News Releases
News From Lane Community College
For release February 10, 2010
Collaborations Dance Concert
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Sarah Ebert and Sarah Nemecek in a Video Image by New Media Artist Terry Holloway in their original composition "A Copy without an Original" |
Collaborations Dance 2010 takes the Main Stage at Lane's Performance Hall, Main Campus February 25, 26 and 27. Curtain for the concerts is 8:00pm.
Collaborations, the annual production of Lane Community College Dance Program, is directed by Bonnie Simoa. In addition to works choreographed by Lane Dance Faculty, the concert presents choreographers and dancers from Eugene and around the Pacific Northwest. The dance styles range from jazz to tap and modern dance, with talent from novice to professional. This annual production is an Oregon favorite, offering something for everyone!
This year the featured choreographers and their works are:
"Merci LaVaughn", a tap dance directed by Margo Van Ummersen for Lane tap students, is inspired by the virtuoso hoofer, LaVaughn Robinson(February 9, 1927 – January 22, 2008). Robinson, was an American tap dancer, choreographer, and teacher who perfected a high speed, low to the ground, a cappella style of dance that was characterized by elegance, precision,and clarity of sound.
"Under Your Breath" was choreographed by Margo Van Ummersen for Lane dance students. This new work explores a series of gestural non-sequiturs, odd dreamscapes full of partnering and entanglements. The work is set to an overlapping medley of horns, drums and voice. The awkward human fumblings include humorous romps along with more tender and primitive musings.
"A Copy Without an Original" is an original piece choreographed and performed by Sarah Ebert and Sarah Nemecek, with video imagery by Terry Holloway. Within the process of placing a close relationship under a microscope, an inherent conflict emerges. Through Holloway's video installation, duet becomes quartet and illuminates the flux between intimacy and isolation. Ebert and Nemecek ask the question: "How can we make peace with the past, find acceptance for the present, and let go and trust the future to unfold as it will?"
"Vibrations on a String", choreographed by Sarah Nemecek, is set on seven students of dance at Lane explores possibilities related to the subject of "String Theory". Two opposing qualities are represented in the piece, with acceptance of the notion they can both exist simultaneously and in harmony.
"Prelude to Spring" is Gutierrez-Garner's euphemistic reference to Winter. Danced by Lane's Bonnie Simoa and accompanied by the music of Sting and Purcell, three movements explore the transition of Autumn into Winter, Winter in its full, icy glory; and Winter's eventual conquest by Spring. Simoa becomes not a human character, but the Winter season itself, its elements revealed through movement and the morphing of Winter's costume as the dance progresses.
"RE place" Gutierrez-Garner's love of the American Jazz Dance vernacular becomes apparent in this exploration of transition and moving. Inspired in part by her move from Minnesota to Oregon, the feelings and emotions engendered by the disruptions of relocation and the response to a new place inform the interplay between the trio of Shannon Mockli, Sarah Ebert and Nicole Curry.
"Concatenation", an original piece by Lane's Bonnie Simoa , unfolds meaning through dimensional designs in space, textural relationships, and full-bodied gestural phrases. Accompanied by the gorgeous cello melodies of David Lang's World to Come, The Lane Dance Company weave stories and tales through the fabric of space with dancing that ranges from delicate to ravenous.
"Another Day" is a smooth blend of hip-hop, jazz and funk to Telepopmusik's house track "Breathe". Experience "Another Day" in the life of these dancers from Lane and Dance Northwest as they groove from one experience to the next.
Choreographer Profiles
Margo Van Ummersen received her M. A. in dance from the University if Oregon in 1991. In 1992, Margo was a member of a touring professional tap company directed by Janet Descutner. She has danced with choreographers Mary Oslund, Cathy Ward, Judith Howard, Kei TeKai, Eric Handman, and David Koteen, and improvisors Alito Alessi and Karen Nelson. Margo has been part of Lane Community College's Dance faculty since 1991, where she currently teaches Modern Technique, Tap and Looking at Dance.
Sarah M. Nemecek teaches part time at Lane Community College, and the University of Oregon. Sarah's dance background encompasses a variety of styles of movement, and references everything from classical to the avante-garde. Sarah graduated with her MFA in Dance from the University of Oregon in spring of 2006 with emphases in collaborative choreographic processes and somatic/ physiological integration for the dance classroom. Sarah has presented research at the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science Conference in 2004, and her writing has been published in the Journal of Dance Education.
Sarah Ebert holds an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Oregon and has continued her training through prestigious dance programs including New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Summer Dance Workshop and the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine. Ebert has danced professionally with wonderslamdance and Hedwig Dances in Chicago, and with Minh Tran and Company in Portland, Oregon. As an educator, Ebert has taught modern, ballet, jazz and hip hop dance classes at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Robert Morris College in Chicago, the University of Oregon and Lane Community College.
Terry Holloway is a New Media Artist from Oklahoma. His work ranges from narrative filmmaking to outdoor light installation. He has produced and directed 6 award-winning short films that are still circulating in festivals around the US. He is known for his technology based outdoor art shows placed at random around the community.
Cynthia Gutierrez-Garner received her B.F.A. Summa Cum Laude at the University of Minnesota in 1998. Her work has been produced at numerous theaters in Minneapolis, several Arizona venues, New York City's Miller Theater, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. She is a four- time winner of the Arizona Choreography Competition's Professional Division. Original works by Gutierrez-Garner have been commissioned by Macalaster College, Arizona State University, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Paul Conservatory for the Arts, the University of Minnesota and the Zenon Dance Company. She has taught on the dance faculties of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and Gustavus Adolphus College.
Bonnie Simoa received her MFA in Dance: Choreography and Performance from Mills College, and is a certified Continuum Movement teacher. In 1990-1996, she directed the Bonnie Simoa Dance Company, which performed nationally, and internationally in Germany and Indonesia. She has performed with Walter Kennedy, the Christopher Watson Dance Company, the Ellen Webb Dance Company, the Ellen Bromberg Dance Ensemble, and the Mills Repertory Company. In 1996, Bonnie began her studies of Indonesian dance and traveled to Bali where she studied the Legong and the Terunajaya, and to Java to study with Suprapto Suryodarmo dancing in temples, sacred places and Nature. At Lane, Bonnie teaches Modern, Ballet, Improvisation, Choreography, Rehearsal and Performance, Fluid Yoga, and Continuum Movement. She is currently director of the Lane Dance Program and employs a process-oriented approach to creating new work.
Anita Sanford has been involved in dance and gymnastics for over 25 years. At 18, she moved to Southern California where she discovered dance. Granted a scholarship to the Act III Academy of Performing Arts, she trained in ballet, hip-hop and jazz. Since 1991, Anita has worked as professional dancer in stage, video, television and film productions. She is the founder and director of Dance Northwest. This group of dedicated dancers produce the annual event, "Down 4 It". Anita currently teaches Dance Northwest company classes, at the EDGE and is in her 11th year at Lane Community College.
Tickets for Collaborations may be purchased on line at lanecc.edu/tickets or at the door the night of the show.
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PIO: Joan Aschim, aschimj@lanecc.edu 541-463-5591
For more information contact:
John Watson
Marketing and House Manager
Lane Community College
541-463-5161
watsonj@lanecc.edu
