The UW–Madison Dance Department presents its Faculty Concert 2024, featuring work from faculty members Omari Carter, Li Chiao-Ping, Collette Stewart, and Jin-Wen Yu, as well as guest artist Takehiro Ueyama.
Performances will take place Nov. 21-23 in the Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space in Lathrop Hall.
The program will include two works by Li Chiao-Ping, the Sally Banes Professor of Dance and a Vilas Research Professor in the School of Education’s Dance Department. She will present “Side x Side,” a new duet that uses a dream state to explore the concept of relationship as structural, pragmatic, and life-affirming, and “Earth,” an ensemble work for six dancers that references the female receptive (yin) energy explained in the I CHING, or Book of Changes. To capture the range of this concept, Li imbues yin (female) with greater complexity — a sense of community, solidarity, and strength.
Jin-Wen Yu, a professor and chair in the Dance Department, will present “Water,” a duet featuring the music of Rene Aubry, and performed by the original 2016 cast including Yun-Chen Liu and Collette Stewart. The work, which has been performed in Chicago and at the DUMBO festival in Brooklyn, New York, uses water symbolically and literally as a means to cool down possessive desire as well as purify the spirit.
Omari “Motion” Carter, an assistant professor in the Dance Department, will present his film, “finding my feet,” a docu-dance that explores the frustrations, doubts, and struggle of an injured dancer. Carter, who is still in the midst of rehabilitation from an injury, confronts his inability to move in ways that he once did through talks with cinematographer James Williams.
Also on the program is “Life & Death,” a work for seven dancers choreographed by Collette Stewart, teaching faculty in the Dance Department. This quirky revision of the creation myth emphasizes the interconnectedness of life and the ordinariness of death. It is a seamless blend of dance and storytelling that takes a light-hearted stroll through the human journey of success, failure, and meaning, and lands in the beauty of everything.
Guest artist Takehiro Ueyama is spending three weeks in residence setting a contemporary work on student dancers and will teach masterclasses throughout his residency. Ueyama is the artistic director and founder of TAKE Dance, a New York City-based contemporary dance company praised for its exciting athletic movement and unusual sensitivity to create distinctive work.
Tickets for the Faculty Concert 2024 are $25 general admission and $19 for students and seniors. They can be purchased at the Campus Arts Box Office, 1st floor Memorial Union, 800 Langdon Street; by phone at 608-265-2787; or online at artsticketing.wisc.edu.
Tickets can also be purchased at the door one hour before performances.