Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth presents the 6th annual Modern Dance Festival at The Modern |
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| This summer, the 6th annual Modern Dance Festival at The Modern will once again celebrate the connections between modern dance, art, and music at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Produced by Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth in collaboration with the museum, the festival features new dance works from CD/FW and a variety of guest artists, a lecture and book signing by choreographer and former Merce Cunningham dancer Jeff Slayton, and a dance shorts film and video festival, among other events. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CD/FW Dance Exchange: A Choreographers Showcase
Friday and Saturday, July 17-18, 8pm. Grand Lobby
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Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth will perform Kerry Kreiman's ground to air signals which premiered on the Barefoot Brigade Dance Festival at the Bath House Cultural Center in April. A quartet created for Breanna Kimbley, Sarah Newton, Claudia Orcasitas, and Allison Perkins, the dance is structured as two simultaneous duets exploring the mysterious "ties that bind" between people, whether near or far. CD/FW artistic director Kerry Kreiman will perform the premiere of Verbal Translation by guest choreographer Jeff Slayton (Long Beach). Set to music by Austin composer William H. Meadows, "Verbal Translation" was created when Kreiman traveled to Long Beach last summer. Kreiman's artistic friendship with Slayton began many years ago as a student at the American Dance Festival, where she was selected for his repertory class in two different summers. Back in the studio together as choreographer/dancer for the first time since 1990, Slayton and Kreiman have enjoyed this process, and hope to continue their artistic collaboration in some capacity in the future. (artist bios) |
Rebecca Gose Enghauser (Georgia), whose guest solo appearances with CD/FW in Fall 2006 at Orchestra Hall were met with great acclaim, returns with a duet entitled Shuffle Play. A former principal dancer with Garth Fagan Dance, Enghauser serves on faculty at the University of Georgia in addition to continuing her professional career as a choreographer and performer. Collaborator and fellow University of Georgia faculty member Denise Posnak (Georgia) will appear with her in this light-hearted duet set to Texas swing and country music. Succumbing to the delicious, soaring vocals and driving rhythms of popular country/folk songs from the likes of Hazel Dickens and Bob Wills, choreographers Rebecca Gose Enghauser and Denise Posnak created dance vignettes that play off the songs' phrasings, rhythms and structures, yet strive for an independent, thematic voice. (artist bios) |
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Curtiss Wesley (Dallas) makes his debut on the CD/FW Dance Exchange with his new contemporary dance company Liquid Movement in the premiere of A: I; OMO (Allein: Interpretation: One, Of Many, Of One) -- a collaborative work created with visual artist Gregory J. Singletary, and based on a series of Singletary's paintings. Singletary began the "ALLEIN" lingual series as counterpoint to messages of intellectual subversion perpetuated by current societal paradigms, customs, and traditions. Utilizing influences of lingual means of interpretation, and harmonic existence with natural environments (evident in studies of pagan and indigenous cultures worldwide, coupled with observed patterns of the natural world), a lexis of characters evolved to serve the function of reuniting the world of humanity with the world of the natural. The word "Allein," German, meaning "alone," has been reinterpreted as "without ornament," and indicates -- with regard to the ALLEIN lingual series -- a philosophy of living within the knowledge of an interconnection of all things. (artist bios) |
Phase 2 Dance Ensemble will preview a work in progress by co-artistic director Lacreacia Sanders entitled Un...Break...Able -- the quartet explores the concept of being "broken" both physically and mentally, and pushes the boundaries of what our individual bodies can and desire to do. Phase 2 Dance Ensemble and many of the dancers/choreographers affiliated with the company have made numerous appearances on CD/FW concerts over the years, and have also collaborated with CD/FW and other members of the Barefoot Brigade coalition. (artist bios) |
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Choking the Earth? Just Take Off Those Clothes and Join the Water in D-Flat by Shelley Cushman is a collaborative group work with eight dancers and music composition/remix by Jesse Coulter of Vortexas. This work juxtaposes the everyday hustle and bustle of the human footprint left on the earth with the beauty of the healing earth we continue to destroy. Ultimately we will all be diluted into the earth's water and swim with the whales who "sing" in D-flat. Local audiences may remember Cushman's slow-motion dance happening during a previous festival, when her dancers evolved through a 3-hour installation scattered inside and outside the museum. A nationally-recognized Denton-based choreographer, she has also appeared with CD/FW at Orchestra Hall. (artist bios) |
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| Jeff Slayton photo by Patricia Reynolds |
Dancing On the Edge: My years with Cunningham and Farber
Saturday July 18, 2pm. Auditorium
Jeff Slayton will teach a master class on Sunday July 19 on the TCU campus: more information
Choreographer/dancer/teacher/author Jeff Slayton will share insights from his career, highlighting his many years with Viola Farber (both as a company member and former spouse), his tenure with Merce Cunningham, and the influences of working with them on his own choreography. A short video screening of a tribute to Viola will be featured, and Slayton will autograph copies of his book "The Prickly Rose: A Biography of Viola Farber" which will be available for purchase. The book includes photographs from a performance residency featuring Farber's "Brazos River" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 1976. Slayton has taught and choreographed throughout the U.S., Europe and South America, and was on the faculty at California State University, Long Beach for twenty-one years. He is also working on two new dance books. (Jeff Slayton bio)
Modern Dance 101 (lecture-performance)
Saturday July 25, 1pm. Auditorium
Members of the CD/FW company provide an introduction to the basic philosophies and styles of modern dance.
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| The Hidden (from Dance Screen Sweden) photo by Bogdan Szyber |
Saturday July 25, 2pm. Auditorium
See some of the best Swedish dance films of the last 13 years selected for an eclectic short film series. "The Rain" -- Pontus Lidberg's collaboration with Christopher Wheeldon -- has been screened and praised repeatedly around the world, and Klara Elenius' "Insight" was shown last fall by the Dance Films Association at The New Museum of Contemporary Art. Other titles include: "The Hidden" by Jonas Akerlund, "Rewind" by Magne Antonsen, and "Weightless" by Erika Janunger. (film reviews)
The Butterfly Effect and Other Beautiful Catastrophes
Saturday - Sunday August 1 - 2, performances at 1pm and 3pm. Grand Lobby
A collaboration between Austin composer William H. Meadows and choreographer Kerry Kreiman and CD/FW members, this collaborative work will use interactive technology to transform dancers' movements and gestures into sound using Nintendo WiiMotes and wireless microphones and transmitters. Meadows will use a variety of programs he has constructed using Kyma DSP software to exploit the buttons and accelerometers on the WiiMotes, which have been configured for real time control of LIVE software. Utilizing ideas from chaos and catastrophe theory as part of a chance structure, each performance will be a unique event.
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| Horizon of Exile photo by Isabel Rocamora |
Dance on Camera: Dance Shorts (short films)
Saturday August 1, 2pm. Auditorium
See some of the most popular short films from the Dance On Camera Festival 2009. CD/FW is a Domestic Touring Partner with the Dance Films Association of New York City. The Dance on Camera films are presented as part of the touring program for the Dance On Camera Festival co-produced by the Dance Films Association and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with support of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Horizon of Exile by Isabel Rocamora, United Kingdom/Spain (2007, 22 min.)
A journey of two women across timeless desert landscapes is punctuated by voice testimonies of Iraqi exiles. Set to a soundtrack by Jivan Gasparyan with the hypnotic voice of Surma Hamid, an Iraqi exile now living in London, the bodies betray a serene violence, travelling as though released from consciousness or gravity, falling and recuperating, haunted by an irrepressible past.
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The Mysteries of Nature by Dahci Ma, South Korea (2008, 10 min.) The 2009 Dance On Camera Jury Winner -- "Torn into bits and gone with the wind." |
| Shake Off by Hans Beenhakker, The Netherlands (2007, 9 min.) Prince Credell solos in this HD recorded dance film in one continuous shot. The camera follows an exceptional dancer as he moves magically through different times and spaces. The athleticism and bold surprises lure the viewer into a dynamic world which teeters between the impossible and the real. The dancer can't or won't stop dancing till he finds his goal. Best Artist Performance Award at Golden Lion International Film Festival. Now playing twice a day before "Tessunstand" by Mijke de Jong in theatres in The Netherlands. |
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