“Life is experienced one moment at a time,” said David Marchant. “Live performance creates dynamic artwork that focuses our collective awareness toward the ever-emerging horizon of time.”
Marchant, a professor of practice in dance in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, is artistic director for “Something is Happening,” the 2025 WashU Dance Theatre performance. The evening-length concert will feature five new and original works, by both faculty and guest choreographers, exploring dance, time and the nature of anticipation.
The program, which takes place Nov. 14-16 in Edison Theatre at Washington University in St. Louis, will open with “Nocturne for Eight” by Liz Lloyd. A master of fine arts candidate in dance, Lloyd is a former company dancer and company manager for the Saint Louis Ballet. “Nocturne for Eight” is loosely inspired by “the concept of entanglement and the vastness of the night sky,” Lloyd writes in her artist statement. “The lullaby-like score guides the piece from the stillness of midnight to the first light of dawn.”
Next on the program will be “Where We Meet” by guest choreographer Xi Zhao. A visiting assistant professor at Webster University, Zhao is founder and artistic director of The NEW–Beijing New Dance Festival, one of China’s few platforms for presenting international contemporary dance. “Where We Meet” unfolds as “a journey from opposition to unity, a space where we explore how energy flows between individuals and groups.”
Alumna Elinor Harrison, a lecturer in dance and a faculty affiliate in philosophy-neuroscience-psychology in Arts & Sciences, will present “Mutternaces.” A work-in-progress choreographed in collaboration with the seven performers, this piece “traces the shapes of sounds to ponder how our voices contour our outward personae.”
Marchant’s “Nucleus,” a work for 11 dancers, was created through a process of individual and collective interaction. “Following intuitive, spontaneous responses, resulting in an emergent form, each individual moves in relationship to the whole,” Marchant explained. The title reflects both the work’s “circular motion and the energetic bonds at the core of the matter.”
Concluding the concert will be “Four Corners” by Ron K. Brown, the dance program’s 2025 Marcus Guest Artist in Residence. A celebrated choreographer, Brown’s many honors include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Choreographers Fellowship and a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award.
“Four Corners,” originally commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2014, depicts “spiritual seekers amid four angels standing on the corners of the earth, holding the four winds.”
Tickets and performances
Performances of “Something is Happening” begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 14 and 15, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16. Performances take place in Edison Theatre, located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6465 Forsyth Blvd.
Tickets are $20, or $15 for seniors, students and WashU faculty and staff, and free for WashU students. Tickets are available through the WashU Box Office. For more information, call 314-935-6543 or visit pad.wustl.edu.
