Washington University Dance Theatre (WUDT), the annual showcase of professionally choreographed works performed by student dancers, will present BODYMIND/Art of Movement, its 2006 concert, Dec. 1-3 in Edison Theatre.
Performances — sponsored by the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences — begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
BODYMIND will feature nearly 50 dancers, selected by audition, performing seven works by faculty and guest choreographers.
“People often think of the body and the mind as separate entities,” said Cecil Slaughter, lecturer in dance and director of WUDT. “But in dance, you don’t have that division. Dancers and choreographers actually think and conceptualize their work through the body. Movement becomes a kind of grammar or language — a form of communication between dancer and audience.
“All of the works on the program are very different, yet they also play off of one another,” Slaughter added. “The idea of community forms a kind of common thread between them — the individual within a community or exiled from a community or causing or responding to turmoil within it. As artistic director, it’s been very exciting to see these pieces come together.”
A highlight of the concert will be the St. Louis debut of Martha Graham’s modern classic “Steps in the Street.” Excerpted from Chronicle (1936), Graham’s celebrated response to the Spanish Civil War, “Steps in the Street” includes 15 dancers and was set earlier this semester by a pair of visiting artists, Gary Galbraith and Bonnie Oda Homsey, both former principal dancers with the Martha Graham Dance Company.
“Like Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (unveiled the following year), ‘Steps in the Street’ is a modernist expression of horror at the devastation of war, including homelessness and exile,” noted Mary-Jean Cowell, associate professor and coordinator of the Dance Program, who served as rehearsal director for the piece. “There’s an angular, twisted quality to some of the movements. It’s all about tension and anger and the resolve that this will not happen again.
“It’s also been a great experience for students,” Cowell added, “both in terms of learning Graham’s choreography and in terms of finding the appropriate energy and imagery within themselves.”
Also featured on the program is “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” an original ballet-influenced work for eight dancers by David Curwen, associate professor of dance at Western Michigan University and artistic director of The Western Dance Project. Curwen, who served as a visiting artist in September, sets this tapestry of family, religion and violence to a mixture of early American music and 17th-century English country dances.
Tickets are $15, $9 for students, senior citizens and faculty and staff, and are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office. For more information, call 935-6543.