Five College Consortium

FIVE COLLEGE DANCE DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER 2016–2017 JIM COLEMAN Editor: Jim Coleman (FCDD Chair) Asst. Editor: Joanna Faraby Walker (FCDD) Design: New Ground Creative STORY/TIME: NARRATION AND ABSTRACTION ill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s classic STORY/TIME, choreographed in 2012 in collaboration with Janet Wong and company members, was restaged on a double College PAID Hampshire U.S. Postage U.S. Nonprofit Org Nonprofit Bcast of twenty FCDD dancers and performed on multiple campuses throughout the year. The work is an exhilarating and unusual hybrid—mixing the deeply personal, socially and politically charged dance making for which Mr. Jones is best known, with more abstract, formalist interests of his long-time mentor, Merce Cunningham. As New York Times critic Claudia La Rocco writes, “Bill T. Jones has long talked about his simultaneous attraction toward narration and abstraction, and about how his desire to lay claim to both of these artistic traditions has often left him in conflict. How to tell a good yarn but not be yoked HABIB PHILIP to it structurally?” The cast was very fortunate to work Bill T Jones first-hand with two illustrious, long-time company members, Jennifer Nugent and Shayla-Vie Jenkins, who shared the staging. The piece was especially challenging for its puzzle-like collage of break-neck movement phrases executed in ever-changing sequence, determined—à la John Cage—by chance procedures, all within the spatial confines of a taped floor-grid of 12 “boxes”. The piece also drew on original personal stories from the dancers, spoken live by different cast members at each performance. This was augmented by a multi-layered sound score, also sequenced by chance, and performed live by electronic musician/composer Jake Meginsky. The whole, exuberant, meticulously-calibrated cacophony unfolded each night beneath a large digital clock that visibly ticked away time’s passing, second by second, from 20 minutes down to the final zero. It was a wild COLEMAN JIM ride for audiences as well as performers! Shayla-Vie Jenkins leading rehearsal (413) 559-6622 893 West 893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002 MA Amherst, “Living and dying is not the big issue. The big issue is what www.fivecolleges.edu/dance you’re going to do with your time while you are here.” Five College Dance Department Dance College Five Dance Building, Hampshire College Hampshire Building, Dance —Bill T. Jones n Amherst College | Hampshire College | Mount Holyoke College | Smith College | University of Massachusetts Amherst1 FCDD ALUMNI BEBE MILLER IN RESIDENCE NEWS The FCDD welcomed celebrated choreographer Aretha Aoki (SC MFA ‘08) and performer Bebe Miller, who joined the Smith is a choreographer, performer, and, most recently, College faculty as the 2017 William Allan Neilson Assistant Professor of Professor. Over the course of the year, she presented Dance at Bowdoin College. three public events, each with her particular point of She was a co-curator of the 2016 Movement Research view and twist on the lecture format. In Syntax and Spring Festival Hand Flow: dimensional meaning-making through the body Written Note(s). arethaaoki.wordpress.com in motion, Bebe presented a hybrid performance- Rachel Aylward (UM ‘13) talk-conversation, and was joined by Bebe Miller most recently performed Company and FCDD faculty members Angie Hauser in Gypsy at the Maltz Jupiter (Associate Professor/Smith College) and Bronwen Theatre under the direction of Tony-nominated Marcia MacArthur (Guest Artist/UMass). Bebe used real- Milgrom Dodge. She is a time performance to help the audience see ‘how she proud new member of the Actor’s Equity Association. sees.’ In her second presentation, Performing Memory, www.rachayl.com Conjuring Body, Bebe and Angie performed a lecture- Christiana Axelsen (MHC in-performance, focusing on their seventeen-year ’03) performed in May collaboration and the exceptional autobiographical in Christopher Williams’s Il Giardino d’Amore at narrative of Bebe’s writings on dance, self, and history. Danspace Project, Saint CERVANTES JULIETA Bebe’s final offering, Body as Archive: regarding the Mark’s, NYC. Bebe Miller and Angie Hauser persistent essential friction of gesture, attention and Pele Bausch (HC ’96) memory, fit the more expected lecture format, yet taught the workshop “Experiments in Making still had her particular performative flare. As she read from her notes, dropping pages to the floor when she was finished, the audience was trans- & Describing”, at Move- ported from dance studio, to childhood home, to summer camp in Maine, to the theater stage and back again. This fall, Bebe returns to the FCDD, ment Research in fall 2016. She also facilitated where she and Angie will offer a repertory project for a cast of eighteen students from all five campuses. Spring Fieldwork 2017, with participants meeting “We’re all made up of these flashes of memory that can come uncalled-for, have no order and are sometimes not complete . but somehow they are weekly to share work at all stages of development what make us up as whole human beings.” —Bebe Miller n and exchange. Kim Brant (HC ’01) received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2017 Grants to Artists award and presented a new work, The Volume, at SculptureCenter, NUDGE: THE CREATIVE PROCESS WITH KINSUN CHAN as part of their In Practice exhibition, January 29– March 27 2017. www.kimbrandt.net Karen Scanlon Brown (UM ’81) is currently teaching at several local dance studios. She is also a dance teacher at Mount Wachusett Community College, and regularly choreographs and stage manages for local community theater and area high schools. She is also a first responder for the Boston Marathon. Shirah Burgey (UM ’11) earned her doctoral degree in Physical Therapy from Northeastern University. She continues to utilize her BA in Dance as a member of Urbanity Underground, where she performs and choreographs. She also works part time as a personal trainer, and participates in fitness competitions as a bikini competitor. Laurel Anne COLEMAN JIM (Kleinschmidt) Boyd (UM ’97, SC MFA ’00) opened Ascendance Inner “Repetition is freedom . now, do it again” were familiar watchwords from guest World Arts, a dance and artist Kinsun Chan during the exhilarating, exhausting rehearsal process for his expressive arts studio in new work, Nudge, created with ballet-trained FCDD dancers and premiered on Florence, MA. Along with colleagues Michelle the FCDD’s annual Faculty Concert in March. Kinsun drew inspiration from the Marroquin (HC ‘94, SC musical compositions of Canadian cellist and composer Julia Kent to create a MFA ‘10) and Stephen Tracey-Ursrpung (SC large ensemble dance notable for its feline dynamism and striking visual de- MFA ‘12), she presented signs. Kinsun is a Canadian-American artist whose works draw from a range of performances in June. When she is not teaching artistic disciplines, which he calls Multium Design. He studied art, graphic de- and mentoring young sign, and dance and has danced with the Louisville Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Bal- students in the community, let Zurich and Ballet Basel. n Laurel is home with her COLEMAN JIM two kids, Gabe (12) and Top: FCDD dancers in Nudge Charlotte (7). Bottom: Kinsun leading rehearsal Nichole Canuso (HC ’96) Dance Company, performed Pandaemonium FOOD for THOUGHT at Fringe Arts and New “Curiosity is a great antidote to fear.” York Live in September, —Meredith Monk and The Garden at A.R.T. in Cambridge in October. Continued on page 3 2 • FIVE COLLEGE DANCE DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER They performed The Garden of Forking Paths in HIP HOP TAKES OFF May at The Bok. Shih-Ming Li Chang (SC MFA ’86) and Lynn Frederiksen (SC MFA ’87) wrote a new book, Chinese Dance: In the Vast Land and Beyond, which will be published by Wesleyan University Press. Joy Davis (SC MFA ’15) joined the Dance Division faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2016. She has also been a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, and created commissioned works for Lindenwood University, Scottsdale Community College, and New Dialect Dance Company in Nashville. She taught Countertechnique and Improvisation at the American Dance Festival during summer 2017. Barbie Diewald (SC MFA ‘16) was named a 2016 Bogliasco Fellow, and did a five-week residency in Liguria, Italy. In 2017, she received grants from the Northampton Arts Council and NEFA’s New England Dance Fund. She recently accepted a two-year Guest Artist appointment at Mount Holyoke College. Her current work Eighteen DEREK FOWLES DEREK Refrains Re:Rhoda premiered this spring at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, with Hip hop is booming in the five colleges—classes are packed, additional performance student clubs are thriving and the FCDD has steadily dates at the APE Gallery in increased its offerings. This year featured several new courses as Northampton, New Dance Alliance’s Performance well as commissioned repertory projects with two of the country’s Mix Festival at University leading female hip hop performer/choreographers. Settlement in NYC, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie was in residence last fall at Smith Maura Donohue (SC ‘92, to create Swept In on FCDD dancers. She is a Bessie SC MFA ‘08) is Associate award-winning performer/choreographer based in NYC, who, Professor of Dance at Hunter College and a as artistic director of Ephrat Asherie Dance, has presented Faculty Fellow at Roosevelt work at the Apollo Theater, FiraTarrega, Jacob’s Pillow Dance House Public Policy Insti- tute. Her essay “Ambivalent Festival, New York Live Arts, Summerstage, and The Yard. Her Selves: Asian Female Body first evening length work, A Single Ride, received a Bessie nomi- in American Concert Dance” was published in nation in 2012 for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. She is a JIM COLEMAN JIM Contemporary Directions regular guest performer with Dorrance Dance and has worked in Asian American Dance and collaborated with Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin and (Wisconsin Press).

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