Work by guest artists from around the U.S. featured in Fall Dance Concert
Dante Brown|Warehouse Dance performs “Social Plaque.” (MABS Media)
A company known for testing both the social implications and the physical limits of moving bodies, Dante Brown|Warehouse Dance are among the performers in Bates College’s annual Fall Dance Concert, with performances at 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15; 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 17.
The venue is Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St. Admission is $6 for general admission; $3 for senior citizens, non-Bates students, and Bates faculty and staff; and free for Bates students. Purchase tickets at www.batestickets.com. For more information, call 207-786-6161.
On the program:
• “Social Plaque” performed by Brown and Warehouse Dance;
• choreography by two dance majors as part of their senior thesis projects;
• four works created in intensive repertory courses for Bates dancers by visiting guest artists including San Francisco’s Sean Dorsey, regarded as the first widely known transgender modern dance choreographer;
• and a collaboration between Bates dance professor Rachel Boggia and video artist Jesse Sugarmann.
Bates College dance major Talia Mason ’15 during a rehearsal in March 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)
Based in New York, Brown and company employ highly physical creative processes to produce intense, dynamic stage environments. “Social Plaque” creates an immersive experience where the audience experiences the building and breaking down of a community. Bates will welcomes Brown to its faculty as a lecturer for the winter semester of 2015.
An award-winning choreographer, dancer and writer, Dorsey spent two weeks at Bates this fall teaching repertory students his piece “The Secret History of Love.”
Along with Dorsey, the choreographers who visited the repertory courses are Laquimah Van Dunk, a Tennessee-based choreographer who looks at community, rituals and habits through a process of game play; and Median Movement founders Alex Springer and Xan Burley, of New York City, whose lively piece on the Bates program is the result of a joint residency involving both Bates and Colby College dancers. The piece will be shown at both schools, with the Colby performances taking place Nov. 22 and 23 in Strider Theater.
“The guest artists bring a variety of perspectives on choreography,” says Boggia, assistant professor of dance and artistic director for the concert. “Along with our thesis students, they create a show that proves that you don’t have to choose between deep thinking and beautiful movement.
“In addition to challenging them with new ideas, the visiting artists give our students a tangible connection to professional artistic life.”
Boggia choreographed an accompaniment to “We Build Excitement,” a nationally touring video installation created by California video artist Sugarmann. Incorporating footage of laid off auto workers re-enacting their jobs and car accident survivors re-enacting their crashes, the humorous, poignant piece explores Americans’ relationships to cars.
An adaptation of site-specific work commissioned by SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, Boggia’s choreography will occupy the lobby and theater space in Schaeffer.
Two Bates seniors offer choreography in a partial fulfillment of a senior thesis in dance. Talia Mason ’15 of Silver Spring, Md., a double-major in dance and in French and francophone studies, presents a piece exploring the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The work was inspired in part by an oral history by a survivor of the genocide.
Regan Radulski ’15 of Topsham, Maine, is a dance major with a minor in chemistry. She is developing a piece that examines the similarities between human movement and the movement of proteins.
