LOTS of performances going on in the next two weeks; some free and some very affordable with the $10 rebate you receive from the Dance Program’s Dance Flip/DanceTrip project when you bring us your receipt(eligibility=enrolled in any Dance Program course this fall or spring).  Lela Aisha Jones is our Consortium for Faculty Diversity fellowship candidate and Kyle Clark is choreographer for this semester’s Hip-hop Ensemble.

Friday, March 17, 2017 at 8 p.m at Swarthmore College
The Cambrians performing CLOVER
LPAC Pearson-Hall Theater (Main Stage) contact Tara Webb, 610-328-8260, for information.           FREE Admission

Also. . . .   Masterclasses:
Wednesday, March 15, 2017 @11:30AM Int/Adv Ballet
Wednesday, March 15, 2017 @ 4:30PM Choreography
Thursday, March 16, 2017 @11:20AM Int Cuban Contemporary
All in the LPAC Boyer Dance Studio.

The Cambrians is an intimate contemporary dance and storytelling venture whose dancers collaborate and builds its works in different geographical locations that networks and tours outwards from those creative loci. At Swat they will be performing Clover which the Chicago Tribune selected as “one of the top 10 dance performances of 2015.

Thursday through Saturday, March 16 — March 18 at The Painted Bride

Lela Aisha Jones and colleagues present three days of performances and workshops at the Painted Bride, 2^nd and Vine, Philadelphia 215-925-9914
THE BODY WAILS, THE BODY RESTORES

Thursday, March 16 at 8pm   Film Screening: LYNCHING&LOVE(2012) –PAY WHAT YOU CAN
This filmed version interprets first exposures to noose lynching as experienced by the artists in the work, offers embodied renditions of the contemporary experiences of U.S. blackness/womaness.

Friday March 17 & Saturday March 18 at 6pm –FREE
Brenda Dixon Gottschild (Solo Work): RACE IS THE PLACE IS THE SPACE
Referencing the Aunt Jemima stereotype to set the stage and through performative, embodied lecture, Brenda Dixon Gottschild travels into the present via her Afro-expressionistic interpretation of selected poems.

Friday March 17 & Saturday March 18 at 8pm   –$20 in advance/$25 day of show
THE BODY WAILS, THE BODY RESTORES
This work weaves together contemporary reflections on the tumultuous events surrounding racial confrontations in Philadelphia, South Africa, and North Carolina. The trauma of the past, unresolved and unprocessed, continues to re-occur in our future.

PLUS additional FREE or Pay what you can workshops on Thursday and FridayClick here for full information

Friday & Saturday, March 17 & 18 at 7pm, March 18 at 2pm at Suzanne Roberts Theatre   Broad and Lombard, center city Philly
Just Sole! Street Dance Theater in THE LIFE OF A JUST SOLE$15 through BrownPaperTickets.com ( http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2842937 ) or contact Justsoledance@gmail.com

Choreographer Kyle “JustSole” Clark, his wife and co-choreographer, Dinita aka “Princess Di”, and the Just Sole! Street Dance Theater Company, take audiences on a jubilant journey through the multi-layered, dynamic spectrum of interpretative street dance — house, locking, popping, and street social dances — in a physical autobiography of the personal, artistic and spiritual journey.

I Understand Everything Better
Thursday, Friday, Saturday  February 23, 24, 25  8 PM Hepburn Teaching Theatre, Goodhart
FREE admission           Running time: 75 minutes

 How often do you get to see the work of an artist whose work is honored by both the worlds of science and the worlds of art? David Neumann is BOTH a SETI Institute Artist-in-Residence AND his work, I Understand Everything Better, which he will perform at BMC, won two Bessie awards, the highest accolade given to contemporary dance in the US.  Emerging from tragedies of nature—the death of his parents and Hurricane Sandy—Neumann and his dancers/performers, costumed and traveling through a cosmically disheveled and surreal set, explore big, unanswerable questions in a work that mixes dance and theater; Kabuki, Noh,and modern dance; text, music, and movement and addresses chaos, letting go, cleaning up, going o–in all of their multiple meanings.

Among the unanimously positive reviews are:

“deeply felt and deeply moving” work that examines “ruthlessly, elemental forces”  Gia Kourlas, NY Times

“beautiful. . . .[Neumann] is an elegantly hilarious dancer” Helen Shaw, Time Out NY

“a richly collaged sampler of movement styles that runs from modern American dance to classical Japanese theater” Claudia La Rocco, Art Forum

PLUS. . .                                                                                    

PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP with David Neumann / Advanced Beginner Group
SAT . FEB 25 . 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall
Free and open to all levels of experience with limited enrollment, please click link below to register
https://brynmawr.wufoo.com/forms/david-neumann-advanced-beginner-group-workshop/
A free workshop for student and professional theater makers and dancers
engaging practices central to the creation of Neumann‘s own hybrid
performance pieces. Participants will work together to create short pieces
as a way to investigate multi-disciplinary work. No one needs expertise in
any of the forms mentioned, just healthy doses of curiosity and some courage.

Roundtable with David Neumann / Advanced Beginner Group
SUN . FEB 26 . 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Dorothy Vernon Room, New Dorm
Attendance is free with limited seating, please click below to reserve your space.
https://brynmawr.wufoo.com/forms/rountable-w-david-neumannadvanced-beginner-group/
Brunch will be available, free for Tri-Co community with a meal plan, $11
for all others, cash only.
This open roundtable will engage David Neumann / Advanced Beginner Group and
participants in questions related to contemporary arts pract.

At Swarthmore with Sydney Dance Company
Master Class with the company. . .

At Bryn Mawr with David Neumann
PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP with David Neumann / Advanced Beginner Group
SAT . FEB 25 . 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall

Free and open to all levels of experience with limited enrollment, please click link below to register
https://brynmawr.wufoo.com/forms/david-neumann-advanced-beginner-group-workshop/
A free workshop for student and professional theater makers and dancers
engaging practices central to the creation of Neumann‘s own hybrid
performance pieces. Participants will work together to create short pieces
as a way to investigate multi-disciplinary work. No one needs expertise in
any of the forms mentioned, just healthy doses of curiosity and some courage

Faculty Dance Concert

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 7:30 pm
Hepburn Teaching Theater
FREE admission

Five accomplished choreographers, some performing solo and some with company members in forms from ballet to modern to hip hop.

Independent choreographer Megan Mazarick who has performed internationally will present a solo, Monster, that she developed in Egypt in which she remixes the metaphor of “hero vs. villan” using movement that appears pixilated and digitized. Hip hop dancer and choreographer Kyle Clark and director of Just Sole Street Dance will bring his company. Freelance dancer Michelle Stortz will perform Portrait/Meet, a dance made from “found” movement by acclaimed choreographer Susan Rethorst.  KC Chun-Manning will join forces with BMC alum Camilla Dely in a new duet with live Bulgarian songs and shruti box. DanceSpora’s Felicia Cruz will premiere a contemporary ballet duet.

The program offers the campus community and the public an opportunity to see the range and depth at the college and in the area. Free, varied and certain to be interesting.

Refreshments follow.

Class schedule for the Spring and all the information you need is up on the DANCE WEB PAGE. Click here.  You can register now on BIONIC if you are taking classes for academic credit.  Classes for Physical Education Credit register in January during the first week back.  Auditions for Ensembles start on the first day of classes, January 17!

We have several faculty returning including Linda Mintzer and Denise D’Angelo in ballet, Corinne Karon in Tap, Donna Reinhart and Bob Butryn for the Swing dance half of Social Dance. Ramaa Ramesh will return for the Classical Indian half of Gesture of Dance joined by new instructor Lauren Ouano Yeremian who will teach Hula. We’re also delighted that Bethany Formica, still relatively new to our Program, will return to teach the Advanced Modern class and Marie Brown joins us for the first time and will teach the Intermediate Modern class. Felicia Cruz will be teaching the second half of Advanced Ballet.

The Ensemble line-up is as follows:
We welcome back Meredith Rainey, who set a ballet piece on our students for the 2015 Concert

and

Megan Mazarick who made a piece for us for the 2013 Concert. Both are highly regarded choreographers in Philadelphia and beyond and we’re delighted that they are back with us.
Kyle “JustSole” Clark will make a Hip-hop piece for our bi-co dancers. Besides a toddler at home, Kyle has been keeping busy in the last year or so by competing in and winning, with his wife Dinita/Princess Di, the House Dance Category at “Juste Debout” an international competition in Paris, and by being invited by the ALVIN AILEY company to set a hip-hop piece on their second company! (see left for a section from Kyle’s piece)  Rev. Nia Eubanks-Dixon will return to choreograph the African Ensemble, planning to explore South African Gumboot dancing. In the Spring concert, April 21 and 22, these works will join a Modern Ensemble by Mady Cantor and a Jazz work by Shannon Murphy already in progress.  CHECK OUT ALL of our faculty on the PEOPLE page of the DANCE WEB SITE.

The Dance Program is sponsoring a trip to see the Pennsylvania Ballet on Friday, November 11 at the Merriam Theater in Center City Philadelphia. The company will be doing three works: Square Dance by legendary choreographer George Balanchine, a new work by local phenom Brian Sanders, and The Third Light by British choreographer David Dawson (“…amazing feats of physical elasticity, unexpected musical arrangements, and innovative integration of light.) It will be a varied and exciting program and I hope you can join in!

Tickets are available at an unusually low group ticket price of $18. They are in the side orchestra, a good location.  The Dance Program will cover the cost of van transportation, which will leave Pem Arch at 7:00 pm for the 8:00 show.
If interested, email Mady Cantor right away, and then bring your money (check payable to BMC or cash) to my office in Goodhart 104B. Have it in an envelope and slide under my door. Be sure to label it. All cash looks alike! Latest reply date is this Friday, Nov. 4.

COME JOIN US…Friday, October 28, 5:30 PM in the Goodhart Music Room (through the glass lobby and one level down)… and find out everything you ever wanted to know about dancing at Bryn Mawr
We‘ll provide hot cider and treats as well. . .

Bryn Mawr and Haverford students can elect to do a MAJOR in Dance, a double MAJOR in Dance and another academic area, or a MINOR in Dance. . . OR they can just take dance classes that match their interests, skill, and schedule, many of which are offered for Physical Education or academic credit.

Bryn Mawr and Haverford students can take technique courses in DANCE at Bryn Mawr ranging from ballet and African to Hip-hop and modern dance and at beginning to advanced levels.  There are several performance options as well for intermediate or advanced dancers.  Students area also invited to get creative in choreography classes or and seminar courses open up the world of dance in history, culture, and society.

Tuesday, October 18th   7:30PM    Goodhart Music Room

Toni Shapiro-Phim is a cultural anthropologist with a specialization in the arts of Southeast Asia. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, writing about the relationship between war, dance and music in Cambodia, and has held research and teaching positions focused on arts and social justice at the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and Bryn Mawr College and is a founding member of the Cambodia/Southeast Asia Working Group at Rutgers University’s Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. Co-editor of Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion (2008), her writing has also appeared in Annihilating Difference: the Anthropology of Genocide (2002), The Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre (2007), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance (2001) and other books, magazines, and journals. She is currently program specialist at the Philadelphia Folklore Project, where she conducts research about urban expressive culture and coordinates an arts and social change education program.

Dr. Shapiro-Phim will discuss her most recent project, the film, Tokay. Shapiro-Phim directed this film about the famous Liberian performer, Tokay Tomah, who was selected at age 10 to join Liberia’s National Cultural Troupe, and who became a lead dancer and eventually, a featured singer. The film focuses on the personal and professional disruption of Tokay’s life during the civil war and on her dynamism, creativity and her sense of responsibility to her country and the women of her country in diaspora—all set against the tensions of civil strife and its aftermath.  The film will be shown on Friday October 21, 7PM, at the Scribe Video Center, 4212 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. You can check out a Liberian music video of Tokay here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3PbHAhtUR8
Living now in the Philadelphia area, Tokay, together with other equally famous Liberian women singers,  have formed the Liberian Women’s Chorus for Change.  To hear the performers of LWCC sing and talk about their mission to educate women about abuse and violence go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJyBDjNWp1g

Dr. Shapiro-Phim is also happy to discuss her work in the camps along the Thai-Cambodian border in the late 1980s, her other research projects, and the field of dance anthropology/ethnology.

Brigitte Heusinger von Waldegge, Associate Professor at Philipps—University in Marburg, Germany is an educator, instructor of contemporary dance and author. She has developed a distinctive syllabus of Enabling Dance in Education and engages students in an experience of dance that involves physical and intellectual problem solving and generates curiosity, creativity, community, and discovery.  She is a co—founder of a unique Masters Program, Cultural Education in Schools. She comes to Philadelphia as part of an international dialogue on Dance in Education and will be visiting and working with Mady Cantor’s Elementary Modern Class on Monday, October 17.

The class will be about the pleasure of moving and making dances, beginning with structures that generate spontaneous impulses and tapping into movement skills from daily life. She will introduce compositional principles that will facilitate the crafting, sharing, and merging of individual dance into collective dances.  The class runs from 12:10-1:30.  Space is very limited so if you are interested in participating or watching, contact Madeline Cantor at mcantor@brynmawr.edu.

Philadanco. . .
as expected, brought the fully-packed Goodhart Hall to its feet on Friday, September 23, with its performances of repertory by 4 distinguished but very different choreographers: Labess by David Brown (pictured to the left); Hand Singing Song by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar; Between the Lines by Francisco Gella; and one of the company’s signature pieces, Enemy Behind the Gates by Christopher Huggins. Amazing and powerful dancing marked this first event of the Performing Arts Series, and we were delighted to see HC alum, Dana Nichols, in three of the works.

On the Thursday prior to the performance, two company members, Janine Beckles and Joe Gonzalez, taught a master class open to our BMC/HC dancers and to dancers from Philly and the community.  The warm-up and center were based on Horton technique, one of the company’s core styles, and were followed by the opportunity to learn a very quick and complex section from their repertory.  Janine and Joe were terrific instructors, attending to all of the students in the class, explaining and modelling the technical elements in a really clear way, and enthusiastically encouraging our dancers to go for it full throttle.  It was challenging, informative, and fun.

Joe Gonzalez with Jasmine S., Shivani P., Tali L., and Joy C.in the first line working on their Horton ‘T’ Lateral.  Janine can be seen working with Joy.
Janine checking out the work of Danielle X. and Diane P.
Janine watching Jasmine and Joy mid-air

Check out more images at http://www.brynmawr.edu/dance/DANCOClass9_16.html