Release date: Oct. 24, 2002
Contact: Sally Corbett, Director of Public Relations, Arts,
at 404-727-6678 or sacorbe@emory.edu

Dance Company Presents Fall Concert, "Connecting Voices"

"Connecting Voices," the Emory Dance Company Fall Concert, will be a program of diverse works, premieres and historic works featuring choreography and direction by Emory dance faculty and Atlanta-based guest artists. Performances of "Connecting Voices" will be Friday, Nov. 8 and Saturday, Nov. 9 at 8 p.m. in the Performing Arts Studio, 1804 N. Decatur Rd., on the Emory campus. Admission is $8, and $6 for students, artists, seniors and children. For information and tickets, call 404-727-5050, e-mail boxoffice@emory.edu or visit www.emory.edu/ARTS.

George Staib II, an award-winning choreographer who joined the Emory faculty in 2001, and Tara Shepard Myers, formerly of the Sankofa Dance Theater in Savannah, Ga., will offer premiere works.

In Staib's work, "Courting the Damned" for 16 dancers, he invites the audience to create a story line for themselves as the piece moves from its dark and eerie beginning to frenzied motion. "My choreographic intention is guided by mood or feeling," says Staib. "I strive to create dances that are visually appealing, viscerally evocative, and open for interpretation."

Myers' new work incorporates tap, jazz, step and hip-hop and investigates how these forms merge to produce a total experience. The musical score for Myers' piece has been engineered and mixed here in Atlanta by Brian "Toronto" Baldwin.

Anna Leo has re-staged "Solitary Dancer," a work she premiered last season in collaboration with Emory's Wind Ensemble. This work is inspired by Warren Benson's piece by the same title. The dance "deals with the quiet, posed energy that one may observe in a dancer in repose, alone with her inner music," says Benson.

Guest artist and Emory dance alumna Blake Beckham presents a duet that initially took shape through collaboration with New York artist Camille Dieterle. Beckham says she crafts this movement to explore "the human struggle to communicate and connect." Choosing the motif of hands lodged inside of their pockets, Beckham directs the dancers to fight, thrash, spin and spill, and then ultimately to come together in what she refers to as "a rich connection expressed through the sharing of weight, and support of each other's bodies." The piece features live performance of a score by Atlanta artists Adam Overton and Ben Davis.

The concert is further highlighted by the re-staging of excerpts from an 1831 piece "Ballet of the Nuns" from the opera-ballet "Robert le Diable." The work has been read from a Labanotation score (a system of symbols that records dances) and is directed by guest artist Valarie Mockabee and choreographed by Romantic ballet artist August Bournonville.

"This work is important to the history of dance since it is the first time lighting, set design, choreography and costuming functioned together to create the magical and otherworldliness that would be indicative of the many Romantic ballets to follow. It signaled new developments in ballet technique and the use of pointe work," says Mockabee.

Emory Dance Company regularly commissions choreographic works and musical scores by local and national guest artists. Their performances include annual concerts of faculty works as well as programs directed and choreographed by students. The Schwartz Center for Performing Arts Dance Studio will open in February 2003 as the new performance home for Emory dance. For more information on the Schwartz Center, visit www.schwartzcenter.emory.edu.

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