UAA Dance Ensemble in Concert, Nov. 4-13

Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.
Sundays, 6 p.m.
Fine Arts Building, Harper Studio Theatre, Room 129

The UAA Department of Theatre and Dance proudly presents its acclaimed Dance Ensemble in Concert featuring the seven member company performing original choreography by visiting guest artist Tahni Holt, Department of Theatre and Dance faculty members Brian Jeffery and Leslie Kimiko Ward and other local choreographers.

These performances typically sell out and seating is limited.

Tickets: All seats are general admission, same prices for all shows. General Admission: $12.00, UAA students (with ID): $10.00. Tickets available at the UAA Fine Arts Box Office, (907) 786-4TIX.

Portland-based multi-disciplinary artist Tahni Holt showcases "Sunshine," a thought-provoking work about resourcefulness in an environment of limited resources. Holt explores principles of minimalism, glamour and mass production through invested choreography and nomadic piles of cardboard boxes, which frame the dance disparately from moment to moment. As a soloist and with her past company, Tahni Holt has performed and been produced throughout the U.S. and abroad. She is the recipient of a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, and has been an artist in residence through SOWA, in Portland, at Caldera, in Sisters and at Performance Art Forum in St. Erme, France. She has worked with dance luminary Deborah Hay, and most recently spent time in Europe where she performed in Vienna through Eszter Salamon and Christine De Smedt in TRANSFORMERS.

UAA Theatre and Dance professor, Brian Jeffery, offers "5inOneCluster," a premiere featuring choreographer Jeffery's signature style of intricately fluid movement performed by a cast of five Dance Ensemble alumni with music scored by Cosmin TRG, Scorn, Born Ruffians, Phon.o and Pantha du Prince.

In "Life as {Weee} Know It," choreographer and Dance Ensemble Alumni, Heather Riggelsen, explores the playfulness of child banter, the witty repartee of lovers and the testing of new boundaries. With stylish expression and modern sensibility, Riggelsen examines ever-evolving relationships between care and spontaneity, familiarity and risk.

Dance Ensemble member Timothy Eby presents his solo "Surrender," a quietly contemplative work featuring piano compositions by Clint Mansell, designed to offer a movement-based filter through which to view the cultivated loss of self destruction.

Teaching artist Leslie Kimiko Ward shares the following about her latest work, "Hush":
Imagine yourself taking a rainy, late-night drive out beyond the city limits. Follow a winding two-lane highway deep into the wooded foothills where the stick-tacky asphalt gives way to softened dirt. At a lone mailbox, cut the engine and walk the full length of a darkened, leaf-covered driveway towards the soft, yellowed glow from a sitting room window. Hide in the shadows and peer inside. What unfolds is an eerie choreographic narrative, the creative synthesis of 60's psychedelic music, David Lynch cinematography, good old-fashioned ghost stories and childhood imaginary friends.