Purdue Dance Company to present Winter Works concert
November 21, 2014
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue Contemporary Dance Company will present its Winter Works 2014 dance concert Dec. 12-13.
PCDC is the resident dance company in the Division of Dance, housed in the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. Faculty and students created seven new dance works this semester for the company.
“This fall original music was created by visual and performing arts’ sound design students for all of the dance works,” said Carol Cunningham-Sigman, division dance chair. “This winter’s performances include a wild romp with superheroes, visual tracings created with latex bands attached to dancers’ bodies and yellow balloons floating amid paper-clad dancers.”
Performances are at 7:30 each evening with a matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Dec. 13. All performances will take place in the Nancy T. Hansen Theatre in Purdue's Yue-Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts. Tickets are $14 for adults, $11 for students and $7 for those 12 and younger. Tickets can be purchased at all Purdue box offices (765-494-3933) and through Ticketmaster (or 1-800-745-3000).
The dances are:
* "Ka-Boom," a high-energy dance work choreographed by Cunningham-Sigman. Action-packed movements, powerful tableaus and a superhero soundtrack evoke images of comic book characters.
* The work titled “47.6097°N, 122.3331°W” is a choreographic collaboration between faculty members Melodie Carr and Kathleen Hickey. This work explores the abstract confines within relationships. The dancers shape this work utilizing their physicality, the rhythms generated by their bodies and their kinesthetic sensibilities.
* Holly Jaycox, faculty member in the dance division, has created a work for six women called “4 Points don’t a Line.” This work, which incorporates four stools into its architecture, explores identity in a social group and how individuals respond to social mores. The sound score was created by Purdue students using only clips from the recorded voice of dance division accompanist Jamie Newman.
* “Almost the End,” choreographed by faculty member Renee Murray, is inspired by “Blood and Milk,” a book of short stories by Sharon Solwitz, an associate professor of English. It is an abstract look into the process of letting go.
* Faculty member Mary Beth Van Dyke choreographed "The Longed For Thing.” In this work set on nine female dancers, Van Dyke explores the idea of home as a place and source for a wide array of emotions.
* Chelsey Garn, a senior majoring in psychological sciences with a dance minor, created her first main stage work, titled “Beyond This Point.” This dance explores group mentality versus individuality, and the tension that resides in this struggle between independence and conformity. The individuals fight to claim their independence, but, ultimately, they are drawn back into the realm of group mentality.
* In “(re)Bound,” choreographer Rachel Rapkin, senior professional writing major and dance and organizational leadership skills minor, explores the development of shapes throughout the stage using the tension and release of latex bands. Dancers create images derived from group movements with the constraints of the prop.
Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu
Source: Carol Cunningham-Sigman, 765-494-5993, carolec@purdue.edu
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