Ballet greats to speak on campus in March

Two well-known dancers will visit Skidmore College in March to share their experiences in the worlds of classical and contemporary ballet in ?Meet the Artist? talks spotlighting Summer Lee Rhatigan on Wednesday, March 4, and Martine van Hamel on Wednesday, March 25. Both events take place in the college?s Dance Theater and are free and open to the public. For more information, call 518-580-5382.

Summer Lee Rhatigan, the founder and director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, will speak at 5 p.m. March 4 in the Skidmore Dance Theater. Rhatigan will present video clips and discuss her career as a dancer and teacher, with a focus on the work of great contemporary choreographers such as William Forsythe and Jiri Kylian.

Trained at the Royal Ballet School in London, Rhatigan danced for more than 20 years, performing in both classical and contemporary repertoire as a soloist and principal dancer with London Festival Ballet, Oakland Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, San Francisco Opera, and Lines Ballet. She worked with distinguished choreographers such as Rudolf Nureyev, Agnes de Mille, Anna Sokolow, and Glen Tetley, among others, and collaborated with a wide range of musicians including the author/musician Douglas Adams, the Kronos Quartet, and musicians of the Ba?aka people of the Central African Republic.

Martine van Hamel, an internationally famed principal ballerina who currently teaches at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of the American Ballet Theatre, will lecture on her extensive career and discuss the works of the late pioneering choreographer Glen Tetley beginning at 5 p.m. March 25 in the Dance Theater.

Born in Brussels, Belgium, van Hamel studied dance in Denmark, Holland, and Venezuela before embarking as a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, the City Center Joffrey Ballet, and the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), which she joined in 1970. With a repertoire that ranged from classic to dramatic, she performed leading roles in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, La Sylphide, and other classical ballets; she also danced the role of the Pioneering Woman in Martha Graham?s Appalachian Spring and performed in ballets created for her by Twyla Tharp, Glen Tetley, David Parsons, and other notable contemporary choreographers. Besides teaching ballet technique at ABT, van Hamel is a founding director of the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, N.Y.