|
Mills College Dance Department presents
Thursday–Saturday
April 16–18, 2009
7:30 pm
Lisser Theater on the Mills campus
These performances will showcase the culminating thesis works of MA and MFA candidates in Mills College Dance Department. Throughout the two-year graduate program, students have been engaged in both physical and scholarly dance research, which is translated into a choreographic work that defines their interests and personal style. The final works represent an array of content and differing processes, and highlight the individual talents and choreographic statements of nine artists: Stephanie Ballas, Katy Becker, Kate Burton, Maria Teresa Houar, Denaya Kraines, Sophia Chakos-Leiby, Kristin Rooney, Anna Seagrave, and Elizabeth Sexe.
The Work
Recently performed at ODC San Francisco as part of the PILOT Program, Stephanie Ballas' Lapse creates a terrain of memory and examines what we lose and what we hold on to through time.
In be careful...you might fall in love with me, Katy Becker aims to capture authentic heart-inspired movement, thus exposing the individual inner stories of each of her dancers. "Your feelings matter" is her mantra in this unique piece that unites movement and the heart chakra.
In Yes, Kate Burton uses solo dances as symbols of strength, vulnerability, and tenderness. Delving into the individual, this work surveys the ramifications of staying, leaving, and saying Yes.
In Study #1, choreographer Maria Teresa Houar creates satire out of the familiar world of the classroom. Bordering on the absurd, her choreography works as metaphor to reveal how our learned social behaviors and interactions can become obstacles on our path toward personal attainment.
From pulling out hair to lifting ones self up with circus-like virtuosity, Denaya Kraines investigates the effects and coping mechanisms of day-to-day stress. Everything is Something Here conveys the mechanical tenseness and the tender desire for support experienced when our "to-do" lists get too long.
In Resonating Tongue, Sophia Chakos-Leiby explores issues of personal and collective voice within a context of cultural democracy and human relationship. The work draws on contemporary movement vocabulary influenced by post modern dance traditions and rhythms of the African Diaspora to investigate the ways in which the collective empowerment of community tentatively rests on the complex web of relationships that individuals have with themselves and others.
Everyday is Different, choreographed by Kristin Rooney, is about dealing with confined space, repetition, and coming and going. It's about making sense of sameness and coping with what you can't control.
Anna Seagrave's work Glamour Scuffs was inspired by the relationship between the fashion industry and women's bodies. Glamour Scuffs explores how ideas of sexuality and gender roles are negatively enforced by what society tells women to wear.
Liz Sexe explores spatial relationships in two specific places in her works, In and Of and People Watching Study 1. As a site-specific work that takes place in Toyon Meadow, In and Of uses found movement that represents a place of meeting, leaving, studying and playing. As a contrasting solo, People Watching Study 1, plucks gestures from the streets of Oakland and Berkeley and relocates the movement to the stage, creating a moving portrait of personalities.
 |
