Dance
Spring Arts Preview 2010
CLARICE SMITH PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
University of Maryland
College Park, Md.
301-405-ARTS
www.claricesmithcenter.umd.edu
Gesel Mason — Through dance, personal stories and video images, Women, Sex, & Desire: Sometimes You Feel Like a Ho’, Sometimes You Don’t challenges pre-programmed cultural assumptions and reflects the struggle, humor and pleasure humans encounter as sexual beings. Contains nudity, adult themes and language (3/25-3/27)
Maryland Dance Ensemble — Undergraduate and graduate student works selected by audition and performed by the repertory ensemble (4/15-18)
David Gonzales — Wounded Splendor is a choreographed suite of poetry, monologues and dance about our suffering planet, accompanied by original score and set within a video design (5/7)
DAKSHINA DANCE CO.
202-247-1292
www.dakshina.org
Spring Open Rehearsal — Dakshina gives a sneak peek of works in progress in an intimate setting, with a reception and silent auction after rehearsals (3/27, Dance Institute of Washington)
ROOMS and KARNA — The company reconstructs Anna Sokolow’s ROOMS and restages the Bharata Natyam piece KARNA in an annual performance at Dance Place (5/1-5/2, Dance Place)
DANCE PLACE
Edgeworks
3225 Eighth St. NE
202-269-1600
www.danceplace.org
EDGEWORKS Dance Theater — Led by founder and award-winning choreographer Helanius J. Wilkins, the city’s premier all-male company of mostly black men celebrates its ninth anniversary season performing an evening of new and signature works including In Progress: Traveling (2009) and a sneak peek of Trigger (3/13-3/14)
Youth Festival — Showcasing the next generation of artistic excellence from the D.C. metro area (3/20-21)
Lionel Popkin — There Is An Elephant In This Dance invites a closer look at how seemingly trivial, self-imposed and uncomfortable constraints reveal the shifting states between discipline and freedom (3/27-28)
Sharon Mansur and Naoko Maeshiba — Mansur directs two multi-media works: semblance, a new group piece, and here/there while Maeshiba presents a new solo and an excerpt from the ensemble piece, Paraffin (4/2-3)
Contra-Tiempo — The Los Angeles-based activist dance company fuses salsa, Afro-Cuban, West African, hip hop and abstract dance theater to blend physically intense and politically astute performance (4/10-11)
Deborah Riley Dance Projects — The Dance Place director enlists dancers and community to find generosity and mindfulness in their relationship to food and nourishment (4/17-18)
olive Dance Theatre — The company pays tribute to break dancing innovator Ken Swift in an evening-length series of vignettes, Swift Solos, documenting his influence (4/24-25)
Step Festival — the Dance Place Step Team is just one of many guests showcasing the abundance of local step talent in D.C. (5/8)
Ko-Ryo Dance Theater — Series: Episodes depicts New York-based contemporary choreographer Sunhwa Chung’s life, upon coming to the United States from Korea in 1994 (5/15-16)
Reggie Glass and Yao Glover — Double Barrel is an evening-length work blending spoken word, music and dance (5/22-23)
Dance Africa 2010 — This 23rd annual festival celebrates the dance and music of the African diaspora while honoring traditional heritage and its transformation into contemporary forms (6/5-6/6)
Sharna Fabiano Tango Company — Inspired by authentic tango aesthetics and social themes, the company explores the deep nostalgia, intimacy and longing inherent to the form while challenging gender roles as women and men exchange following and leading (8/7-8/8)
GMU CENTER FOR THE ARTS
4373 Mason Pond Drive
Fairfax, Va.
888-945-2468
www.gmu.edu/cfa
GMU Dance Company 2010 Gala Concert (3/26-27)
Garth Fagan Dance — The Tony Award-winning choreographer for Broadway’s The Lion King, Fagan blends ballet, modern and Afro-Caribbean movements (4/10)
GMU Dance Company Spring Concert (4/17)
GMU Dance Company May Dance Concert (4/30-5/1)
JANE FRANKLIN DANCE
703-933-1111
www.janefranklin.com
Outside/In (4/10-4/11, Woolly Mammoth)
Zip Through A Tight Space — a fundraiser for the company with silent auction and food (5/16, Arlington Arts Center)
of Bones & Bridges — a free outdoor event (4/25, Holmes Run Greenway in Alexandria)
KENNEDY CENTER
2700 F St. NW
202-467-4600
www.kennedy-center.org
Shen Wei Dance Arts — Performing Re-(Parts I, II, III), a triptych featuring choreographic journeys to Tibet, Angkor Wat and the New Silk Road (4-29-4/30, Eisenhower)
Compañía Nacional de Danza — One of Europe’s premier contemporary dance companies makes its Washington debut performing Multiplicity: Bach, a tribute to the composer (5/14-5/15, Eisenhower)
Ballet Across America II — The biannual program explores the breadth and depth of the art form and the nation’s various companies, including Tulsa Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses, Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and North Carolina Dance Theatre among others (6/15-6/20, Opera House)
MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE
5301 Tuckerman Lane
North Bethesda, Md.
301-581-5100
www.strathmore.org
Luna Negra Dance Theater — Cuban composer/saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and jazz/classical innovators the Turtle Island Quartet joins this dance company in a new work based on the danzón, the national dance of Cuba (3/19)
THE WASHINGTON BALLET
202-362-3606
www.washingtonballet.org
WAM! (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (3/14, 18, Atlas Performing Arts Center)
Bolero(+) — This high-energy program celebrates the marriage of music and dance (4/14-18, Harman Hall)
Shoogie, The Tail of My Wiener Dog — Septime Webre returns to the stage for the first time in 15 years in this nod to his Texas upbringing (4/21-4/25, The Washington Ballet’s England Studio)
The Washington Ballet’s 2010 Gala: Purple Rain (5/13, Swedish Ambassador’s Residence)
Genius3 — The third installment of this series, focused on dance masters, features Twyla Tharp’s witty Push Comes To Shove, Mark Morris’s fluid Pacific, Nacho Duato’s passionate Cor Perdut and George Balanchine’s modernist masterpiece The Four Temperaments (5/19-5/23, Harman Hall)
WASHINGTON PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY
202-833-9800
www.wpas.org
Ron K. Brown and Evidence — The Brooklyn-based dance company fuses African dance with contemporary movements and spoken word (4/30-5/1, Harman Hall)
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