2008 Woodie Awards
Master Choreographers commands the stage
Dana Harrington
Issue date: 2/15/07 Section: Life!
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This past weekend, students performed in the impressive Master Choreographers dance concert. This annual concert featured works by faculty and guest artists and was presented by the Muhlenberg Dance Association. The show ran Feb. 8-10 in the Empie Theatre for a large and very receptive audience of peers, faculty, staff, family, members of the community and prospective students.
The performance opened with "Stride" (2007), a jazz piece choreographed by the College's own Karen Dearborn, Professor and Director of Dance and Artistic Director of the concert, and Samuel Reyes, Lecturer. It was a great collaboration. The movement was smooth but with sharp hits that the dancers nailed perfectly, and it provided a nice intermingling of hip-hop style and jazz technique.
Second was Keith Thompson's "Raw Images" (2007). Thompson is a guest artist who toured with the Trisha Brown Company for ten years and currently works with Creach/Koester, Bebe Miller and danceTactics. The piece had a beautiful fluidity and picturesque quality to it, creating intricate shapes in motion. It also explored innovative partnering as the dancers expertly rippled off of each other's movements and filled in one another's spaces.
"Collapsing Points" (2006), choreographed by Kathleen Bibalo, a Lecturer at the College, was next. A contemporary pointe piece, it fused classical ballet skills with edgy jazz and modern movement. The women's hot pink tutus and men's bright turquoise shirts looked striking on stage, and the audience was wowed by the dancers' technical feats and difficult lifts.
The first act closed with Assistant Dance Professor Charles O. Anderson's "in the decadence of forgetting" (2007). This Afrocontemporary work began with thought-provoking words written by Anderson himself, which made the audience consider "the vain act of looking the other way" and "peace without confrontation." The dancers carried a strong pulse throughout the piece which climaxed at the end, when all eighteen of them filled the stage for a powerful, non-stop unison section.
The performance opened with "Stride" (2007), a jazz piece choreographed by the College's own Karen Dearborn, Professor and Director of Dance and Artistic Director of the concert, and Samuel Reyes, Lecturer. It was a great collaboration. The movement was smooth but with sharp hits that the dancers nailed perfectly, and it provided a nice intermingling of hip-hop style and jazz technique.
Second was Keith Thompson's "Raw Images" (2007). Thompson is a guest artist who toured with the Trisha Brown Company for ten years and currently works with Creach/Koester, Bebe Miller and danceTactics. The piece had a beautiful fluidity and picturesque quality to it, creating intricate shapes in motion. It also explored innovative partnering as the dancers expertly rippled off of each other's movements and filled in one another's spaces.
"Collapsing Points" (2006), choreographed by Kathleen Bibalo, a Lecturer at the College, was next. A contemporary pointe piece, it fused classical ballet skills with edgy jazz and modern movement. The women's hot pink tutus and men's bright turquoise shirts looked striking on stage, and the audience was wowed by the dancers' technical feats and difficult lifts.
The first act closed with Assistant Dance Professor Charles O. Anderson's "in the decadence of forgetting" (2007). This Afrocontemporary work began with thought-provoking words written by Anderson himself, which made the audience consider "the vain act of looking the other way" and "peace without confrontation." The dancers carried a strong pulse throughout the piece which climaxed at the end, when all eighteen of them filled the stage for a powerful, non-stop unison section.