Jan. 24, 2014—The University of Oregon’s Department of Dance will present Dance 2014, the annual faculty dance concert, at 8 p.m. on Feb. 13, 14, and 15 in the Dougherty Dance Theatre in Gerlinger Annex on the UO campus.
Tickets are $10 general, $5 for students and seniors, available at the door or in advance from the UO Ticket Office.
In keeping with the department’s vision of dance as a growing, vital art form, the 2014 concert will feature the work of over fifty dancers, and will focus on mixed-media collaborations—some of them familial, others across artistic disciplines, and all of them compelling.
The new work "Bridge Series #2 - St. Johns" is the second dance in an ongoing collaboration between UO choreographer Walter Kennedy and award-winning videographer Bridget Murnane. Using Portland's historic St. John's Bridge as seeing and inspiration, the cast of sixteen dancers will use the bridge as a metaphor for the connection between past and present.
UO choreographer Brad Garner has collaborated with electronic music faculty member Chet Udell in the creation of his premiere dance film Nearby Far, which portrays space and time as bonding forces between two people. Garner will also premiere “Shrine of Echoes,” a group work that examines American society's fixation with fame.
Dance faculty members Christian Cherry and Shannon Mockli will collaborate on “The Fierce Urgency of Now” a new work combining music and dance that reveals the unique conversational elements between two minds that regularly create and teach together. Significantly, “The Fierce Urgency of Now” will feature Cherry and Mockli as performers, the only work in the concert to do so.
Dance professors Steven Chatfield and Jenifer Craig will each collaborate with their respective sons on artistic projects. Chatfield’s son Joshua will play guitar live on-stage to accompany his father’s piece “Another Little Story,” while Craig’s son John created the sound score for her work, “Letters in the Attic.”
“How will the next generation’s connections be passed along differently than when old scrapbooks and letters were stored boxes in the attic or basement?” department chair Jenifer Craig asks. “This work is a collaboration with the dancers, who shared photos and stories from their families, leading to he development of movements images based on the theme.”
Additional dances that will be presented as part of the concert will include Mockli’s “Meeting Ground” and Kennedy’s "Solo from the Deep Field.”