Pre-professional student dance ensemble marks 25 years of performance and educational outreach

Members of the Kent Dance Ensemble perform "Two
Pieces of One: Green," choreographed by Tony
Award® winner Garth Fagan.

Kent State University’s School of Theatre and Dance presents the Kent Dance Ensemble’s 25th annual main stage concert as part of a weekend celebration that includes a reception for campus and community, a dance alumni reunion and a dinner to benefit dance student scholarships. The April 2-4 concert includes selected repertory from the last 25 years and a signature work by Tony Award® winner and internationally renowned choreographer Garth Fagan. Performances are Thursday, April 2, through Saturday, April 4, at 8 p.m. in E. Turner Stump Theatre located in the Center for Performing Arts, 1325 Theatre Drive on the Kent Campus.

For tickets, call 330-672-ARTS (2787), purchase online at www.kent.edu/theatredance or in person at the Performing Arts Box Office located in the Roe Green Center lobby of the Center for the Performing Arts, Monday to Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Tickets are $18 for adults, $16 for Kent State alumni, faculty and staff, $14 for seniors (60+) and non-Kent State students age 18 and under are $10. Tickets are free for full-time, Kent Campus undergraduate students. Groups of 10 or more can purchase tickets for $12 per person. The box office accepts Visa, MasterCard, Discover, checks and cash.

“Kent Dance Ensemble: 25 Years” showcases jazz, modern and theatre dance choreography by the ensemble’s founding faculty members John R. Crawford, dean of Kent State’s College of the Arts; Dance Division Director Andrea Shearer and Darwin Prioleau, Ed.D., now dean of the College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at State University of New York, the College of Brockport. The concert also features choreography by current Kent State dance faculty members Kimberly Karpanty, Kent Dance Ensemble artistic director (1996-present), Joan Meggitt and Barbara Allegra Verlezza.

“The 3-D Duet,” choreographed by Crawford, premiered in 1993 on the Kent Dance Ensemble and is a “manifesto” for modern dance. Using text from speeches made by modern dance pioneers Jose Limon and Martha Graham, as well as ideas from philosophers and aestheticians, the dance is interwoven throughout the concert and appears in three distinct parts: Part 1 “Dialogue,” Part 2 “Discussion” and Part 3 “Declaration.” In addition to being a work in a post-modern style, the dance represents the educational outreach component of Kent Dance Ensemble’s mission.

Shearer’s “Considering Lilies” premiered as a trio in 1994 and in its current form with six Kent Dance Ensemble dancers in 2000. It is an abstract dance in four sections, undeniably linked to the music of Antonio Vivaldi — serene, reverent, light, spacious and full of grace.

Karpanty revisits “Soledades (The Solitudes),” the first dance she created for the ensemble in 1995. The dramatic dance/theatre work was inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise,” and addresses women’s issues of domestic violence, identity, fear and overcoming. An original score by Bradley Kaus was composed for the piece.

Repertory from the 21st century begins with Prioleau’s 2000 jazz piece “Feel the Rhythm…and Dance!” Performed to the head-bopping, foot-stomping music of Benny Goodman, the dance also requires the performers to play found instruments and vocalize.

Meggitt’s 2009 “Drift In, Drop Out” pairs an evocative sound score by Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg with a gracefully idiosyncratic dance for four women. Like Ginsberg’s visceral poetry, the dance invites the viewer to let the movement wash over them, and to then swim with it as it moves through space and travels from dancer to dancer.

Pictured is a dance routine from "Two Pieces of One:
Green," choreographed by Tony Award-winner Garth
Fagan and performed by members of the Kent Dance
Ensemble.

The most recent dance in the concert, Verlezza’s “Three Sister Sonata,” premiered in 2014 on current ensemble members. The piece is a modern-based work that focuses on the relationship of three women exploring the stages and struggles of growth, aging and change. The exquisite guitar rendering of J.S. Bach’s "Sonata No. 1 (Adagio)"by Paul Galbraith serves as inspiration for the work with its rich and somber tone. The work will be presented in New Jersey for the Raritan Valley Community College faculty concert in March.

The 25th anniversary concert closes with all 14 Kent Dance Ensemble members performing excerpts from Fagan’s “Two Pieces of One: Green.” Fagan has had a modern dance company based in Rochester, New York, for more than 40 years but is most recognized for his Tony award-winning choreography for Broadway’s “The Lion King.” Natalie Rogers-Cropper, assistant rehearsal director of Garth Fagan Dance, set the piece in an intensive weeklong residency in October 2014. Getting to work with guest choreographers is an important step for dancers pursuing careers in performance, choreography and education. The company recently performed the second section, “In Memorium” at the American College Dance Association’s East Central Region conference in Athens, Ohio.

In addition to the main stage concert each season, the Kent Dance Ensemble also educates K-12 students with lecture-demonstration performances and movement workshops, and it has performed for special events, festivals, symposiums and conferences on campus, in the region and throughout the nation.

For more information about “Kent Dance Ensemble: 25 Years,” visit www.kent.edu/theatredance/kent-dance-ensemble-25-years.