Salt Lake Community College Dance Company has gathered faculty and the best student choreography to perform in their spring concert titled, “Our Dance Language.”
As a theme for this performance, choreographers were asked to focus on a specific artistic element that gives dance its ability to communicate. Space, shape, timing and effort where explored to reveal how dance can “speak” about the feelings, ideas and experiences of being human.
Guest, faculty and student choreographers have been working with the best SLCC dance students to present their works on Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Grand Theatre.
The company will showcase many different styles of dance, from the polyrhythms of West African dance and drum, to a high energy Bollywood-style work. Guest choreographer Natosha Washington uses the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as movement catalysts. Adjunct dance faculty Marsha Pabalis will show a duet exploring the choices we make in relationships.
The student choreographers have taken on topics as diverse as nightmares, internal struggles, the serenity of nature, and the joys of independence. Dance for the Camera works will also be presented at this performance.
Associate professor and company director Tess Boone explains, “Dance has a ‘vocabulary’ for communicating ideas, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. That vocabulary consists of the basic artistic elements of movement, which are space, shape, time and energy. How these elements are used and combined give the communicative potential to human movement. We can all relate to dance, if we let ourselves feel it, physically and emotionally!”
Concert tickets are $10, or half price if two non-perishable food items are brought in for the Utah Food Bank. SLCC students receive free admission with a current SLCC I.D. and two food items. For tickets, call the Grand Theatre box office: 801-957-3322.
For more information about the spring concert or about the SLCC dance department, e-mail Tess Boone at tess.boone@slcc.edu or call 801-957-3002.
