FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Whitney Herr-Buchholz
Manager, Operations and Advancement
School of Dance, University of Arizona
Phone: 520.621.1263
Email: whb@email.arizona.edu
Website: dance.arizona.edu
Location: Stevie Eller Dance Theatre
Address: 1737 E. University Blvd. Tucson, AZ 85721
Purchase Tickets: College of Fine Arts Box Office 520.621.1162 or tickets.arizona.edu
Direct Link:(https://oss.ticketmaster.com/aps/uacfa/EN/buy/browse?i%5B0%5D=77)
Show Dates and Times
Wednesday, November 14, 7:30pm
Thursday, November 15, 7:30pm
Friday, November 16, 7:30pm
Saturday, November 17, 1:30pm
Saturday, November 17, 7:30pm
Sunday, November 18, 1:30pm
Sunday, November 18, 6:00pm
Performance Length: 1.5 hours (including 15 min. intermission)
Ticket Prices: Adult $35 / Senior, Military, UA Employee $30 / Student $15
Tucson, Arizona ˗ In Premium Blend, UA Dance will perform the work of two masters, Martha Graham and George Balanchine. The curtain will rise first on Concerto Barocco, which dance critics over the years have called “spiritual perfection,” and “among the greatest of ballets.” Intended as an aesthetic response to Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, as opposed to a narrative one, the ballet is considered quintessential Balanchine. Today, almost 80 years after its creation, this gem continues to astonish with its architectural clarity.
Christopher Compton and Jory Hancock team up to create a new work, House of Life. Danced to expressive male and female arias sung by Philippe Sly and Arleen Auger, this pas de deux reflects upon the way a place in our home, such as a specific chair, takes on the energy and essence of the inhabitant, even when not present. Compton says of the significance, “As long as there is a chair for you, you have somewhere you belong, and when there are two chairs together, maybe there is someone that belongs there with you.”
Former UA Dance professor David Berkey’s male quartet, Sentinel, explores camaraderie and the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next through a changing of the guards ritual. The piece is set to the lyrical Adagio movement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Sentinel is in the repertoires of numerous ballet companies, including Ballet du Nord, Roubaix, France, and Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
At the concert’s close, UA Dance will offer Graham’s 1935 Panorama. Graham conceived this powerful piece about social activism at a time when the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the World Wars were the historical context. The Los Angeles Times has said: “Geometric juxtapositions, simple actions heightened through forceful repetition, visual and percussive rhythms: What a declaration of creative independence this microcosm of society… represented, with Graham’s scarlet costumes enhancing her genius for forceful modernist spectacle.”
As part of the Sunday, November 18, 6:00 PM concert, the last and final public performance of Premium Blend, UA Dance will pay tribute to the Beads of Courage Angel Charity Arts-in-Medicine Program.
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