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Dance festivals are breaking out all over
Have feet, will travel, just ask the local troupes that will be stepping on stages near and far.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
DAYTON — Local dance companies won't be cooling their heels now that the 2007-08 season is over.
It's festival time.
Extras
South Dayton Dance Theatre will host nine other troupes from Ohio and the northeastern states during the 2008 Regional Dance America Northeast Festival May 22-24 at the Victoria Theatre.
The company usually in residence at the Victoria, the Dayton Ballet, will help launch a promising new Midwestern showcase on the same three days, the first Spring to Dance Festival in St. Louis.
The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company will be part of the 75th annual American Dance Festival June 5-July 20 in Durham, N.C.
More about the festivals
South Dayton Dance Theatre will dedicate the RDA Northeast event to Dayton Ballet founder Josephine Schwarz, who was a pioneer in the regional dance movement. The Ohio Arts Council-supported event will include classes, seminars and performances.
Festival adjudicator will be Dayton native Jeffrey Gribler, who studied with Schwarz, danced with the Dayton Ballet and went on to a long career with the Pennsylvania Ballet. Faculty will include Ballet Chicago director, Dayton native and former New York City Ballet dancer Daniel Duell, choreographer Luis Fuente, Jon Rodriguez, DCDC director Debbie Blunden-Diggs, Wright State University dance faculty members Teressa McWilliams and Gina Walther and present or former DCDC dancers DeShona Pepper-Robertson, Terence Green and William McClellan Jr.
Best way for the general public to experience part of it will be one of the three nightly performances in the Victoria Theatre: 7:30 Thursday and Friday and the gala showcase at 7 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $20 for the first two and $25 for the finale. Call (937) 228-3630.
For more about RDA honor company SDDT, which was founded in 1986 by Elizabeth Karns and is directed by Gigi Gardner-Schlesinger, call (937) 435-5052.
The Dayton Ballet's Jennifer and Richard Grund will be featured in two duets in St. Louis: "The Voodoo That You Do," from the Stephen Mills ballet "The Naughty Ones," and Dermot Burke's "Still Lifes."
"Spring to Dance," which is patterned after New York's Fall to Dance Festival, will be co-sponsored by Dance St. Louis and the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It will include more than 30 dance companies from throughout the Midwest in performances on two stages — the Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall and the smaller Lee Theater. Tickets are only $10 for all performances.
The Dayton Ballet duo will dance in the 7 p.m. May 22 show at the Anheuser-Busch Hall, along with the Joffrey Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Giordano Jazz Dance and Ballet Memphis. Other companies in the festival include: the Cincinnati Ballet, BalletMet Columbus, St. Louis Ballet, Nashville Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, Dance Kaleidoscope, the James Sewell Ballet of Minneapolis and Ragamala. Call (314) 516-4949 or (866) 516-4949.
DCDC's latest appearance at ADF will be in a program at 8 p.m. June 8-10 in the Page Auditorium at Duke University that will also include the Jose Limon company in Jiri Kylian's "Evening Songs" and Limon's "Chaconne" and "The Moor's Pavane." DCDC will perform Asadata Dafora's solo Awassa Astrige/Ostrich, Eleo Pomare's "Las Desenamoradas" and Talley Beatty's "Mourner's Bench."
Also at ADF this summer will be the companies of Paul Taylor, Trisha Brown, David Parsons, Martha Graham, Lar Lubovitch, Ronald K. Brown, Doug Varone and Bill T. Jones, along with Alvin Ailey II, Pilobolus, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Eiko & Koma, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and Meredith Monk. For more information, call (919) 684-4444.
Other festivals
"Dance Matters: Speaking of Moves," the annual OhioDance Festival, will finally be held May 31 at Ohio State University in Columbus. Originally scheduled for March, it was canceled because of the late-winter blizzard. Classes in various disciplines will be offered from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Sullivant Hall, annual awards will be presented from 5:30 to 7 p.m., and the showcase performance will be presented at 7:30 p.m. in Sullivant Theatre. Featured choreographers will include Dayton natives Rodney Brown, a former member of DCDC, and Cara Surico, who got her start with South Dayton Dance Theatre. Call (614) 224-2913 for more information.
The Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass., will feature American companies including Garth Fagan Dance, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, Alonzo King's Lines Ballet, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project and Lar Lubovitch, plus an international array of troupes from France, Africa, the Netherlands, England, Italy, Brazil, Sweden, India and Japan. Call (413) 243-0745 for more information.
Summer dance reading from the University Press of Florida
"Remembering Nureyev: The Trail of a Comet" by Rudi van Dantzig; 304 pages, 42 photographs; $34.95.
"The Fosse Style" by Debra McWaters; 384 pages, 355 illustrations; $34.95.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or
tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
