Dance students to perform this weekend in Winter Concert

Students and faculty in the Dance Department at Skidmore College will pool their talents to present the annual Winter Dance Concert, which each year features student performances of works choreographed or restaged by their teachers. The 2008 Winter Dance Concerts will begin at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, and at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, in the College?s Dance Theater.

The program for all performances will feature Marius Petipa?s classical ?Paquita,? restaged by Denise Limoli of the Skidmore dance faculty. Also on the program will be new contemporary dance works from veteran Skidmore choreographers Debra Fernandez and Mary Harney, and from Rub n Graciani, a new member of the Skidmore dance faculty, who danced with the Mark Morris Dance Group and other contemporary companies. A new contemporary ballet by guest artist Lorin Johnson will also be performed.

Petipa?s original ballet, which premiered in 1846, told the tale of Paquita, a noble-born beauty stolen and raised by gypsies, who reunites with her lost family and finds true love. In additions created by Petipa in 1881, Paquita and her Lucien celebrate their wedding with a feast of virtuosic dance solos and duets widely recognized as major contributions to the traditional classical ballet repertory and staged by companies around the world.

The new work by Fernandez is titled ?Sign?on the dotted line,? an abstract piece that was inspired by semiotics, the study of signs and signals and their interpretation. There is even a bit of American Sign Language interspersed in the piece, which is set to music by Liam Gillick.

?Black Dress? has been reconstructed by Harney with original musc by Carl Landa and spoken passage from ?Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi.

Tickets are $10 for general admission, and $5 for students and senior citizens, and are on sale 30 minutes before each performance. Reservations are not accepted. For more information, call the Dance Theater box office at 518-580-5392.