November 9, 1999
Contact: Charla Jenkins, University Theatre, (785) 864-2684.
LAWRENCE -- The University Dance Company at the University of Kansas will present its fall concert at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Nov. 18 and 19, in the Lied Center at KU. Peggy Gaither Adams and Asha Prem are guest choreographers for the concert, which will spotlight the varying rhythms of dance.
Opening the dance program is "Marches and Meetings," a work-in-progress for seven dancers by Joan Stone, instructor of dance. Set to music by Charles Ives, the work is about Populist women at the turn of the last century, who were marching and meeting to change their lives.
Also on the fall program are:
-- "Govinda's Realm," a solo work created by Prem and Patrick Suzeau, instructor of dance. Danced by Suzeau to the rhythms of East Indian music, the work brings together contemporary and classical East Indian dance.
-- "Octet," a work choreographed for eight dancers by Muriel Cohan, associate professor of dance. It is performed to and was inspired by the unusual rhythms and sounds of the percussion score "Drum Jug" by Rich O'Donnell of the St. Louis Symphony.
-- "Gitanas," Jerel Hilding's ballet for seven dancers, performed to "Lute Suite #1, BWV996," by J.S. Bach. Played on the guitar, the music takes on a Spanish flavor that Hilding, associate professor of dance, brings out by blending the classical ballet idiom with movements and moods suggestive of Spanish dance.
-- "Jump Start," Gaither Adams' new work for 12 dancers, performed to music by Ronald Reid Womack and electronically realized by Michael Sidney Timpson, assistant professor of music theory and composition at KU. Gaither Adams, who spent a month in residence at KU this fall, works in rhythm tap styles as well as modern dance and the fusion of rhythms and forms is evident in this piece, performed by dancers in sneakers.
-- "Feet in the Soil," a dance of ritual adoration created by Willie Lenoir, instructor of dance. The moves of the dancers are sometimes primitive, sometimes modern, Lenoir said, as they dance to the pounding, earthy beat of New Age composer James Asher's "Ijeilu."
Guest artist Gaither Adams, a native of Topeka, has been on the dance faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa for 16 years. Previously she taught at Ohio State University, the University of Utah and Cornell University. She received her master of fine arts in dance from the University of Utah and bachelor of fine arts in dance from Arizona State University. She has directed two dance companies, has taught many master classes and workshops, including one for the Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts, and has been a guest teacher, choreographer and performer at universities and schools throughout the United States as well as in England, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Scotland. Her last residency at KU was in 1990.
Prem, a native of Bangalore, India, is a leading exponent of classical dances of India. For more than a decade she has operated her own school in St. Louis for training students interested in the Indian dancing styles of Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi and folk dance. A soloist as well as well as a member of her own troupe, Prem has served as a member of the guest faculty of several ballet dance companies and on the steering committee of Dance St. Louis. She was invited to inaugurate the Festival of India Programs in New York and was selected as a master in the apprenticeship program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Missouri Arts Council and Missouri Cultural Heritage Center.
General admission tickets for the University Dance Company concerts are now on sale in the KU box offices: Lied Center, 864-ARTS; Murphy Hall, 864-3982; and SUA, 864-3477. Tickets are $7 for the public and $5 for students and senior citizens. Both VISA and MasterCard are accepted for phone orders.