In culmination of the yearlong Choreographing Justice Series and Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year, the Department of Performing and Media Arts is pleased to announce the 2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, from Thursday, April 25 through Saturday, April 27.
This year’s series includes the premiere of an evening-length interdisciplinary dance project that reimagines and reclaims the Kiplinger Theatre, entitled This table has been a house in the rain, followed by a walk-through installation of body-based and dance-driven mixed media in the Schwartz Center atrium. All performances are free and open to the public, with the Kiplinger doors opening at 7:00 pm for a pre-show observation leading up to the live performances beginning at 7:30 pm. Audiences are then invited to experience and engage with the multimedia installation directly following the main stage event in the Schwartz Center atrium.
Get tickets: https://pma.cornell.edu/tickets
Over the course of the spring semester, participants in this year’s dance project laboratory had the unique opportunity to work with and be mentored by internationally acclaimed choreographers and dance artists whose bodies of work have catalyzed community, social advocacy, and critical archival by [re]claiming and activating freedoms of their own bodily expression: distinguished guests Eiko Otake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Keith Hennessy, and faculty Danielle Russo. Otake introduced students to exercises and practice towards body-based democracies and autonomous expression, prompting participants to locate themselves, their stories, and their intentions for making and for performing. This set the foundation for improvisation, and experimental inter/play with collective scores and scenes by Houston-Jones and Hennessy, and choreographic studies, dramaturgy, and direction led by professor Russo. In response to Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Perhaps the World Ends Here, these students generated, self-directed, and collaboratively designed an original 75-minute performance project with set, costume, sound, projection, and lighting faculties, students, and guests, building upon legacies of dance and performance as freedom practice. What Adrienne Marie Brown might call emergent strategy turns into futurist action, encouraging us to trust and engage with the synergetic space that Fred Moten refers to as “figuring it out together.” Whether seated at, bringing to, cards on, always room, turning, clearing, or as Nina Simone said, “to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served,” what is the power, the promise of gathering and of taking time to come to the table today? In tandem, participants in PMA 3350 & 4350: Technology & the Moving Body I & II and PMA 1611-601: Rehearsal and Performance produced a collection of dance films, stills, and object explorations with faculty Olive Prince, echoing these very themes, questions, and curiosities: How can dance and performance be portals for embodied inquiry into power, collaboration, equity, and liberated imagination?
Read more about the event in the Cornell Chronicle: 'A place at the table': Exploring free expression through dance
This event is made possible through the generosity and support of Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year, Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf, and the Lisa Lu Foundation.
"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from "The Woman Who Fell from the Sky" (1994), with permission from the author Joy Harjo and publishing house, W.W. Norton.
Poster image created by Wei Jian Cheng, Molly Hudson, Irene Kim, Isabel Padilla Carlo, Taylor Pryor, and Eliza Salamon.
Listen to the PMA Podcast Episode 56 - 2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series
