Theatre and Dance announces spring season – UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff
The Department of Theatre and Dance’s spring year of dance and drama delivers identified directors and choreographers collectively with esteemed school and emerging student expertise to create modern primary productions that both equally entertain and discover the human issue.
Reside, in-person performances return this year in the Center for the Arts and in the Katharine Cornell Theatre in the Ellicott Sophisticated.
The lineup:
Dance
Zodiaque Dance Organization
March 11-12: 7:30 p.m.
March 12-13: 2 p.m.
Drama Theatre, Heart for the Arts
The 47th spring application of the Zodiaque Dance Corporation, UB’s pre-skilled dance organization, capabilities jazz, faucet, present day, afro-fusion and present-day dance operates. The demonstrate is co-directed Kerry Ring, clinical affiliate professor, and Michael Deeb Weaver, medical assistant professor.
Choreographers consist of Ring, Deeb Weaver and dance school users Anne Burnidge, Jenna Del Monte Zavrel and Thomas Ralabate. Guest choreographers involve Buffalo artist Megan Rakeepile alumni Richard Ashworth and Julie LaMancuso and professional visitor choreographer Takehiro “Take” Ueyama from the Choose Dance Business.
Choreolab
April 1-2: 7:30 p.m.
April 3: 2 p.m.
Drama Theatre
Now in its 3rd period, ChoreoLab is a performance and choreographic investigation laboratory for school, graduate and undergraduate dance pupils, and guess artists. Devoted to fostering a assorted, innovative atmosphere in which to discover movement, ChoreoLab embraces modern day developments whils supporting dancers, and investigates the position fo dance within just culture and lifestyle.
Less than the management of Jenna Del Monte Zavrel, artistic director and medical assistant professor, ChoreoLab’s spring system incorporates 33 university student performers, both equally undergraduate and graduate.
Ariel Nereson, director of graduate dance, is producing a operate to be performed by the entire MFA Dance cohort, alongside with three undergraduate dancers and more collaborators from other disciplines, such as MA theatre candidate Kaylie Horowitz and English PhD student Dana Venerable.
Visitor artists Paul Ocampo and Chien-Ying Wang of the OcampoWang Dance Company are generating a new up to date piece for ChoreoLab all through their spring 2022 residency. Hailing from Taiwan and the Philippines, respectively, the pair has been building dances with each other due to the fact 2001. Their is effective have been offered in their property international locations, as very well as in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, China, Indonesia and the United States. Ocampo and Wong are noted for their “world-embracing strategy to tradition.”
Pupil choreographers incorporate Ruby Abraham, Anna Caison Boyd, Lyssie Hartzog, Melanie Kaisen and Theo. Alongside Zodiaque Dance Organization, ChoreoLab provides versatile choreographic and efficiency options for UB pupils that reflect the present dance landscape.
MFA Dance Thesis Live performance
April 8-9: 7:30 p.m.
Drama Theatre
The once-a-year MFA Dance Thesis Live performance will function the leading of new functions by MFA dance candidates Jacqueline Cherry and Meg Kirchhoff, with performance by MFA dancers Anna Caison Boyd, Abby Cass, Natasha McCandless and Samantha Schmeer, and undergraduate dancers Gabi Marshall, Kelly Quinn, Celia Ramos and Hayley Timberlake. Ariel Nereson, assistant professor and director of graduate dance, serves as faculty adviser.
The output showcases the culmination of Cherry and Kirchhoff’s imaginative exploration from their thesis project. The live performance capabilities collaborations with media artists and the pupil performers.
Cherry’s get the job done is a collection of believed-provoking parts that mirror her factors of check out on several principles and ordeals culminating from scientific tests in Black feminist assumed, sociology, embodiment and somatic tactics.
Kirchhoff’s piece, which explores the physicality of responsiveness, awareness and intra-exercise, is supported by a community humanities grant and functions dwell songs executed and composed by UB PhD candidate Thomas Minor.
Theater
“Twelfth Night”
April 21-23: 7:30 p.m.
April 23-24: 2 p.m.
Black Box Theatre, Middle for the Arts
“Twelfth Night” is Shakespeare’s tale of a girl who finds herself in a globe where by she does not belong, and attributes people freshly grieving the reduction of cherished liked kinds. Inspite of the themes of loss and grief, “Twelfth Night” does not linger in sorrow, but fairly provides a entire world complete of hope and merriment — a zany comic romp through mistaken identity, the thrill of slipping in love and the discovery of shed matters found at the time far more. The demonstrate is directed by Danielle Rosvally, scientific assistant professor.
Studio Theatre Ensemble: Vinegar Tom
April 29-30: 7:30 p.m.
Katharine Cornell Theatre
“Vinegar Tom” was written in 1976 by British playwright Caryl Churchill, who collaborated with the feminist theater corporation Monstrous Regiment immediately after assembly some of its associates at a professional-selection protest in the 1970s. Their hope was to build a perform about the troubles of women’s lives in 17th-century England and how females who did not reside by the mores of the time or had been perceived as “difficult” would typically be branded as witches. It was also meant as an allegory for women’s lives in the 20th century.
The music was composed by Helen Glavin, co-founder of Monstrous Regiment, and the show was designed collaboratively in excess of quite a few months prior to its debut on Oct. 12, 1976, at the Humberside Theatre, Hull, England.
The protagonist is Alice, a woman in her 20s residing in a compact village with her mom, Joan. The pair is accused of witchcraft immediately after an argument with neighbors Jack and Margery. The neighbors have struggled economically and there are challenges encompassing their intercourse lifestyle. Fearing that God is versus them, Jack and Margery choose to believe that their misfortunes are the end result of Joan’s witchcraft, and act with malice.
It is later on implied that Joan’s cat, Vinegar Tom, may well have been liable. Accusing other people of witchcraft in buy to shift blame towards nonconforming gals, like the single, aged, very poor, shrewd or attained, was not uncommon in 17th century England, and so became a narrative concept of the time. It was one more implies to disempower women.
“Violet”
May 5-7: 7:30 p.m.
May 7-8: 2 p.m.
Drama Theatre
“Violet” is a musical about a youthful woman on a quest to ideal the wrongs of her past. Dependent on “The Ugliest Pilgrim” by Doris Betts, the award-profitable production travels from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1964. The songs is by Tony Award-successful composer Jeanine Tesori, identified for many prosperous reveals, such as “Shrek the Musical” and “Totally Modern-day Millie.” Guide and lyrics are by Brian Crawley. “Violet” features a vibrant selection of American roots and gospel new music that depict the journeys of the soul, such as the present-stopping inspirational music “Let It Sing.”
Violet is directed and choreographed by award-profitable visitor artist Terry Berliner, who served as assistant director of the original manufacturing of Violet 25 years in the past at Off Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons. The solid and designers are learners from the Office of Theatre and Dance. Musical course is by Alison d’Amato, scientific assistant professor and director of music theatre. The guest dramaturg for the generation is Buffalo-based mostly author and artist-filmmaker Annette Daniels Taylor.
Tickets for performances in the Centre for the Arts are $20 for normal admission and $10 for students and seniors. Tickets are $5 for performances in the Katharine Cornell Theatre.
