Washington University Dance Theatre to present Reach/Rebound Dec. 2-4

Washington University Dance Theatre (WUDT), the annual showcase of professionally choreographed works performed by student dancers, will present Reach/Rebound, its 2005 concert, Dec. 2-4 in Edison Theatre.

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Performances — sponsored by the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences — begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 2 and 3, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4.

Tickets are $15 — $9 for students, senior citizens and Washington University faculty and staff — and are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

Reach/Rebound will feature close to 40 dancers, selected by audition, performing six works by faculty and guest choreographers.

The program will highlight excerpts from Koto, a five-part ballet by Alonzo King, founder and artistic director of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet in San Francisco. King, who was in residence earlier this fall thanks to a grant from the National College Choreography Initiative, originally developed the large-scale ensemble piece — named for a traditional seventh-century Japanese musical instrument — in 2002 with composer Miya Masaoka. The result, according to the Los Angeles Times, weds “mystery and even mysticism to powerful classical technique.”

King, who founded LINES Ballet in 1982, has created dances for many of the world’s finest companies, including the Joffrey Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Earlier this fall, he received the 2005 New York Dance and Performance (or “Bessie”) Award for Sustained Achievement. Next spring, he will return to St. Louis with LINES Ballet as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series.

Also on the program is The WOMEN by Cecil Slaughter, lecturer in dance and director of WUDT as well as rehearsal director for Koto. Slaughter describes his piece, which features 12 dancers, as “homage to the women who give of themselves with unconditional love and nurturing guidance to those that are in their lives.”

Other works include:

Didadi: Diadié Bathily, artistic director for the St. Louis companies Afriky Lolo and Yélé Sunshine, choreographs this original work for 10 dancers. Bathily, a native of Ivory Coast, West Africa, notes that Didadi (which translates as “good as the honey”) is a traditional dance of Mali’s Bamana people, designed to “celebrate the arrival of an important person, often during the end-of-the-year holidays.”

Shall We…?: Mary-Jean Cowell, associate professor and coordinator of the Dance Program, choreographs 15 students in this humorous reinterpretation of ballroom dance. “Ideas of gendered movement, partnering positions and signature steps have been used to create new movement expressions of the ‘couple’s dance,'” Cowell explains. The result “may be unlike anything previously seen on the ballroom dance floor.”

What’s the Pointe?: Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal, senior lecturer and director of the Ballet Program, choreographs this exploration of a dancer preparing for a ballet performance. The piece is partly inspired by her own backstage preparations as a professional dancer with companies such as American Ballet Theatre, the National Ballet and the Cincinnati Ballet.

Untitled: An evocative duet for two male dancers choreographed by David W. Marchant, senior lecturer in dance.