DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA’S DANCE PROGRAM TO PRESENT:
FALL DANCE CONCERT
Kim Brooks Mata, Producer and Artistic Director
November 21-23, 2024, at 8:00 p.m., Culbreth Theatre
The Dance Program of the Department of Drama at the University of Virginia presents its Fall Dance Concert on November 21, 22, and 23, at 8:00 p.m. in the Culbreth Theatre. We invite you to join us in the celebration of seven new student and faculty works performed by UVA and local community members. Choreographers for this concert address themes of collaboration and support across a diverse set of experiences and cultures. The works invite us to consider the complexities of “being in relationship with”, and explore a variety of ways to navigate, process, and acknowledge events from our individual and collective journeys.
Two pieces in the Fall Concert were choreographed by Lecturers in Dance, Demetia Hopkins and Emily Wright. Hopkins’ piece, Ode to Light, is inspired by composer and musician Don Pullen’s album titled “Ode to Life (a tribute to George Adams),” and began as an exploration of the glimmers of gratitude past the darkness of grief. “Whether grieving an ancestor, the end of a relationship, or a part/phase of your life that has passed,” said Hopkins, “it is imperative to look forward to love, hope, and joy, and that which has the power to lighten life’s often heavy load.” The piece also includes original poetry written and performed by Hopkins.
Wright’s piece features an intergenerational cast of community dancers and dance program students, which creates an engaging dynamic as each person brings a unique perspective and energy to the work. “We developed the material together through a variety of task-oriented processes,” Wright says, “so the movement signature of each person is inscribed in the work.” As integral as these distinct movement vocabularies are to the piece, they are harmonized through moments of unison, as well. Wright has enjoyed the genuinely collaborative nature of the work and the process. “This dance wouldn’t be the same if even one person was missing,” she added.
Emma Block, a third-year Anthropology Indigenous Worlds Concentration, Environmental Thought & Practice major and Dance minor, also offers a piece centered on collaboration, a call to those before us and after. The work reaches forward and backward into the histories and stories of the humans and more-than-humans that perpetually define us. Block aims to uplift marginalized stories and cultural dances through this piece. This work has included collaboration beyond the dancers and choreographer, integrating what Block notes as “powerful and radical creative forces. These contributions including individuals in the Black & Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute (https://www.biffinstitute.com), Katie Schetlick from the dance program, Noel Lobley from the music department, Minh Nguyen and others from UVA Bluegrass, ‘X’ from the Black Power Station situated in South Africa (https://theblackpowerstation.art/), and an extraordinarily infinite and cyclical list of nameable and unnameable forces.”
Three of the student choreographers this fall are in their fourth year of study at UVA. To be wild and perfect for a moment, by Eleanor Byrd, a Mathematics major, Dance and Data Science minor, was inspired by “moments in life that are often taken for granted: small, simple things that combine to make a great contribution to your overall happiness.” The piece features movements inspired by the environments of these moments, including nature and connection with others. Byrd is particularly grateful for the vulnerability the dancers were willing to share in the process, bringing their own memories and movement vocabulary to the work.
Deneishia Haralson, a Kinesiology major and Dance minor, created Return to the Previous, a piece inspired by her own experience sustaining injuries from being hit by a car as a pedestrian, and “allowing the support from those around me to give me the strength to continue to push through my healing journey.” The process involved navigating movement while reckoning with pain and relying on the support of one another. Haralson hopes to honor and reflect in this work the unwavering support of her family and friends throughout her own intensely challenging experience.
In the Tides, by Emma Strebel, explores a different kind of journey, navigating change and decision-making. Strebel, a Global Studies Interdisciplinary major and Dance minor, questions the impact of external forces on the course of our lives, and the myriad emotions that exist within change. The movements are often inspired by water imagery, illustrating “how the constant, at many times unpredictable movements of the ocean in many ways resemble the journey of life and the unstoppable passage of time.”
This semester’s concert also includes a short dance film created by second-year Naomi Diener, a Youth and Social Innovation major and Dance minor. Diener created the piece, Grounded Reality, for a project in her Screendance course this semester. Brooks Mata, instructor of the course and Director of the concert, said that she invited Diener to screen this piece because, “although Diener is new to the medium of filmmaking, her aesthetic and choreographic sensitivities are heavily evident in the filming and editing of this work.” Brooks Mata thought that the themes and the level of the work aligned nicely with her peers making it a fitting addition to the concert.
Tickets for the Fall Dance Concert can be purchased online at artsboxoffice.virginia.edu, by calling 434-924-3376, or in person at the UVA Arts Box Office, located in the lobby of the UVA Drama Building, open Tuesday through Friday from noon until 5:00 p.m. Tickets are $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and UVA Faculty/Staff, and $5 for students. Full-time UVA students may receive one free ticket if reserved at least 24 hours in advance of their desired performance date.
Free parking on performance nights is available in the Culbreth Road Parking Garage, located next to the Drama Building.