May 13, 2010
MFA Dance Concert set for May 20-23
The MFA Dance Concert will be presented May 20-23 in Meany Studio Theater. The concert highlights new dances and collaborative works by MFA candidates Brenna Monroe-Cook, Matthew Henley, Bliss Kohlmyer, Elizabeth Lentz, Tonya Lockyer and Paula Peters.
Choreographer Elizabeth Lentz and dancers perform Dona Nobis Pacem, an excerpt from “A Mass for Our Time,” created in collaboration with the UW Symphony Orchestra, University Chorale and the UW Chamber Singers. Originally presented at the American Choral Directors’ Association Northwest Conference and UW’s Meany Hall, this excerpt brings singers and dancers together on the Meany Studio Stage. Ralph Vaughn Williams’ wrote Dona Nobis Pacem in 1936 in response to WWI as a plea against war. The result is a dance celebrating mercy, peace, and hope in troubled times.
Bliss Kohlmyer, hailing from San Francisco where she is co-artistic director of project agora and a highly regarded artist with Robert Moses’ Kin and Janice Garrett and Dancers, premiere’s Unravel, a collaboration with contemporary composer/bassist Doug Niemela and costume designer Linnaea Wilson. In an attempt to re-discover essences lost in the rapidity and complexity of contemporary life, Unravel asks, “What is revealed when we peel back the layers of our selves, beliefs and relationships?”
Acclaimed Seattle choreographer Tonya Lockyer pairs up with Candace Frank, costume designer with Degenerate Art Ensemble and ACT Theater, and soloist Erica Badgeley to create A tiny ship in a vast outer space where the air is quiet and transparent. Taking inspiration from Edvard’s Grieg’s music for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, and excerpts from Mishima’s The Decay of the Angel, this meditation on memory and loss transforms the theater into a vast exterior scene animated by the magical, sometimes frightening fantasies of childhood.
Former Limón Dance Company member Brenna Monroe-Cook’s Attendant Imaginings also looks to childhood for inspiration. A special collaboration with her brother, visual artist Jonathan Monroe-Cook, Attendant Imaginings considers the attachments we form to inanimate objects during childhood and how these objects take on life and personality.
Having worked for close to a decade as an artist/educator in New York City, Matt Henley is a master at bringing vibrant communities together in kaleidoscopes celebrating the joy of movement. In 24, twenty-four dancers fill the stage in a work questioning what happens when a deeply private event takes place in public space.
Veteran Seattle dance artist Paula Peters teams up with admired Seattle composer and master of the electric violin Eric Chappelle. Their fitting tribute to our region, Zephyrus investigates the infinite movement patterns created by the branches of the Evergreen Tree during the signature windstorms of the Pacific Northwest. Chappelle has composed for dance for more than 30 years including collaborations with choreographers Deborah Wolf, Pablo Cornejo, Holly Eckert, Aiko Kinoshita and Anne Green Gilbert. He performs Zephyrus live each evening.
Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $14, $12 for UWAA members, faculty and staff, and $10 for students. Tickets are available on line at www.meany.org or at the UW Arts Ticket Office, 4001 University Way NE, Seattle 206-543-4880.
