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The trailblazing Philadanco comes to campus 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8 at the Williams Center for the Arts. The renowned African-American dance company from Philadelphia takes the stage in what is sure to be a night of innovation and originality.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $20 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009.
Remaining performances in the Footlights Series include Ping Chong and Company: Undesirable Elements Tuesday, Nov. 14, $20; Big Dance Theater: The Other Here Friday and Saturday, Jan. 26-27, $18; and Men-Jaro Tuesday, March 20, $18.
A pre-performance talk by Philadanco founding artistic director Joan Myers Brown will be held 7 p.m., in the Williams Center room 108. There will also be master class workshops for community dancers noon-1:30 p.m. at the Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Performing Arts, located at 675 East Broad Street in Bethlehem. The classes are hosted by dance instructor Kim Maniscalco, and interested dance students should contact her at (610) 868-2971.
Philadanco’s performance will reprise its New York appearances at the Joyce Theater and preview the home season at the Kimmel Center. With choreography by Christopher Huggins, Milton Myers, George Faison, and Ronald K. Brown, Philadanco performances feature an unusually rich spectrum of styles, with dances of virtuosity and physical verve interspersed with statements of spirituality and grace. Two dances on the Lafayette program are “must see” creations: Christopher Huggins’ Enemy Behind the Gates, set to the pulsing music of Steve Reich; and Ronald K. Brown’s For Mother, set to music of Roberta Flack—an homage both to the universality of maternal love and to the legacy of Harriet Tubman.
Philadanco “work[s] in a range of idioms most companies don’t even try to possess” and is “a company that can do more than just anythingit can represent the possibilities of human spirit through dance,” hails Dance magazine.
New York Magazine has praised the company as “visceral—fierce and sensuous by turns—elegant and ingratiating.”
Philadanco was the pilot dance company in the State of Pennsylvania’s Comprehensive Education Training Act arts training program. The company continues to stress the importance of arts education, offering dance instruction classes, sessions, and their apprentice program, D/2.
This project is partially supported by a grant from Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, a program developed and funded by the Heinz Endowments; the William Penn Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; and The Pew Charitable Trusts; and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Residency activities are supported by a grant from the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation.
The 2006-2007 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, James Bradley Fund, and 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, Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.