11/25/2003

Contact: K.E. Schwab  -- 724-738-2199;  e-mail: karl.schwab@sru.edu

Special Production of Anna Sokolow Work Set --

SRU’s DANCE CONCERT TO SHOWCASE WORKS BY GUEST ARTIST, FACULTY, STUDENTS   

          SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – Works by guest artist Helanius J. Wilkins, department faculty and students will highlight the Slippery Rock University dance department’s fall semester concert set for 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday [Dec. 6] in Swope Recital Hall.

           The student program will also include works by the late, modern dance pioneer Anna Sokolow along with a range of dance forms, includingjazz, tap, modern, pointe and works that utilize technology. 

          Tickets are $2 at the door.

       An award-winning choreographer, performance artist and instructor based in Washington D.C., Wilkins completed an on-campus residency earlier this semester at SRU where  he created "Collapsing:  Fragmented Images" for a group of SRU dance students. The program is based on original music by Thomas F. Bickley. 

      Wilkins received the 2001 Metro D.C. Dance "Emerging Choreographer" award and is founder and artistic director of Washington,

D.C., Edgeworks Dance Theater, the city’s premier touring contemporary dance company of African American men. The company will present an evening of dance in Miller Auditorium in March. Ursula Payne, associate professor of dance at SRU, directed the residency with funding through SRU’s University Program Board’s Initiatives Grant program.

As part of the fall semester concert, Payne and Nola Nolen, associate professor, will premiere works created for students in their repertory classes.  In addition, students, directed by Payne, will offer a section from a 1971 work by Sokolow. The setting of the work, titled "Scenes from the Music of Charles Ives," was made possible through an SRU faculty-student research grant. In setting the piece, Payne followed a "labanotation" score -- one of the few, systemized notation languages for dance.

Students participated in a New York City field trip to meet and interview Jim and Lorry May, former members of the Sokolow company and current keepers of the archive. The SRU students will return to New York City in April to perform at the "Sharing the Legacy" conference at Hunter College.

          For additional information, call 724-738-2036.

PN, WPN, PgN, RL