Dance students to perform faculty works in Spring Concert

Skidmore student dancers will perform works newly choreographed or restaged by their Dance Department faculty in the annual Spring Dance Concert Friday and Saturday, April 24?25. Performances are scheduled at 8 p.m. Friday and at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday in the Dance Theater.

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

The program for all three performances will feature an array of works in historic ballet, modern dance, and theatrical ballet styles. Approximately 80 students will dance in the six pieces presented by five faculty choreographers.

Among the performances will be a presentation of Ga t Parisienne, newly designed by Denise Warner Limoli and inspired by Leonide Massine?s 1938 Ballets Russes production. A theatrical ballet with music by Jacques Offenbach, Ga t Parisienne is set in a 19th-century Paris nightclub whose elegant guests include a duke, a Peruvian playboy, an old general, a dashing captain, and the ladies who accompany them. The plot involves a tryst with a mistress, a diamond necklace, a fight, and a rowdy Can-Can finale.

Another highlight will be an excerpt from Act II of the romantic ballet, La Sylphide, originally choreographed in 1836 by August Bournonville and restaged during a recent Skidmore residency by the internationally recognized prima ballerina Kirsten Simone of the Royal Danish Ballet. Set in the Scottish highlands, the ballet tells of a young man about to marry his sweetheart when he is beguiled by a beautiful woodland sylph. He pursues her into a forest glade where a corps of sylphs dance for him, demonstrating the Bournonville style of bouyant jumps, intricate footwork, and youthful exuberance.

Among the modern and contemporary dances will be two works by Skidmore dance faculty members Rub n Graciani and Mary Harney, with music by Carl Landa, and a premier performance of a new work by Summer Lee Rhatigan, founder and director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. Rhatigan?s At Play, From Above is described as a dance work that ?pushes the boundaries of classical ballet technique into contemporary dance.? Set to music by Beethoven, it is a brief tour de force that requires ?speed, articulation, and sheer endurance,? according to Limoli.