The Rocket

Issue date: 10/19/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Submitted Photo [Click to enlarge]

The curtain will open on this year's annual SRU Faculty and Guest Artists Dance Concert in Miller Auditorium at 8 p.m. on Oct. 23.

This year, the faculty have choreographed dance works for students at SRU and their special guests, including both a Pittsburgh-based dance troupe called Labco Dance and a dance troupe from an Indian temple in Pittsburgh directed by Jaya Mani, SRU's world dance expert.

"Every year it's a different concert," said Jennifer Keller, an associate dance professor at SRU. "I'm very excited this year to be bringing up Labco Dance."

Labco will perform two works, one created by New York City choreographer Sarah Skaggs, and one from Keller.

"In this concert, the audience is going to see a 6-minute excerpt from a 20-minute work that I've made for (Labco)," Keller said. "I love to work with athletic partnering, so there is a lot of lifting, flying and leaning into each other."

The full-length work, which will be performed by Labco at Hazlet Theater in Pittsburgh from Nov. 30 through Dec. 2, uses technological set pieces designed by SRU students, including an 8-foot sculpture made from old television sets that will show a live feed of the performance while it's happening.

"Dancers work with the idea of space and boundaries between bodies," Keller said. "They really try to compress those spaces down to nothing."

Keller also choreographed a modern dance duet to be performed by two SRU dance majors, senior Angel Streitman and junior Todd Englander.

"There's a lot of lifts and weight bearing," Streitman said.

Also included in the concert will be two dances created by guest artists.

"Falling" by Helanius Wilkins and Lar Lubovitch's "Marimba" will both be performed by SRU students.

"Falling" is a contemporary piece that Streitman is also performing in.

"For a lot of the modern dance pieces, it's up to the audience to interpret what they want (from it)," Streitman said.

She said the audience is supposed to get the feeling that the performers are dancing on clouds.

"They gave us texture images to work with and the sensations of feelings that we are supposed to portray," Streitman said. "We fall on and off stage during every transition."

Continued...

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