Winter Dance Concert to be presented this weekend

The Skidmore Department of Dance celebrates the end of the semester with performances designed to showcase both its faculty's original choreography and its students' best moves in ballet, modern, and contemporary dance.

This year's three Winter Dance Concert performances will take place Friday and Saturday, Dec. 4 and 5, in the College's Dance Theater. Performances will begin at 8 p.m. Friday and at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday.   Tickets are $10 for general admission, and $5 for students and senior citizens. For information, call 518-580-5392. Seating is limited and reservations are not accepted; tickets go on sale 45 minutes prior to each performance.

Skidmore students of ballet will perform the " Grand Pas Classique" from Act III of Raymonda, the 1898 ballet choreographed by dance legend Marius Petipa.  To music by Alexandre Glazounov, the dance combines classical ballet with a Hungarian gypsy style. The Skidmore performance, staged and coached by Denise Warner Limoli, will feature two couples and a corps of 10 dancers. 

Artist-in-residence Mary Harney's new work is Synesthesia, a piece for 10 dancers. "Simply stated, the dance is an exploration of the fusion of sound and color," said Harney. The 12-minute piece will be performed to "Metamorphosis," composed in 1988 for piano by Philip Glass. 

Students of Debra Fernandez will present one of her most popular pieces, Zero Hour, a work for five dancers set to nuevo tango masterpieces by the Argentine master Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992). Originally choreographed in 1996,  Zero Hour "showcases the technical and artistic capabilities of its cast," said Fernandez.  

Rub n Graciani will duet with Emily Sferra '09 in his work Rapture, a live dance and multimedia installation created last summer during Skidmore's Faculty/Student Research Program, with video by Elissa Nadworny '10. Performed to Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor, the piece is about the last two people left at the end of the world, according to Graciani. A second Graciani work, Under the Milky Way, unfolds in four vignettes. Created in memory of a friend recently deceased, it will be performed to a score composed by Graciani and Skidmore composer/accompanist Carl Landa.  

The Winter Dance Concert will also feature Rush Hour, a fast-paced abstraction of urban life created in 1998 by nationally acclaimed dancer/choreographer Robert Battle and set on Skidmore dancers this semester by visiting-artist Erika Pujic, a dancer and rehearsal director for the Battleworks company.

For more information, call the Skidmore Dance Theater box office at 518-580-5392.