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The highly-acclaimed Department of Modern Dance Performing Dance Company kicks- off it’s 2009-2010 season in the spirit of collaboration, presenting four pieces which highlight art, film, music, design and dance.

Faculty member Professor Pamela Geber has collaborated with colleagues Ellen Bromberg (visual media design) and Cole Adams (lighting design), to premiere With/Without, a duet driven, desperate and awkwardly tender.  Passing through narrow corridors of light projections that metaphorically hint at search lights, two women grasp for hands, sometimes connecting and sometimes not.  Beginning in an intimate, contained area, the dance spatially unravels, exposing their paradoxical relationship.  Music is by experimental acoustic cellist Zoe Keating and Cliff Martinez.

Professor Satu Hummasti’s Dance With Me was originally commissioned and created on The Compañía de Cámara Danza UNA in Costa Rica June 2009. Seven dancers move through a series of vignettes inspired by questions such as: What does it feel like to dance alone in an empty room? With someone in a club? With someone you love? With a group of people in solidarity? In the first section, music by Japanese electro/rap/pop duo Takamasa Aoki and Noriko Tujiko inspires Hummasti and the dancers to challenge their habitual movement choices and patterns with the incorporation of interruptions and club dance tinged movement sequences. In the second section, dancers depend on one another through a series of split-second falls and lifts.

Fourteen dancers in Professor Abby Fiat’s newest work explore the spatial parameters that are inherent in relationships.  Dancers create spaces to slip through, to attach, to thread, to impede, and to vacate.  Through these spatial investigations, the dancers reveal both the intimacy and the distance that relationships can create.

The concert will conclude with an encore performance of ZIJI, originally commissioned for the College of Fine Arts 60th Anniversary Gala Concert.  This work brings together the collaborative efforts of The Department of Modern Dance, Ballet, Art and the School of Music.  Choreographed by internationally acclaimed performer and choreographer Edgar Zendéjas, currently with Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, and with an original sound score by the Emmy and Grammy award winning composer Patrick Williams, ZIJI sets the stage afire with breath-taking visuals and celebratory movement.

On Thursday, October 1st and 8th, there will be a post–performance dialogue with selected choreographers to discuss their processes of creation and collaboration.

This concert is funded in part by Fine Arts student fees.  Photo by Erik Isakson

Tickets are available through Kingsbury Hall Performing Arts Ticket Office at 801-581-7100, or online at http://www.kingtix.org . Tickets are also available at the door one hour prior to the performance at the Marriott Center for Dance box office. Programs, dates and times are subject to change
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FALL

PERFORMING DANCE COMPANY’S FALL CONCERT

October 1, 2, 3 and 8, 9, 10; 7:30 pm
Hayes Christensen Theater in the Marriott Center for Dance
Performing Dance Company’s Fall Concert presents four impassioned and captivating works by Abby Fiat, Satu Hummasti, Pamela Geber in collaboration with Ellen Bromberg (visual media design) and Cole Adams (lighting design), and a breath-taking encore performance of Edgar Zedéjas’ dance, ZIJI, bringing together the collaborative efforts of The Department of Modern Dance, Ballet, Art and the School of Music.

Please join us for a post-performance Q & A with selected choreographers on Thursday, October 1st and 8th.

HIGH SCHOOL WORKSHOP

October 24th; 9:30 am - 3:30 pm
For more information, click HERE

MODERN DANCE GRADUATE CONCERT

November 19, 20, 21; 7:30 pm
Hayes Christensen Theater in the Marriott Center for Dance
The Odds Are In!

Contemporary visions, death-defying aerial antics and just plain insanity. The third year graduate students from The University of Utah’s Department of Modern Dance present their thesis concert, “The Odds”, five dance pieces laying open the “oddities” of five radically different choreographers, Nancy Carter, Erin Empey, Juliana Hane, I-Fen Lin, and Shannon Vance.
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STUDENT CONCERT I

December 10, 11, 12; 7:30 pm
Experimental Theatre, Studio 240 in the Marriott Center for Dance
Tickets are only available at the door.
Innovative, unique and eclectic: Student Concert features choreography created by some of the most gifted students in the department. Don’t miss the chance to be the first to see the work of these student artists.

SPRING

PERFORMING DANCE COMPANY’S SPRING CONCERT

February 18, 19, 20 and 25, 26, 27; 7:30 pm
Hayes Christensen Theater in the Marriott Center for Dance
Always captivating and compelling, Performing Dance Company will not fail to mesmerize the audience with works created by celebrated artists including the departments own Eric Handman, Satu Hummasti and Stephen Koester.

MODERN DANCE SENIOR CONCERTS

Concert I: March 11, 12, 13; 7:30 pm
Concert II: April 1, 2, 3; 7:30 pm
Hayes Christensen Theater at the Marriott Center for Dance
Graduating BFA students present their own joyfully infectious work in two concerts, highlighting a wide-array of movement explored through contemporary dance forms. Plan now to attend both concerts.

STUDENT CONCERT II

April 8, 9, 10 ; 7:30 pm
Experimental Theatre, Studio 240 in the Marriott Center for Dance
Tickets are only available at the door.
Finishing off the year with a bang, Student Concert features choreography created by some of the most gifted students in the department. Don’t miss the chance to be the first to see the work of these student artists.

Unless noted otherwise, tickets are available through Kingsbury Hall Performing Arts Ticket Office, (801) 581-7100, or online at http://www.kingtix.org . Tickets are also available at the door one hour prior to the performance at the Marriott Center for Dance Box Office. Programs, dates and times are subject to change.

UNDERGRADUATE (BFA)

Students must attend the following date to audition for the upcoming Fall 2009 semester.

Friday, August 21, 2009
      Registration: 8:30 - 9:00 am
      Orientation/Audition: 9:00 am - 12:00 pm*

Audition Dates for Fall 2010:

Saturday, January 23, 2010
      Registration: 8:30 - 9:00 am
      Orientation/Audition: 9:00 am - 1:30 pm*

Friday, March 26, 2010
      Registration: 11:00 - 11:30 am
      Orientation/Audition: 11:30 am - 3:30 pm*

Friday, August 20, 2010
      Registration: 8:30 - 9:00 am
      Orientation/Audition: 9:00 am - 12:00 pm*

*Estimated end time.

There will be a $45.00 (non-refundable) processing fee required for each auditioner, to be included in application submission. Checks can be made to: The University of Utah Department of Modern Dance.

Click here for details.
Please also visit our PROGRAMS AND COURSES link for more important information about the department.

GRADUATE (MFA)

Audition Dates for Fall 2010:

Friday, February 19, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010

NEW YORK CITY AUDITIONS:TBA

Click here for details.
Please also visit our PROGRAMS AND COURSES link for more important information about the department.

The Odds Are In!

Contemporary visions, death-defying aerial antics and just plain insanity. The third year graduate students from The University of Utah’s Department of Modern Dance present their thesis concert, “The Odds”, five dance pieces laying open the “oddities” of five radically different choreographers, Nancy Carter, Erin Empey, Juliana Hane, I-Fen Lin, and Shannon Vance.

North Carolina native, Nancy Carter, explores the feeble ferocity paradox holds. The subtle friction of the conflict inherent in paradox yields a strange world where “spies don’t look like spies,” the mad hatter makes perfect sense, and we all have the strange feeling we’re rubbing the cat the wrong way.
Drawing inspiration from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Erin Empey of Casper Wyoming brings to life the sub-conscious as movement and voice combine to create a dance and theatre collaborative performance.

Juliana Hane of South Carolina takes us on a journey of flight with seven dancers suspended on a cargo net. Grasping for an experience in the vertical space, Hane explores ideas of apathy, empathy and the myth of human flight.

I-Fen Lin comes to the University of Utah from Taipei Taiwan and brings with her a style that’s disturbing yet alluring as she takes both the dancer and the viewer from a state of motion to emotion in her play with gesture, metaphor and language.
Shannon Vance, from Salt Lake City explores a neurotic state of mind as dancers physically transform from the what, to the whatever through compulsive movement phrases, which begin small and elaborate into chaotic motion.

“Play the odds” and come see what these choreographers are up to on November 19-21 at 7:30 pm.  Purchase your tickets through Kingsbury Hall box office at http://www.kingtix.com or 801-581-7100, or up to one hour prior to the performance at the Marriott Center for Dance box office.  For more information please visit http://www.dance.utah.edu or call 801-581-7327.  This concert was made possible in part through Fine Art student fees.

Tickets are available through Kingsbury Hall Performing Arts Ticket Office at 801-581-7100, or online at http://www.kingtix.org . Tickets are also available at the door one hour prior to the performance at the Marriott Center for Dance. Programs, dates and times are subject to change.
Buy Tickets

Dance at The University of Utah provides a rigorous, supportive community distinguished by its sense of excellence, professionalism, humanism, and a profound commitment to a lively spirit of creative inquiry.

QUICKLINKS

Graduate Concert: The Odds, A Dance Concert with Things on a Stage

Professor Stephen Koester’s So You Think You Can Dance Blog

Undergraduate and Graduate Auditions

2009-2010 Performance Calendar

The 7th Int’l Dance for the Camera Festival and Workshop 2009 with LAURA TALER

The College of Fine Arts Home Page