HWS News
15 April 2024 Faculty Dance Concert 2024
A concert to celebrate the creation of three new dances choreographed for HWS Dance Ensemble students will be held on April 19 and 20.
The HWS Department of Dance and Movement Studies will present The Faculty Dance Concert 2024, “Inspirations,” on Friday and Saturday, April 19 and 20 at 7:30 p.m. in Deming Dance Theatre. The concert celebrates the creation of three new dances choreographed for HWS Dance Ensemble students, including 10 Arts Scholars, eight graduating seniors, and several first years, sophomores and juniors.
The concert opens with Professor Michelle Iklé’s “Kandinsky Project,” inspired by the abstract art of Wassily Kandinsky. Featuring eight dancers and the music of Ivan Malcolm ’24, the piece explores the shape associations, color theory, and musicality of Kandinsky’s paintings in vibrant, three-dimensional form. Iklé and Malcom collaborated on the creation of the score, each responding to Kandinsky’s work.
In the photo above, dancers perform Michelle Iklé’s “Kandinsky Project."
Professor Kelly Johnson will present six dancers in “That Piece with the Chairs” in a collaborative journey exploring the difference between witnessing and seeing. Department musician accompanist Ryan Russell will perform an original score live each night, supporting the dancers as they move through themes of listening, responding and belonging.
In the photo above, dancers perform “That Piece with the Chairs."
The Department is pleased to have guest artist and visiting ballet professor Stevie Oakes contribute the final piece to this year’s concert. “Murmuration” is a contemporary ballet for 12 dancers to the music of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Concerto in C Minor.” First conceived as a restaging of a 2016 ballet, Oakes writes that “it has turned into a deep collaboration with THESE dancers, celebrating their individuality and challenging some of the traditional ways of working with balletic vocabulary.” As the title suggests, the dancers sweep and swirl, coming in and out of synch with each other so that the group flocks like starlings at dusk.
For further information, please contact Department of Dance and Movement Studies Chair Professor Cynthia Williams at williams@hws.edu.
In the header photograph, dancers perform “Murmuration” by Stevie Oakes.
