Photo credit: SDSU NewsCenter
By Alejandra Enciso Guzmán
The SDSU University Dance Company will celebrate twenty-five years of dance this spring with a concert featuring stunning young artists in a contemporary dance work by SDSU faculty and guest artist Gina Bolles Sorenson. Intrigue, the bizarre and the fascinating set the tone for this showcase of San Diego’s rising new dance talent.
Lizbeth Price, Public Affairs Specialist at the SDSU School of Music and Dance, contacted San Diego Free Press to share the great news. I had the opportunity to direct a few questions to Melissa Nunn, Choreographer and Emeritus Professor of Dance.
“The objective is to provide advanced students with performing experience under the direction of professional faculty and guest choreographers; to prepare these students for professional work once they graduate” shared Nunn who will premiere a choreography of her own in this concert titled Presence. This work celebrates the live art of dance as physical presence, awareness and community “even as other social contexts create increasing detachment. Dancers are both elevated and subsumed by this fact, often at personal cost. We emphasize contemporary modern dance technique, improvisation, composition and performance, as well as dance pedagogy, dance history, digital technology, body modalities and video dance”.
The program will also premiere Blot by Gina Bolles Sorensen, GO by Leslie Seiters and Duets by Patricia Sandback.
“These dancers are some of the best young dancers in San Diego and are immersed every day in hours of dance classes and rehearsals. Our dance program is dedicated to faculty themselves creating work with students for performance, and providing the community with a state-of-the-art collaborative process as it unfolds on stage. Our concerts are unique, varied, edgy and full of surprises” Melissa concluded.
Performances are Friday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m., Sat. May 3 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 4 at 2:00 p.m. in the Dance Studio Theatre (ENS 200) at SDSU. Tickets are $15, general admission, and $10 students and seniors (60+), and can be purchased through the online box office at music.sdsu.edu, or at the box office one hour before performance.
Sound designers for this concert include Kristopher Apple, Kyle Sorensen and Patricia Sandback. Lighting designer is Conor Mulligan.
The SDSU University Dance Company has contributed innovative programming for the larger San Diego dance community since 1989. As one of the longest-standing student performance ensembles in Southern California, it features young dancers on their way to professional careers as dance artists. The SDSU dance faculty annually creates work with the dancers, as do nationally recognized guests. The company has participated in several ACDFA festivals, and toured to Lugano, Zurich, and Bern, Switzerland as well as Konstanz, Germany. The group regularly performs at campus events and at area community colleges.
Alejandra Enciso Guzmán is an arts consultant and reporter in both Tijuana and San Diego. @Riselah / @Riselaheng
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