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Into the Current
April 18, 19, and 20, 2013
Program A:
Thursday April 18 and Saturday April 20, 8:00 pm
Program B:
Friday April 19, 8:00 pm and Saturday April 20, 2:00 pm
Lisser Theatre
Admission:
Free to Mills Community w/ ID
$10 general, $8 seniors and non-Mills students w/ID
Tickets at the door.
Into the Current showcases the culminating thesis works of Mills College Dance Department MFA candidates Rebekah Brown, Adrianne Cherry, Garth Grimball, Rachel Holdt, Jeanette Male, Nataly Morales, Erica Pinigis, and Carmen Roman. Expressing both the choreographic and performance aspects of the degree, the performances present works in both solo and group choreography and provide an eclectic composition of pieces that defines each choreographer’s interests and showcases them in their own light.
Rebekah Brown
Replacement
My piece speaks to significant situations in our lives that are influenced by change. These situations may present obstacles to overcome, where relationships or memories are lost; however, they are replaced by new relationships and new memories. How each dancer deals with the obstacles are personal—and even though they may not expect the end result, change has happened and growth takes place as a result of the perpetual cycle of replacement in our lives.
“The ability to let go, and have nothing, in order to regain everything.” Rebekah Brown
Adrianne Cherry
My choreographic thesis has been inspired by the unconscious communication of the body and the connection of emotion through movement. In everyday life, beneath all verbal communication there is an underlying conversation being expressed by our bodies, through posture and gesture. This unconscious communication of the body provides a deeper insight into the individual’s emotional mindset. I wanted to play with the idea of the inner monologue being expressed fully through the body within different relationships and different dancers. With this unconscious body language, there is also the idea of motor matching and empathetic response. When having a conversation our bodies naturally configure to the same posture and positioning of the person we are speaking to. Although we may not realize it our body is taking in information and in turn provides us with an empathetic response.
Garth Grimball
My piece has six dancers and is to the music of Darius Milhaud, “La creation du monde.” The choreography has a direct relationship to the music. The inspiration for the piece comes from the sociobiological studies of EO Wilson, specifically on the genetics of kinship. In a write up on Wilson’s research in The New Yorker the term eusociality is used to describe the adaptations a species must progress through in order to exhibit kinship. Those adaptations include formation of a group, division of labor, collective rearing of offspring, defense of nest. These are the adaptations that structure the development of my choreography.
Rachel Holdt
s.y.n.a.p.s.e. Groupthink, social networking, feedback loops, and community are contemporary elements of everyday life at the forefront of today’s society. It is my intention to bring these schemes into the spotlight. s.y.n.a.p.s.e will focus on the interplay between independent agendas and the larger global communities of which we are all a part. Social psychosis theory investigates the ideas of how and why people either choose to live with a self-centered lifestyle or take part of the larger common good through the individual choices they make. In this work, I highlight the soloist against the group, investigating the results of multiple agendas.
Jeanette Male
Into the Mirror explores different states of liminality that relate to the physical and psychological boundaries of experience. Driven by choices of fight or flight, acceleration and hesitation, the work passes over a threshold and into the shadows.
Nataly Morales
The origins of my piece began with a project I did in Contemporary Choreography class. I began with the idea of bodies of knowledge. How do they shift, evolve and reproduce into new, abstracted, or altered bodies of knowledge? How are they effected and what by? The process for this piece began with a specific movement vocabulary and morphed from there. I use ballet and modern dance vocabulary with gestural movements to create the movement and was inspired but the dancers’ strengths and personalities.
Erica Pinigis
Artifact #1: Bendrija is the result of a deeply collaborative and exploratory process. The movement and was derived from the dancers' improvisations based on Russian Folk stories and is structured to highlight the dances both as individuals and as a close community. The music was constructed similarly after a long improvisation period in rehearsal with the dancers. As a cultural artifact of the cast and collaborators, Bendrija arose from our idiosyncrasies and values.
Carmen Roman
Flores amarillas que brotan del vientre (Yellow Flowers That Pour From Your Belly)
I have developed a contemporary elaboration of an Afro-Peruvian Landó. The Landó is an Afro-Peruvian dance seldom performed. As a musical genre, the Landó is more popular than its dance counterpart. The traditional dance is said to be a matrimonial dance derived from the Brazilian Lundú, a couple’s dance that arrived with the slaves from Angola whose most salient movement is the pelvic bump. Elaborating on the function of the Landó, a matrimonial ritual, this piece adds elements of Ochun (deity in African religions systems, not practiced in Peru) the goddess of love, fertility, and beauty; as well as elements of modern dance.
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