Friends of Brockport Dance

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

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.

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

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.

Brockport grad Elizabeth Streb S.L.A.M.s into Rochester to give a talk at RIT

Sorry about the late notice due to the holidays, but we wanted to let you know that Elizabeth Streb, the award-winning artistic director of the Streb Extreme Dance Company will be presenting a talk on the Limitless Imagination of the Muscles & the Bones: Action in Time & Space on Monday, January 7th from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at RIT's Carlson Auditorium (Bldg. #76).

There is a Brockport connection here. Ms. Streb holds a B.S. in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport and also received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Brockport. She has been a dancer and choreographer for the past thirty years, and received a MacArthur Genius grant in 1997 as well as many other awards. Streb is inspired by velocity, gravity, impact and danger, calling her Brooklyn studio "S.L.A.M." (Streb Laboratory for Action Mechanics) and her dancers "action engineers." As set out in her bio, "Elizabeth Streb's trademark risky choreography combines the visceral impact of extreme sports with the poetry and split-second timing of dance, opening new frontiers of daring and beauty against the powerful force of gravity."  There are links to much more information on Streb here on her ArtandCulture.com profile.

Garth Fagan Dance brings Edge/Joy to Rochester area

Garth Fagan, distinguished professor emeritus of the Brockport Department of Dance is bringing his outstanding dancers back to perform in the Rochester area for a fall program at Nazareth College. Garth Fagan Dance will be performing selections from their repertoire and a challenging new work, Edge/Joy, with music composed by the Eastman School of Music's Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. Check out the Democrat and Chronicle's profile by Anna Reguero in today's paper for more (do so soon as the link will only be available for a short time).

Performances will be at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 27th; 8 p.m. on Wednesday, November 28th through Friday, November 30th; at 2 and 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 1st; and at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 2nd. Tickets cost from $30 to $40. Check here for information on purchasing tickets or call the Naz box office at (585) 389-2170.

Baroque organ + improvised dance makes for an exciting event at the MAG in Rochester on November 18th!

On Sunday, November 18th, organist Stephen Kennedy will be joined by SUNY Brockport Department of Dance Associate Professor James Hansen to perform an exciting program of organ and improvised dance in the Fountain Court of the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, assisted by nine Brockport dancers. Hansen's busy summer was recently profiled in this blog.

Kennedy is the Director of Music and Organist at Christ Church Rochester. He is also an Instructor of Sacred Music at the Eastman School of Music, Director of Chapel Music and Instructor in Liturgical Music at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary, Instructor of Organ for Eastman's Community Education Division and Instructor of Piano at Nazareth College, and as director of the Christ Church Schola Cantorum, a vocal ensemble he founded in 1997 for the purpose of singing the weekly Office of Compline at Christ Church.

Tickets for the performance are $12 (students $8) and will be available at the door. [Added 11/14:  A friend has pointed out that there is something missing from this post--the time. The performance will take place from 5:30-7:30.  Sorry!]

West Side Story . . .Garth Fagan Dance Spring season with Billy Bang

OK, as you may know or not, the humble writer of this blog not a dancer (if you saw a picture, there'd be NO doubt).  It's one reason I rarely use the first person in a post; I'm just reporting the facts, ma'am (and sir).  I came to be writing this blog as a way to help out the Friends of Brockport Dance and the Dance Program at SUNY Brockport, as I know the principals of each and supported the goals of the Friends. However, I recently realized that, somehow, after living in Rochester since 2002, I had managed not to see Garth Fagan's work other than taking my wife Dianna to see the Lion King when it was at the Auditorium Theater. As the writer of a dance blog, the weight of that omission became heavier since Garth Fagan Dance is such a treasure in Rochester's many artists. When they announced the Spring Season it gave me the chance I was looking for and I went for it. The fact that it had a tie in to jazz with the Billy Bang Septet providing live music for a suite of dances made it a must see for me (if you don't know, I also do a blog about live jazz here in Rochester).  When the group performs in the Rochester area it often is at Nazareth College on the east side of the city, but this first Spring program in a number of years was done on the west side in conjunction with a residency at the Greece Athena Center for Performing Arts.

I really haven't done this before in this blog, but these performances have been percolating in my brain since Saturday and I need to express.  Damn!  Eloquent, maybe not, but it expresses how I felt while watching the performances.  One after another I sat there, drinking in the movement and the sound. Best of Brockport Dance had a similar effect on me, but perhaps the newness of seeing Fagan's dance choreography for the first time (at least without the animal costumes) brought it closer to the surface. I love the way that Garth Fagan layers different cultural and dance references and traditions in his choreography, with movements from African, Afro-Caribbean dance interspersed with ballet, modern dance, and even ballroom.  The dances ranged across the history of the Garth Fagan Dance group, which was founded in 1978, and showed the broad and deep talent of the dancers in his ensemble.

Of course, I had a special place reserved for the tryptich of dances that the dancers performed with the Billy Bang Septet. I've seen Bang perform a few times here in Rochester (see here for the most recent on my jazz blog) and have been transfixed by the mastery that he and his bandmates show of their instruments and deep emotion that comes out of his playing as he seeks to work through his Vietnam War demons or swings into another solo.  A new and wonderful layer was added to the music I had heard performed before as movement was added; I couldn't see Billy and his band (they were in the pit), only the dancers.

As I'm sure many of my Brockport readers know, Garth is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at SUNY and taught at Brockport for over 30 years.  But the connections to Brockport Dance are much more than that. Of his current company, the following are former students in the Dance Program at Brockport: Nicolette Depass, Kevin Moore, and Todd Vanslambrouck.  It is heartening to see the results of this thing we are supporting in the movement of these dancers.

Best of Brockport Dance . . . What Can We Say? Wow!

From the spiritually exuberant opening Ijexa, performed by the Sankofa African Dance Ensemble, to the quiet poignancy of SUNY Brockport Assistant Professor James Hansen's Fade to Snow and Gray, to the fun finale Benny-B-Good choreographed by Dr. Darwin Prioleau, Chair of the SUNY Brockport Dance Department, the Best of Brockport Dance was a great success!  The performances by the students (and faculty) were outstanding! The event, held April 14th in the historic performance hall at Hochstein Music School in downtown Rochester, energized the Brockport Dance faculty and founding members of the Friends of Brockport Dance in moving forward with an important project—building a scholarship funds for newly admitted students in the Brockport Dance programs.

Over 250 attended the performance, with 100 also attending the pre-performance reception that served as the inaugural event for the Friends of Brockport Dance. According to Professor Hansen, "there was a wonderful sense of celebration that existed in both the reception and performance."  In addition to celebrating dance, the purpose behind the Best of Brockport Dance was to raise money for scholarships for talented new students. As Dr. Prioleau noted, SUNY Brockport dance faculty are going out and seeking to recruit dancers from all across the country and are having some success. However, the SUNY Brockport Dance program needs scholarship support to attract the best young dancers and give them the resources to focus on mastering their art.  Hansen believes that the enthusiasm expressed by the audience during this event will continue to provide a foundation on which to build and will impact fund raising efforts by the Friends for scholarships.

The Best of Brockport Dance also brought the outstanding dancers and faculty of SUNY Brockport into the heart of the Rochester community.  As SUNY Visiting Professor and Guest Artist Bill Evans put it:

The Best of Brockport Dance concert was a great first step in establishing a Rochester presence for our faculty and student dance artists.  I hope that we can become integrated with and relevant to the artistic life of greater Rochester on many levels . . . [and] ask all those who attended Best of Brockport Dance to help spread the word to their friends and associates.

During the reception, Dr. John R Halstead, President of SUNY Brockport spoke about how to create a recipe for a Best of Brockport Dance.  He said the ingredients include honoring one of your own, the late beloved faculty member Santo Giglio, to whom the entire performance was dedicated.  Eleven of his family members were present, along with his widow Mary Ann (pictured here with Dr. Halstead), who announced an award in his name for choreography.  To that you add a dynamic chair for the Department in Dr. Darwin Prioleau, mix in outstanding faculty like Bill Evans, James Hansen and others and, of course, the students.  The dish was served well done.

This blog, in addition to serving as the website of Friends of Brockport Dance, is another part of SUNY Brockport Dance's efforts to build bridges and connect with the Rochester community. By highlighting dance throughout the Rochester and Western New York area through this blog, the Friends and Brockport's Dance faculty hope to build the community of dance and a wider audience for an art form that so naturally complements the musical arts that are such a foundation of the Rochester community.

I apologize for the delay in this post on the Best of Brockport Dance performance.  Chalk it up to busy lives and the end of the academic year. In addition to those included in this post from the reception, we hope to share some pictures of the performances themselves in the coming weeks. We'll probably post them individually with information about the performances and dancers.

Best of Brockport Dance . . . Your chance to sound off!

While we assemble a longer piece on the Best of Brockport Dance that occurred last weekend, we're writing this post to encourage readers to express their thoughts and comments.  Just click on Comments link immediately below this post and leave your thoughts on the event and the performances, the Friends reception and anything else that comes to mind.  If you'd prefer, you can click on the link to send an email and we'll add your comments.

Garth Fagan Dance Spring Season Coming in May!

Garth Fagan Dance is doing a Spring season May 4th and 5th here in Rochester, with live music by the Billy Bang Sextet, who has wowed audiences (and this writer) at the Rochester International Jazz Festival and other venues in Rochester). There will only be 3 performances.  The venue will be the Athena Performing Arts Center, 800 Long Pond Road, Rochester.  Tickets are available at all Wegmans "That's T.H.E. Ticket" locations.  Come out to see the work of a true Rochester gem!

City Newspaper's take on the Best of Brockport Dance

There's an article about the Best of Brockport Dance on Saturday in the City Newspaper.  Although it has received a lot coverage in this blog, there are some additional insights to be found there, including the following illumination of the one of the reasons Hochstein was selected as the venue:

The choice to perform Best of Brockport in a downtown Rochester theater rather than on campus was a deliberate one, according to Evans. "We want to enter the consciousness of the dance-going public," he says. "This concert will show the scope of what is going on at Brockport."

Do you have your tickets yet . . . .?

So...do you?  In addition to the wonderful program of dance that will be taking place at the Hochstein this weekend, you can also join the Friends of Brockport Dance at a reception prior to the program to help us launch the group's fund for scholarships for new students in the Dance Program at SUNY Brockport.  Hope you can join us! Call 585.395.2153 for tickets or more information or visit the Dance Program's website.

Come out to Best of Brockport Dance . . . Supporting new Brockport dance students supports dance in Rochester

There are a lot of reasons to come out to the Best of Brockport Dance on April 14th and support the Dance Program at SUNY Brockport. The program has a world renowned faculty. One of the most broadly based dance programs in the country, it serves almost 100 undergraduate dance majors, 25-30 full-time graduate students, and about 800 other students each year. Brockport dance alumni are performing in major dance companies and teaching at universities, public schools and private studios across the country and in the local area.  To continue this proud tradition, the program needs to attract and retain the best students.  The Best of Brockport Dance event will feature the best work emerging from of the Department of Dance, and proceeds from this event will help fund freshman scholarships.  As Darwin Prioleau, chair and graduate program director explains:

We are very proud of the strides the dance program has been making during the last few years. Through active recruitment, the Brockport faculty are attracting some of the most talented prospective students in the country. Our goal is to raise money for scholarships, so financial constraints don’t keep any talented young person who wants to come to Brockport from doing so. . . .

Another reason for this event is to the bridge the gap between Rochester and Brockport. It is important for the residents of Rochester know about some of the wonderful things that are happening at Brockport in the arts which is only 25 minutes away. . . .The arts contribute to economic growth of a city by attracting the best and the brightest in every field. Rochester has the potential to be considered a city where dance not only exists but flourishes. This could only be a win-win situation for us all.

Friends of Brockport Dance was organized to help the Program raise funds for these scholarships.  We hope you join us in coming out to the Best of Brockport Dance and support the arts and the dance arts in the Rochester area. Tickets to the Best of Brockport are $35. Brockport student tickets are $8 (there is a 2-ticket limit for student tickets, per order). With an additional donation of $15 per person, you are invited to join the faculty, dancers and others at a pre-concert reception at 6:30 pm.  Call 585.395.2153 for more information or visit the Dance Program's website, or download a PDF copy of the "invitation" here.

It bears repeating . . . The Best of Brockport Dance is coming April 14th!

As reported in January with a "Save the Date" post, The Best of Brockport Dance, a major event for the Dance Program at the State University of New York College at Brockport and for the Friends of Brockport Dance will be kicking off at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 14th, at the Hochstein School of Music and Dance at 50 North Plymouth Avenue in Rochester, NY. This concert, a fund-raiser for scholarships for incoming freshmen, is part of the SUNY Brockport Department of Dance's ongoing mission to reach out to the greater Rochester community.

Among the exciting program of dance at the Best of Brockport Dance will be the following performances:

• Fade to Snow and Gray by faculty member James Hansen.  This dance premiered at the prestigious Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival in 2005 and was performed at the Kennedy Center for the  National American College Dance Festival Association in 2006.  Reviewed by the New York Times in 2006 during the opening night of the International Dance Festival in N.Y.C., it was called a "thoughtful meditation on group dynamics".
• Calcio Garden by faculty member Eddie Murphy. The newest work by this international Irish step dance performer and choreographer.
• Suite Rhythm by visiting faculty member Bill Evans. This dance was performed at the Elliott Spitzer Inauguration 2007 (and was featured in a previous post).
• Where is the Line?—Adjudicated into the regional American college dance festival association Gala Concert in Columbus, Ohio in 2006
• One More for the Road—The entire concert is dedicated to the late Santo Giglio. This piece is one of Giglio's final dances, which will be performed by Brockport alumnus Chris Walker as a tribute to Giglio's artistry and commitment to students.

Tickets to the Best of Brockport are $35. Brockport student tickets are $8 (there is a 2-ticket limit for student tickets, per order). With an additional donation of $15 per person, you are invited to join the faculty, dancers and others at a pre-concert reception at 6:30 pm.  Call 585.395.2153 for more information or visit the Dance Program's website.

SOTA Dance Students Dig Taye Diggs

The Rochester Public School system's School of the Arts will be presenting their 2007 Dance Concert Next weekend, March 9-11, in the Main Stage Theater.  The highlight this year will be the presentation of the work Agnus Dei, choreographed by actor/dancer Taye Diggs and his fellow SOTA graduate Andrew Palermo. The two are artistic directors of the NYC dance company dre.dance, which premiered last year in Manhattan’s Ailey Citigroup Theater and will be offered later this month at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, where the dre.dance company is housed. Diggs and Palermo came to Rochester twice in January to work with the SOTA systems.

SOTA’s Dance Concert 2007 will include dances by students and faculty members in a variety of dance styles. Shows are at the School of the Arts Main Stage Theater, 45 Prince St., begin at March 9 and 10 at 7 p.m., and March 11th at 5 p.m. Reserved tickets are $9, $7 for students and seniors. You can call 585.324.3535 for more information.

Philadanco Comes to Rochester

Philadanco! (or The Philadelphia Dance Company) will be performing at the Nazareth College Arts Center on Friday, January 26, 8 p.m. Founded by Joan Myers Brown in 1970, Philadanco is a modern contemporary dance company touring nationally and internationally. The Company founded the International Conference of Black Dance Companies and International Association of Blacks in Dance,  which address the special needs of the African-American dance community.

The Nazareth College Arts Center is located at 4245 East Avenue, Rochester, N.Y., 14618, Tickets are $40 ($35 for subscribers and group sales of 10 or more). For tickets or more information, you can call the Nazareth College Box Office at (585) 389-2170 or visit Nazareth College's website.

Keep the Date . . . Best of Brockport Dance is April 14th!

A major event for the Dance Program at SUNY Brockport and for the Friends of Brockport Dance will be kicking off at 8 pm on Saturday, April 14th at Hochstein School of Music and Dance at 50 North Plymouth Avenue in Rochester, NY. This concert, a fund-raiser for scholarships for incoming freshmen, is part of the SUNY Brockport Department of Dance's ongoing mission to reach out to the greater Rochester community. 

We will be writing more about the dancers and choreographers who will be appearing at this event in these pages in the near future and will have special features on the event until April.  We will also be providing links to where tickets can be purchased and other such information.

Tickets to the Best of Brockport are $35. Brockport student tickets are $8 (there is a 2-ticket limit for student tickets, per order). With an additional donation of $15 per person, you are invited to join the faculty, dancers and others at a pre-concert reception at 6:30 pm.  Please save the date.