Scenes from the performance of Bird Suite by Company SoGoNo in Colgate’s Brehmer Theater. Learn more about the performance.

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Performances: Friday and Saturday October 23 and 24, 2015, 7:00p.m.
Admission: FREE
Location: Brehmer Theater, Charles A. Dana Arts Building, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346

Bird Suite is an evening-length dance theater piece that explores bird-nature and bird-like personalities in female sexual personae. From a study of elemental avian struggle (four infant birds learning to fly) and the beauty of awkwardness, to more anthropomorphic situations in which pubescent flamingo lawn ornaments dream of Vegas, or steamy scheming swans survey a room to size up the competition, each section reveals a very different kind of bird-energy. The suite creates a dreamscape of exquisite images punctuated by alert, articulate movement.

The sections of Bird Suite to be presented are the seven-minute quartet Hatch, which will be danced by Colgate students and community members, the 13-minute duet Flamingo Flamingo, the 25-minute quintet Ain’t No Swan Lake, and a newly minted duet by Calamoneri and long-time collaborator Micaela Gardner of New Mexico, inspired by ravens and female trickster characters.

New York City-based Company SoGoNo is directed by Colgate dance professor Tanya Calamoneri. The company has received recognition from New York Innovative Theater Awards and funding from NYSCA, NYFA, American Composers Forum Live Music for Dance, Puffin Foundation, and others. Since 2003, the company has presented work in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Kyoto at venues such as Irondale, Ontological Hysteric Theater, 3LD Art & Technology, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Movement Research at NYLA, Temple University, Links Hall, Velocity Theater, and Urban Guild.

Performers: Erin Cairns Cella, Christine Coleman, Mariko Endo, Micaela Gardner, Becky Gough, Dages Juvelier Keates, Allison Spanyer, Emily Rose
Sound Design: Soraya Odishoo and Danny Tunick
Costume Design: Mioko Mochizuki and Vicki Davis

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As a student fellow with the New York Six Think Tank, Danielle Iwata ’15 created a blog to document her advocacy work with The Dance Initiative, a student-driven campaign to raise the profile of dance at Colgate.

In addition to videos of choreography by Colgate dance students, Iwata’s blog includes two short interviews with Tanya Calamoneri, visiting assistant professor of dance, and a profile of Chloe Holt ’14, a former leader of The Dance Initiative who connects her student dance experience to her matriculation at Harvard Law School this coming fall.

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Join the Colgate theater program for two events this week with renowned hip-hop dance artist Duane Lee Holland.

Thursday, February 19

Brehmer Theater, 4:15-5:45
Hip-hop dance demonstration and talk with Duane Lee Holland, in conversation with Kermit Campbell, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric

Friday, February 20

Huntington Studio 303, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
Hip-hop dance workshop with Duane Lee Holland

Sign-up required: e-mail Professor Tanya Calamoneri at tcalamoneri@colgate.edu to reserve a space

Duane Lee Holland began his professional dance career at the age of 17, dancing for the first hip-hop dance theater company, Rennie Harris Puremovement.  He has also worked with Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, and with Garth Fagan as part of the original Broadway cast of “The Lion King.” He also served as assistant choreographer, assistant dance captain, and featured dancer in Maurice Hines’s Broadway production of “Hot Feet.”

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There will be two dance workshops during the month of October that students are encouraged to attend:

Kasai’s Voice Power, a workshop with Mariko Endo
October 18, 2014, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., Ryan 212
Campus calendar

Partnering Dance Workshop with Phoenix Dance Project
October 24, 2014, 4:30 – 6:00 p.m., Huntington 202
Campus calendar

Both workshops require reservations!  Please email Professor Tanya Calamoneri at tcalamoneri@colgate.edu.

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This fall, Tanya Calamoneri joins the Colgate faculty as a visiting assistant professor of English in the University Theater, teaching courses in contemporary dance and dance imagery and improvisation.

Calamoneri (BA, American University; MA, New York University; PhD, Temple University) comes to Colgate from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where she has been project manager for DanceMotion USA for the past two years. She also brings teaching experience from Temple University, New York University, and New College of California. Calamoneri’s dissertation title is “Becoming Something, Becoming Nothing: Performer Training Methods in Hijikata Tatsumi’s Ankoku Butoh.” Her teaching specialties and research interests include dance technique and creative process, dance cultural studies, somatic studies, ethnographic research, and movement and consciousness studies.

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Headlong Dance Theater’s residency on campus runs February 3-8, 2014.

From February 3-8, 2014, Colgate will host a residency and performance by Headlong Dance Theater, a Bessie-Award winning modern dance company based in Philadelphia. The residency will include a colloquium on February 4, sponsored by the Division of Arts and Humanities, and two performances of Headlong’s piece Shosha in Brehmer Theater on February 7th and 8th.

Shosha, an adaption of Isaac Beshevis Singer’s eponymous novel, depicts the Jewish ghetto of 1930s Warsaw through the lens of 1970s New York, where Singer enjoyed the most productive period of his career. Simultaneously comic and sensuous, Shosha draws its movement vocabulary from vaudeville and contact improvisation, framed by stage imagery that the Boston Globe calls “striking and unforgettable.”

Founded in 1993, Headlong Dance Theater has performed nationally and internationally to a range of audiences, and the company’s work — informed by a deep commitment to collaboration, and formal experimentation — has won many fans and much acclaim. “Does experimental dance have to be intimidating?” asks Gia Kourlas in the New York Times. “Not according to Headlong Dance Theater, which likes to lace its cerebral offerings with sly humor… Headlong is clearly not your typical dance company, with dances in keeping with the troupes’s motto that intelligent experimentation can be compelling and, in some cases, hilarious.”

Headlong’s Co-Directors, David Brick and Amy Smith, have trained in modern, ballet, jazz, tap, contract improvisation, releasing techniques, theater, sports, sign language, Bharata Natyam, and Ghanaian dance. Drawing on these and other sources, Headlong creates dances that both reflect and comment on the blind spots and hot spots of our strange, contemporary times. For more about the Headlong Dance Theater, visit their website.

Colloquium: Tuesday, February 4, 4:30 p.m., 105 Lawrence Hall
Performances: Friday, February 7 and Saturday, February 8, 8:00 p.m., Brehmer Theater. Admission free!

Funded by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation.

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Those interested in dance should enroll in the course ENGL 250: Dance Practicum, instructed by Elaine Heekin. The class meets Monday and Wednesday, from 10:30 a.m. – 12:10 p.m. in Ryan 212.

The course is an introduction to contemporary dance for students with or without previous dance training.  Students will explore dance as an educational, technical, and creative discipline through dance technique, strengthening and aligning the body, and the development of physical coordination.  The course includes opportunities for improvisation, composition, and performance.

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