of art & design
Thursday, April 19 and Friday, April 20, 2012
8pm, Stewart Theatre
Tickets: $12 General; $10 Faculty/Staff; $5 Students
The NCSU Dance Company 25th Anniversary Concert will be presented on Thursday, April 19 and Friday, April 20 at 8 pm in Stewart Theatre on the NC State Campus. The concert will feature selected works from Robin Harris’s 25 years as artistic director of the NCSU Dance Company. The concert includes work created from 1988-2007.
The oldest work on the concert is A Door off the Kitchen, created in 1988, when Robin was a North Carolina Choreographer in Residence at the American Dance Festival. A Door of the Kitchen was the first work (of seven to date) performed by the NCSU Dance Company to be selected for a National Gala of the American College Dance Festival Association. All the works - or at least sections of each work - on the 25th Anniversary Concert have been selected for performance in either a Regional or National Gala of the American College Dance Festival Association.
An Outspoken Dinner Party (1996) was inspired by the paintings of Edouard Vuillard. This work explores psychological interiors of four women at a blue table. As “the dinner party” progresses, the women’s superficial postures and relationships give way, and their private feelings are revealed.
Resort (Or How I Should Love to Marry) (2000) comments on the experiences of women at resorts of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s – with the resort wear consisting of dresses with inner tubes tied to the hems with colorful ribbons. Resort is inspired by Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States by Cindy S. Aron and is set to Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E flat major, D897 “Notturno.”
30 and 73 (2000) documents the choreographer’s father’s 1941 canoe trip from Logan, West Virginia, to New Orleans, Louisiana. On this trip, Robert Harris and Tom Orr acted as newspaper correspondents to their hometown newspaper, The Logan Banner, writing accounts of their trip along the way. The newspaper articles, in the choreography, chronicle the journey, tell the story, and serve as the structural device of the work. The dance is structured as a series of newspaper “reports” based on the boys’ reports: LOGAN BOYS LEAVE FRIDAY ON 1,732 MILE CANOE TRIP LOGAN, WEST VIRGINIA June 19; ON TO NEW ORLEANS….GRANT, KENTUCKY July 1; BOYS IN LOUISVILLE LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY July 4; BOYS HAVE CLOSE CALL BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA July 22; CANOEISTS END TRIP…NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA July 25. Recorded text (the text from the newspaper articles) is intermingled and juxtaposed with other music and sound: March, J.S. Bach, arrangement by Percy Grainger; O Mensch, Bewein’ Dein’ Sunde Gross, J. S. Bach, arrangement by Percy Grainger; excerpt from Piano Concerto in A Minor, Allegro Moderato, Edvard Grieg; Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 “Moonlight,” Adagio sostenuto, Ludwig van Beethoven, played by Arthur Rubinstein; as well as frog sounds from Sounds of North American Frogs: The Biological Significance of Voice in Frogs; and other environmental and contextual sounds, such as water flowing, camera shutters, and typing. An 18-foot Old Town canoe is the set for the work.
How To (2001) is a collection of seven dances based on “how to” phonograph records from the 1950's and 1960’s. The How To dances are:
I. INSTANT VENTRILOQUISM
II. SWIMMING SKILLS THRU DRY LAND DRILLS
III. STENO SPEED
IV. HAIR FACTS, NOT FANCIES
V. BATON TWIRLING, THE EASY WAY
VI. SELLING REAL ESTATE: HOW AND WHERE TO FIND LISTINGS
VII. LOOKING YOUNG FOREVER
Guest performer Jack Arnold will dance the roles of the Ventriloquist and the Realtor.
Beginning with an audio clip from a 1936 radio broadcast of a boxing match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, the introductory text of Élégie (2007) sets up the metaphor for the work’s content: “… is down, hanging to the ropes, hurting badly, he is a very tired player, he is blinking his eyes, he is shaking his head, the count is done, the fight is over, the fight is over”. Élégie’s movement vocabulary is derived from descriptions of fights in vintage radio broadcasts of boxing matches, studio fight poses and fight action photographs of boxers, descriptions of boxing in prose, and images from films. Élégie is set to music by Jules Massenet.
NCSU Dance Company members performing in the concert are Kelly Bryant, Hayley Dirscherl, Jennifer Gamble, Sarah Griner, Megan Imhoff, Mary Jackson, Cassia Lewis, Monica Matthai, Kaitlin Smith, Agee Taylor, Ashley Walls, and Jacquelyn Watson.
For tickets, please call Ticket Central at 919.515.1100 or click on the "by tickets" link to the left. For more information, contact Robin Harris at 919.515.7034 or danceprogram@ncsu.edu.