Information on Fall Semester credit and non-credit dance classes is up! This fall, three new instructors are teaching non-credit dance classes at Harvard: Tai Jimenez, Kathleen Mitchell, and Libby Nye. New Assistant Dance Director Kristin Ing Aune will also be teaching Advanced Ballet. Find information on all Fall Semester instructors here.
This Fall the Dance Program is also offering two credit courses through the Committee on Dramatic Arts. Dance Director Elizabeth Weil Bergmann is teaching Dramatic Arts 121: Group Choreography, and Leslie Woodies is teaching Dramatic Arts 124: Dance in Musical Theatre. You can find more information on both of these classes in the 2008-2009 Courses of Instruction, and on the Dance Program website here.
Bhangra performs this Saturday as part of the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association’s FEAST this Saturday, December 8th 8:30-10:30 in Lowell Dining Hall. Visit the FEAST Facebook page for more information.
excerpts from George Balanchine’s Apollo and Emeralds staged by Heather Watts, former principal dancer, New York City Ballet
Martha Graham’s Heretic and Lamentation staged and performed by Christine Dakin, former principal dancer and artistic director laureate, Martha Graham Dance Company and members of HCDE
as well as a new collaborative work by Dance Director Elizabeth Bergmann and six student choreographers
and a new jazz piece by Jodi Allen
Friday, December 7, 8pm
Saturday, December 8, 3pm & 8pm
Harvard Dance Center
60 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tickets: Harvard Box Office
617-496-2222
and a dazzling mix of classical and contemporary ballet including:
Petipa’s La Bayadere
excerpts from George Balanchine’s Apollo and Emeralds
and premieres by Brenda Divelbliss, Joshua Legg, Coral Martin, and Claudia Schreier
Friday, December 14, 7pm
Saturday, December 15, 2pm & 7pm
New College Theatre
12 Holyoke Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
$7 students, $10 General Admission
Tickets available at the Harvard Box Office
Open 12 noon – 6pm, Tuesday – Saturday
(617) 496-2222
Directed by Caitlin Kakigi and Kevin Shee
Produced by Valentine Quadrat
Conducted by John Kapusta
This interview is part of our “On Making Dance” series which illustrates the wide ranging contributions that Harvard’s dance community makes to our art form on campus and around the world.
Harvard dancer Marin Orlosky ’07-’08 has done her share of choreography during her time here, making dances for student productions and concerts presented by the Dance Program. In her last semester, this super senior has taken on a new challenge as choreographer for Harvard’s production of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad.
“Oh Dad is a straight play, but the director wanted to incorporate movement in order to help tell part of the story,” notes Marin. It’s a parody of absurdist theatre, so it’s drama with dark comedic elements that borders on being cartoon-like in places. Choreographically, there is movement integrated as part of the show, but there aren’t ‘dance numbers’ like in a musical.”
The play is the first show to run in Harvard’s New College Theatre, and Office for the Arts is producing it. Most of the artistic team including playwright Arthur Kopit and director David Gammons are Harvard alumni, while the cast members are current undergraduates of the College.
Marin says, “I like working on plays as a choreographer because in dance, you have to create the world yourself. In theatre, you get to enter a world someone else created and find ways to add to their world. It’s an exciting change of pace.”
“Actors,” she notes also, “have a very different sense of their presence on stage. They can be precise in terms of their face and voice, but they don’t have awareness of their physicality and how it helps portray a character. Getting them to work that concept was my biggest challenge. It’s exciting though, because inthe collaborative process with nondancers, you get to sketch the concepts and leave room for them to fill in some blanks…and sometimes what you get are moments of genius.”
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad runs through this Saturday. Visit the Harvard Box Office for ticket information.
The Dance Program is pleased to present Claire Porter in her fun-filled one-woman show, Namely, Muscles.
This is a FREE performance! Join us, and bring your friends.
Saturday, October 27th 8PM
Harvard Dance Center
VOLUNTEER to usher at this performance, and receive a free ticket to the Dance Program’s December concert! (Email us at dance@fas.harvard.edu to volunteer.)
Namely, Muscles is a humorous look at the human body and how it works for us through the eyes of a dancer/poet.
Porter leaves “the audience…delirious with pleasure.” – Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times
This interview is part of our “On Making Dance” series which illustrates the wide ranging contributions that Harvard’s dance community makes to our art form on campus and around the world.
While interning at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival this summer, James Fuller ’10 found a connection between his Harvard concentration and his artistic passion.
He said, “I really had a chance to engage with dance academically because there were always two dance scholars at the Pillow this summer. They conducted pre-performance talks with choreographers and other dance experts and since I was running the sound equipment, I has able to hear most of those talks with people like Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, and Joan Acocella.”
It was dance and performance critic Suzanne Carbonneau who had a real impact on James. “Suzanne introduced me to a great bibliography on dance and the body of scholarly-dance related discourse that’s happening in America.
“Since I’m a philosophy concentrator, I was able to look at philosophy in relationship to dance—this was a largely Anglo-American perspective. I’d seen dance theory that was Foucault-based. But this was Wittgenstein-based, which is more aligned with I experience at Harvard. The material was a philosophy of aesthetics—particularly aesthetics in dance, and was related to a philosophy of language. These writers were asking questions like, ‘what is it for dance to have meaning?’”
James notes that post-Harvard, he has certainly considered dancing. And now thanks to his experience at the Pillow, he can also see himself as a dance scholar. “It was encouraging,” he smiled. “I know now that there is a real presence of literature on dance that is both academic and critical. There is a way to participate in the growing tradition of scholarship in dance.”
