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Vol. 4, No. 3 - February 16, 2005
| PearsonWidrig DanceTheater to Perform Quirky New Work Internationally acclaimed for its dramatic and often amusing contemporary dance works, PearsonWidrig DanceTheater will present its newest work, Thaw, at the Dance Theater at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25. The performance represents the culmination of a three-week residency jointly sponsored by Skidmore and the Emma Willard School in Troy. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $8 for senior citizens, and will be available at the Dance Theater box office (580-5392) 45 minutes prior to each performance. Reservations are not accepted. Seating is first-come, first-served. Dancer/choreographers Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig aim in their work to "transform the familiar into the mysterious, the absurd, and the intimate." Their style has been described by The New York Times as "impressive, virtuosic, amazing... imagistically rich." The Neue Zurcher Zeitung called the company "American dance theater at its funniest and most compelling." Commissioned by New York City 's 92nd Street Y, Thaw is described by Pearson and Widrig as "an unlikely symphonic investigation of elemental encounters under increasingly curious circumstances." The hour-long work for five dancers (including Pearson and Widrig) will feature ice, snow, and historical video footage of the 1914 Antarctica expedition led by Ernest Shackleton, projected onto a waterfall created from dry ice. The musical accompaniment will range from recordings of ice cracking to Duke Ellington works like "In a Sentimental Mood." According to Pearson, Thaw is "guaranteed to be full of violent beauty and kinetic humor." The work will have its New York premiere March 16. Since 1987, PearsonWidrig DanceTheater has created more than 40 dance works and earned wide acclaim for a movement vocabulary the Calcutta Times of India called "extremely original." Their choreography is often augmented with such unexpected elements as 300 oranges, haystacks, rowboats on a Central Park lake, and the smashing of a 200-lb block of ice. The company's previous performance at Skidmore, in The Return of Lot's Wife, featured eerily beautiful swirling arcs of table salt. Performing extensively across the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia, the company tours between six and 10 months a year. In New York City, where the company is based, PearsonWidrig DanceTheater performs at major dance venues including the Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop Central Park SummerStage, P.S. 122, and Lincoln Center, among others.
Skidmore
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