From the UNCG Campus Weekly:
The 2016 North Carolina Dance Festival, a 26-year-old annual showcase of modern and contemporary choreography by N.C. artists, will bring a meaningful closing performance to Greensboro November 12, after stops in Raleigh and Boone.
The performance will inaugurate the Van Dyke Performance Space, a newly created black-box theater in the Greensboro Cultural Center.
The NC Dance Festival has strong roots in UNCG’s dance department, and involves the efforts of many UNCG alumni. It is a program of the Dance Project, a non-profit organization founded by the late Dr. Jan Van Dyke, a celebrated choreographer, teacher, and community leader, a long-time faculty member and department head in the UNCG Dance Department, and an alumna herself. It has been operating in North Carolina since 1989, and it is now directed by Anne Morris and Lauren Joyner, both UNCG alumni.
The festival features choreographers from across the state as well as those from Greensboro, such as UNCG alumnae Renay Aumiller, Alexandra Warren, Danielle Kinne and members of the Van Dyke Dance Group. The Greensboro performance includes several guest performances, with a special dedication to the late Jan Van Dyke to honor her gift that made the Van Dyke Performance Space possible. The Van Dyke Dance Group will perform Full Circle, the first dance Van Dyke choreographed upon moving to Greensboro in 1989. The audience will also enjoy a screening of rare video footage of Jan Van Dyke performing a lively and sassy solo, part of her 1977 “Fleetwood Mac Suite.”
As part of the performance, UNCG MFA graduate Danielle Kinne will premiere “Greensboro Moves,” a new work made possible by a Spark Fund Grant from Action Greensboro and DGI. To produce this piece, Kinne and her dancers, also recent UNCG alumni, drew inspiration from members of the community at public events and local schools. Also performing is UNCG alumna Alexandra Joy Warren, who is the founding artistic director of JOYEMOVEMENT Dance Company, and she will present “Fit the Description,” a powerful solo danced by Emmanuel Mallette that examines the experience of being a suspect because of one’s association or physical appearance.
From complex relationships to minimalist movement, the festival presents the wide variety of contemporary modern dance being created in North Carolina.
Parking is available near the theater, in the Church St. and Davie St. parking decks, or on the street. General admission tickets are $20, and it’s $15 for students or seniors and $10 for children under 10 and for groups of 10 or more. In honor of this special first performance in the Van Dyke Performance Space, a limited number of Patron Tickets are available for $35 each; these include reserved seats with the best sight-lines and an invitation to a pre-show cocktail hour with the dance artists and community leaders. For ticket reservations visit http://ncdance.brownpapertickets.com. Tickets will also be available through the Dance Project website: www.danceproject.org/festival and at the box office the night of the performance.
Lindsey Kelley Brewer will also teach a free, open-level Modern Technique and Repertory master class on November 12 from 12-2pm (Greensboro Cultural Center, Studio 323). Find out more about upcoming classes, artist talks, and more on the website: www.danceproject.org.