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Award-winning choreographer Elizabeth Streb brings her eponymous company and its singular PopAction style to Lafayette’s Williams Center for the Arts Wednesday, Sept. 13 at 8 p.m.
Tickets for the performance are free for Lafayette students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $20 for the public, and may be obtained by calling the Williams Center for the Arts box office at (610) 330-5009.
Other performances in the Footlights Series are Philadanco Wednesday, Nov. 8, $20; Big Dance Theater: The Other Here Friday, Jan. 26, and Saturday, Jan. 27, $18; and Men-Jaro Tuesday, March 20, $18. A subscription to the Footlights Series costs $59, a 22 percent savings off the single ticket price. Tickets for a special non-subscription performance of Ping Chong and Company’s Undesirable Elements Tuesday, Nov. 14, are $12.
In addition to the Wednesday performance, Elizabeth Streb will offer a free presentation Tuesday, Sept. 12 at noon in the Williams Center room 108.
Streb’s unique performance style, PopAction, intertwines dance, athletics, extreme sports, and Hollywood-style stunt work into choreography focusing on pushing beyond the conventional limits of the human body. Her creations summon an aesthetic of grace, the use—or defiance—of gravity, and the basic principles of time, space, and human movement to create a distinct way of moving, an idiosyncratic vocabulary, and a visceral performance experience, resulting in work that is compelling and unforgettable.
Founded in 1979, STREB tours extensively throughout the United States and internationally presenting performances and residencies, and conducts year-round activity at its home studio/laboratory in Brooklyn. Classes are taught for children and adults, and all company activities—rehearsals, demonstrations, workshops—are open to the public, reflecting Streb’s commitment to making the arts part of everyday life.
“We want to be part of the general public’s daily activity,” she says. “We want them to see us invent new pieces.We want them to watch/question/interact/participate in our creation and to get a clear picture of the hard work that mingles with skill and talent in the making of art.”
STREB has received numerous awards and financial support from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. STREB has also been featured on the David Letterman Show, CBS Sunday Morning, ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings, and on Larry King Live.
The 2006–2007 Lafayette College Performance Series is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.