Faculty Dance Concert set for April 18 to 21

Western Washington University’s Department of Theatre and Dance will present its annual dance faculty concert on April 18-21 in Western’s Performing Arts Center Mainstage Theater.

The concert will feature three world premieres by Western’s Dance Program faculty members Penny Hutchinson, Pam Kuntz, and Rick Merrill, as well as Liz Gerring Dance Company’s “she dreams in code” danced by Western Dance Program students.

The evening will begin with “Yatra,” which is Sanskrit for journey. Along with Penny Hutchinson’s choreography to music by John Adams, 13 dancers worked intensely with writing and developing movement phases based on memories, things to let go of, and, in the exuberant last movement, the idea of leaving no one behind.

Pam Kuntz will debut her new work, “Persist,” as the second piece of the program.

 “I have enjoyed working with nine very talented young women on a piece for this year’s dance faculty concert,” said Kuntz. “Together we have created a piece that uses their individual voices and explores the idea of women persisting.”

Rick Merrill will round out the first half of the concert with his piece, “Thirst.” Merrill’s piece is a dance of longing - yearning to enjoy and celebrate the magic of the senses and perception, of the wisdom and empathy that come through moving and being moved, and of living fully embodied with your mind, heart and body united.

The second half of the concert will feature Western students in “she dreams in code,” an original work choreographed by Liz Gerring and performed by the Liz Gerring Dance Company, based in New York City. Members of the company enjoyed a fall 2012 teaching residency on Western’s campus where they set the work on dancers from the department, teaching an abbreviated version of “she dreams in code” for the students to perform as part of the annual dance faculty concert.

Since its inception in 1998, Liz Gerring Dance Company has been exploring non-narrative, abstract movement, often derived from natural gesture. “She dreams in code,” was presented as a world premiere by The Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City in October 2011, at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the summer of 2012 and again at New York's 92Y Harkness Dance Festival 2013 last month. In a recent “New York Times” review by Alastair Macaulay, “she dreams in code” was described as a “work (that) has the texture of both a game and an experiment, happily taking movement this way and that as if testing its properties.”

The dance faculty concert will run Thursday through Saturday, April 18-20, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 21, at 2 p.m. in the PAC Mainstage Theater.

Tickets are available through the WWU Box Office and are $12 general admission; $10 seniors, Western faculty and staff; and $8 students.

Box Office hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and one hour prior to the performance.

For individual tickets or disability accommodations, contact the WWU Box Office at (360) 650-6146 or visit http://www.tickets.wwu.edu.

For more information on the Liz Gerring Dance Company, please visit www.lizgerringdance.org. For more information about the dance faculty concert, visit http://www.wwu.edu/theatredance/ or call (360) 650-3876.