13th annual DanceMasters Weekend Showcase Performance to feature Pilobolus, Camille A. Brown and Dancers, and Garth Fagan Dance on Saturday March 10
Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts presents the 13th annual
DanceMasters Weekend
Showcase Performance on Saturday March 10 to feature Pilobolus,
Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and Garth Fagan Dance
Middletown, Conn., March 2, 2012—On Saturday, March 10 and Sunday, March 11, 2012 Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts will celebrate its thirteenth annual DanceMasters Weekend, an exciting event for choreographers, students, and dance enthusiasts alike. DanceMasters offers a unique combination of outstanding performances and Master Classes."DanceMasters immerses Connecticut dance students in a wide range of contemporary techniques and allows them to experience the breadth and depth of what’s out there in the dance world,” said Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts. “We are also providing regional dance teachers an important professional development opportunity.”
This year’s DanceMasters WeekendShowcase Performance features Pilobolus; Camille A. Brown & Dancers; and Garth Fagan Dance. The DanceMasters Weekend Showcase Performance will take place on Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 8pm in the CFA Theater, located on the Wesleyan University campus at 271 Washington Terrace in Middletown. Tickets for the Showcase Performance are $27 for the general public; $20 for seniors citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, and non-Wesleyan students; and $8 for Wesleyan students. Showcase Performance tickets are available online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/dancemasters, by phone at (860) 685-3355, or in person at the Wesleyan University Box Office, located in the Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. Tickets may also be purchased at the door beginning one hour prior to the performance, subject to availability. The Center for the Arts accepts cash, checks written to “Wesleyan University”, and all major credit cards. Groups of ten or more may receive a discount – please call (860) 685-3355 for details. No refunds, cancellations, or exchanges.
Camille A. Brown, Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, is the 2012 Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award recipient. “Wesleyan audiences have been watching Camille since she danced with Ronald K. Brown/Evidence. She's a breathtaking dancer and a choreographer of great range” said Pamela Tatge. “She's the first woman to be awarded the Princess Grace Award for Choreography and we're delighted to be giving her the McGlone Award this year.” Past recipients of the Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award include Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance (2011), Zoe Scofield (2008), Nora Chipaumire (2007), Nicholas Leichter of Nicholas Leichter Dance (2006), and Robert Battle of Battleworks Dance Company (2003).
Master Classes are taught by visiting artists from an array of nationally and internationally renowned dance companies, providing instruction in a diverse range of dance styles. Master Classes are designed for students with intermediate to advanced dance experience. They are taught throughout the day on both Saturday, March 10 and Sunday, March 11 from 11am to 4:30pm. Class fees are $19 per class for the general public (plus a $6 registration fee); $17 per class for four or more classes; and $13 per class for Wesleyan students. A Weekend Pass includes five Master Classes and one ticket to the Showcase Performance, and costs $99 for the general public (plus a $6 registration fee); and $73 for Wesleyan students. Group discounts are available – please call (860) 685-3355 for details. To see the full schedule, and to get more information about the teachers and artists, please visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/dancemasters. To register for Master Classes, please call (860) 685-3355 or visit the Wesleyan University Box Office.
DanceMasters Weekend is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mariam McGlone DanceMasters Endowment Fund.
About the Showcase Performance Artists
Pilobolus began in 1971 as an outsider dance company and quickly became renowned the world over for its imaginative and athletic exploration of creative collaboration. Forty years later, it has evolved into a pioneering American arts organization of the 21st century. The company now revolves around three nuclei of activity: Pilobolus Dance Theatre, the umbrella for a series of radically innovative and globally acclaimed concert dance companies; The Pilobolus Institute, educational programming for schools, colleges, andpublic arts organizations as well as a series of classes and leadership workshops for corporate executives, employees, and business schools; and Pilobolus Creative Services, a division specializing in a wide range of movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events.
Pilobolus is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut and performs for stage and television audiences all over the world. The company has appeared late at night on the Tonight Show, early in the morning on Sesame Street, and in primetime as a feature on CBS's 60 Minutes. Pilobolus touring companies have performed in 63 countries and received a number of prestigious honors, including the Berlin Critic's Prize, the Scotsman Award, the Brandeis Award, a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in cultural programming, Mexico's Lunas Award for best modern dance (2011),and, as the first collective to receive it, the Dance Magazine Award (2010), which is given to artists who have made a lasting impact on the field. Pilobolus works also appear in the repertories of major American and European dance companies, and, in June 2000, the company received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in choreography. In 2007, Pilobolus opened up its collective choreographic process to outside artists of different backgrounds through the formation of the InternationalCollaborators Project. The company has since created pieces with writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak; the Israeli choreographic team Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak; American puppeteer Basil Twist; Steven Banks, head-writer for SpongeBob SquarePants; the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory; family rocker Dan Zanes; butoh choreographer Takuya Muramatsu; pop band OK Go; master jugglerMichael Moschen; and critically acclaimed Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
For more information about Pilobolus, please visit www.pilobolus.com
For Camille A. Brown & Dancers, dancing is as natural as talking. It is an extension of everyday life. The company’s work explores typical, real life situations ranging from literal relationships to more complex themes. Theater, poetry, visual art andmusic of all genres are combined with group and solo dance works in order to inject performances with energy and vibrancy.
Ms. Brown’s work has been seen in many venues both nationally and internationally, including TheJoyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater, The Juilliard Theater, City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, the Skirball Center, Aaron Davis Hall, Symphony Space, Dance Place, Washington, D.C.; Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas, Seattle, WA; and Perry-Mansfield’s New Works Festival in Steamboat Springs, CO.
Camille A. Brown & Dancers offers classes for movers of all ages. They have conducted residencies and classes nationally and internationally at Peridance (NY), Broadway Dance Center (NY), STEPS (NY), Central District Forum for Arts andIdeas (Seattle, WA), The Ailey School (NY), The Litchfield Jazz Festival (CT), The Queens Museum of Art (NY), City Center Fall for Dance, The Lenox Hill Neighborhood House (NY), Perry-Mansfield School of the Arts (CO), Reflections Dance Company (Washington, D.C.), North Carolina School of the Arts (NC), Hunter College (NY), Princeton University (NJ), New Orleans Dance Festival (LA), Central Park Summerstage, Broadway Dance Center (Japan) and Danza IdaDance (Italy). Ms. Brown has taught classes to Urban Bush Women, Philadanco, Milwaukee Ballet II, Hubbard Street II, Reflections Dance Company, Cleo Parker-Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theater, and Ailey II among other professionalcompanies.
Spirituality is a guiding force in Ms. Brown’s work. Her desire to give back to the community through dance is evident in the company’s volunteer work for institutions such as Creedmore Psychiatric Center, Columbia University and the Derek Jeter Foundation’s Turn2Us program.
For more information about Camille A. Brown & Dancers, please visit www.camilleabrown.org
Now in its 40th season, Garth Fagan Dance is deemed “unfailingly original” by The New York Times, which also named the company’s piece, Mudan 175/39, third of the top six dance watching moments of 2009. Tony Award-winning choreographer Garth Fagan’s dancers communicate with unbridled energy the depth, precision, and grace of Fagan’s work. The company’s “fearless” dancers are "able to sustain long adagio balances, to change direction in mid-air, to vary the dynamic of a turn, to stop on a dime," wrote David Vaughan in Ballet Review. Mr. Fagan’s ever-evolving dance language draws on many sources: sense of weight in modern dance, torso-centered movement and energy of Afro-Caribbean, speed and precision of ballet, and the rule breaking experimentation of the post-moderns. The company has been cited for its excellence and originality with a New York Governor's Arts Award and has claimed five winners of "Bessie" Awards (New York Performance Awards): Garth Fagan, Steve Humphrey, Norwood Pennewell, Natalie Rogers andSharon Skepple.
The troupe has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Near and Middle East, North and South America, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies. Foreign tours have included a 13-city tour of The Netherlands; appearances at France's Maison de la Danse and Chateauvallon Festival; Turkey's Istanbul Festival; the New Zealand International Arts Festival; Germany's Internationales Tanzfest N.R.W.; Switzerland's Basel Tanz; the Israel Festival in Jerusalem; the Vienna Festival-Tanz; a tour to Harare, Zimbabwe with the United States Information Agency; and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. In 1994, the company opened the then newly-renovated American Center in Paris, France. In 1996, principal dancers were invited by the Federation Caledonienne de Danse to perform in "La Nuit des Etoiles" along with members from the New York City Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet and the Kirov Ballet.
Domestically, the company has performed at such venues as Jacob's Pillow, Spoleto USA, Dance/Aspen, and the first National Black ArtsFestival. Performances in New York City venues include Brooklyn Academy of Music, City Center and frequent seasons at the Joyce Theater. In 1993, Garth Fagan Dance went on a national tour with the Wynton Marsalis Septet performing Mr. Fagan's critically acclaimed full-evening length work Griot New York. The company was seen nationally on the Tonight Show starring Jay Leno in that same piece and Griot New York aired worldwide on the PBS’ Great Performances -- Dance in America series in the spring of 1995, marking the company’s third appearance on that series.
Principal dancers Norwood Pennewell and Natalie Rogers participated in the "66th Annual Academy Awards" broadcast, joined by principal dancers from seven other major international dance companies. In 2004, the company performed at the historic opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. That year also saw the company as part of the grand opening celebration of Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center; they later returned in fall 2005 for their 35th anniversary season in New York City.
For more information about Garth Fagan Dance, please visit www.garthfagandance.org
About the Master Class Teachers
This year’s master class teachers are Camille A. Brown, Camille A. Brown & Dancers; David Dorfman, David Dorfman Dance; Bill Hastings, jazz; Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent, Pilobolus; Carolyn Kirsch, "Never Stop Moving: A Fosse-Style Workshop for Older Dancers"; Ryoko Kudo, Limón Dance Company;
Nicholas Leichter, Nicholas Leichter Dance; Aubrey Lynch, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Troy Ogilvie, Gallim Dance; Miki Orihara, Martha Graham Dance Company; Meg Gordon Roe, ballet; Natalie Rogers-Cropper, Garth Fagan Dance; and Samantha Speis, Urban Bush Women.
For more information about the Master Class teachers and schedule, please call (860) 685-3355 or visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/dancemasters.
About the Performing Arts Series
The Performing Arts Series at the Center for the Arts brings a wide array of world-class musicians, cutting-edge choreography, and groundbreaking theater performances and discussions to Wesleyan University.
This season's performances include the 13th annual DanceMasters Weekend Showcase Performance (March 10), the Connecticut premiere of Chunky Move: Connected (March 30 & 31), the Fernando Otero Quartet (April 14), and the 11th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend featuring the Jay Hoggard Quartet (April 28). For more information, please visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.
Save 10% when you buy tickets to four or more Performing Arts Series events. Call or visit the Wesleyan University Box Office at (860) 685-3355 to take advantage of these discounts.