Hopkins Center for the Arts

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Dartmouth Dance Ensemble

Ford Evans, director

Friday & Saturday, MAY 23 & 24 • 8 pm
The Moore Theater
$14 • Dartmouth students $3
All other students $6

Out of New Zealand and Maori traditions comes a new multimedia dance work by Ford Evans and members of the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble. Inspired by a transformative spring-break tour to this south Pacific island nation, the Ensemble has created complex and colorful choreography informed by firsthand experiences learning Maori dances, exploring the natural wonders and performing at Ottaga University and elsewhere on South Island. In this ravishing concert, the Ensemble also performs works by two dance luminaries: Torelli by Twyla Tharp, first performed in 1971, fuses highly structured movement sequences with performance improvisation, illuminating the early “Tharp” style of dance vocabulary and choreography. Laura Dean's physical tour-de-force Skylight relies on movement repetition to a driving percussion score to create a trance-like work about synchrony and ritual.