments of dance,” notes Artistic Director and Assistant Professor of Dance at Brockport, Suzanne Oliver. Maura Keefe, assistant professor of dance and graduate program coordinator is Artistic Director responsibilities with Oliver for Dance/Hartwell.

The featured MFA works will include two dances by Mark Schmidt exploring a physical vocabulary inspired by the cultural practices and movement qualities found in the New York underground House dance scene. Originating in Chicago and New York, House is a musical genre and dance style with roots in African-American vernacular jazz-tap. “Socially,” Schmidt observed, “this dance form is an affirmation and celebration of cultural marginality through communal dancing.” The diverse cast celebrates, explores, recreates, and reinvents the rituals and social practices of house dance culture on the concert stage.

Molly Christie’s piece will explore the embodiment and transformation of encoded ritual movement and rhythmic languages from two sacred dance and music traditions. The traditional works are transformed for the concert dance stage. An original musical score by Clement Joseph, weaving both modern and traditional musical languages and instrumentation, has been commissioned to accompany the piece.

Cynthia Hermann will be working with two movements from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, the Allegretto and the Allegro Con Brio. “Within my choreography,” said Hermann, “I hope to bring to life the energy and emotion that I feel when I listen to these two pieces of music. Beethoven's music is sophisticated and complex so my goal for the work is to choreograph two pieces that dance with the music rather than to it.”

The remaining dances in the concert will include choreography selected in an adjudicated process open to all graduate and undergraduate dance students. We hope you come out for a wonderful evening of dance!

Performances are being Thursday–Saturday, April 3–5, at 7:30 pm, Hartwell Dance Theater, Kenyon Street. Tickets for DANCE/Hartwell are $12 general/$10 seniors/$8 students and are available at the Tower Fine Arts Box Office on Holley Street. For more information, call (585)395-ARTS.

FOBD Newsletter: Bill Evans's Creative Activities

2008-03-14T08:00:00-04:00

We continue (and actually finish) the republication of the Friends of Brockport Dance newsletter, which was published in January with these notes by Visiting Professor and Guest Artist Bill Evans on his creative activities during his recent leave:

During the 10 weeks during which I was off-campus on my 2/3 semester unpaid leave, I was able to accomplish the following:

Full-length solo performances at: Skidmore College (Reminiscences of a Dancing Man), Cornish College of the Arts (rhythm tap improvisations accompanied by Joe LaBarbera), and Allegheny College (rhythm tap choreography and improvisation, accompanied by Allegheny College jazz musicians); full-length duet performance with Adrienne Wilson at Nazareth College, (Dancin’ through the History of Jazz, produced by David Perlman, narrated by Michael Lasser, accompanied by seven Rochester area jazz musicians); four duet performances of my work Yes, Indeed! with Mark Santillano, at Mercyhurst College; performance of my solo Three Preludes for the Texas Association of Dance, Galveston
Half-day seminars/lecture-demonstrations at: On the Boards Center for Contemporary Performing Arts in Seattle (The Legacy of Bill Evans) and at the Firehouse Performing Arts Center in Bellingham, WA (The Bill Evans Effect)
Two-day workshop in Evans Modern Dance Technique, Bartenieff Fundamentals and Laban Movement Analysis for the Arizona Dance Education Organization in Phoenix
Teaching residencies at: Skidmore College (three days), Cornish College (three weeks), Anne Green Gilbert’s Creative Dance Center (two classes), Allegheny College (two classes), Mercyhurst College (two weeks), San Jacinto College (three days), Texas Association of Dance (two classes), Calvert High School, southern Maryland (one class)
Restaging of choreographic works at Cornish College of the Arts (30-minute Mixin’ It Up, with support of National Endowment for the Arts); Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA (Passionsong and Yes, Indeed!)
Choreography of new works for: Dance Gallery, Bellingham, WA (Perhaps for the Last Time); Anne Green Gilbert’s Kaleidoscope Dancers, Seattle, WA (Jamaican Me Happy); Southern Maryland Dance Collective, Calvert County (Home); Ohio Northern University, Ada (Puttin’ Down the Fog)
Keynote address for Texas Association of Dance, Galveston

I really missed teaching our wonderful Brockport dance majors during the fall semester, but I was able to mentor a group of students for their performances of my choreography in our DANSCORE concerts, and I was also able to act as artistic director of DANSCORE, serve as mentor to our ACDFA Conference coordinators, and continue to act as departmental liaison to FOBD. In November, a new book edited by Renata Celichowska, Seven Statements of Survival: Conversations with Dance Professionals, was published by Dance and Movement Press in New York City. It includes an extensive interview with, and several photographs of, me. Others subjects are Carolyn Carlson, Garth Fagan, Deborah Jowitt, Madeleine Nichols, Andrea Synder and Joanne Keal’inohomoku.

FOBD Newsletter: Professor Suarez Takes A Sabbatical

2008-03-11T08:00:00-04:00

We continue the ongoing republication of the FOBD Newsletter originally published in January. The following are some notes by Associate Professor and MA Graduate Dance Program Advisor Juanita Suarez about her upcoming sabbatical:

Juanita Suarez will be serving her sabbatical spring semester 2008 and plans to teach at a private school in China, Guang Ya School, the first private school to ever open in China. She will create a dance drama based on the survival story of the Giant Panda and set the work on students of the Guang Ya School as well as on a talented young actor by the name of Xiong Liang Chao. The work will be presented for the director and administrative personnel of the Wolong Natural Reserve for the Giant Panda in Wolong China. VIPs engaged with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing will also be attending this performance.