WHAT'S NEW AT BRYN MAWR THIS YEAR?
We're delighted to welcome some new choreographers to Bryn Mawr this year for special projects. Audition dates will be posted on line in the 2007-08 schedule section (curriculum) and will be announced.
1) In the Fall, Nichole Canuso will be making a piece for the Modern Dance Ensemble. This piece will be performed in our annual Spring concert. In addition to being a critically acclaimed dancer with other companies in Philadelphia, Nichole is the Artistic Director of Nicole Canuso Dance Company.
Nichole combines subtle gesture and explosive movement to explore the human condition through dance. Her work has been inspired by literary sources ranging from Samuel Beckett’s ‘Act without Words I’ to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Each dance invites the audience to journey alongside Canuso (metaphorically in stage performance and literally in site-based works) as she and the performers embody the fabulous mystery of human warmth and its intersection with the cold logic of existence.
Nichole’s dancing, choreography and study have taken her throughout France, Scotland, Poland, Japan and across the U.S. Her work has been supported by a Bessie Shoenberg First Light Commission, The Leeway Foundation, the Independence Foundation, Dance Advance (a grant program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts), The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Ellen Forman Memorial Award. Choreographic residencies include The New Edge Residency (CEC, Philadelphia), nEW festival (MSDT, Philadelphia), The Swarthmore Project (Swarthmore College, PA), The Choreographer’s Project (Susan Hess Dance Studio, Philadelphia). Nichole’s choreographic projects have been presented by Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), The Wilma Dance Boom Fesival (Phila), Judson Church Movement Research Exchange(NYC, Phila), DancePlace(D.C.), Links Hall (Chicago), Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival(NYC), The Philadelpia Fringe Festival and The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Swarthmore College (PA), Hampshire College (MA).
In addition to her own choreographic projects, Canuso collaborates with several dance and theater companies. Most notably as a company member with Bessie Award-winning Headlong Dance Theater, where she has been a company member for 10 years. Work with Pig Iron Theater Company includes the creation and performance of a 3 woman clown play ‘FLOP’. Other companies include Karen Bamonte Dance Works, Group Motion Dance Company, Big Mess Theater, The Arden Theater, Theater Exile, and Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival. Nichole was also a co-founder and co-director of Moxie dance collective from 1999-2004.
2) In the Spring we will also welcome Janet Pilla, who will work with our students on reconstructing a movement from Waldstein Sonata by the great choreographer, American José Limón.
The Waldstein Sonata, set to Beethoven's piano work of 1804, was Jose Limon's final work, left unfinished by his death in 1972.It was completed by his protégé Daniel Lewis and first performed by the Juilliard Dance Ensemble in 1975. It has been performed periodically since then and is considered an example of Limon’s passionate approach to dance. The danceis a soaring pure movement work for an ensembleof eight dancers, full ofduets, trios and quartets that sweep, curve and shape to the piano music that is both robust and delicate.The groupings and spatial patterns give the work a transparent physical architecture. At Bryn Mawr we will be presenting the first and most substantial of the three movements of the Waldstein.
Limón was a Mexican-born U.S. a dancer and choreographer who worked initially with two of the early pioneers of US modern dance, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, before founding his own company in the mid-40s after returning home from WWII. Humphrey remained an artistic advisor until her death in 1958. He is particularly noted for expanding the Humphrey-Weidman technique to include powerful, sweeping gestures and for creating a repertory that explored the plight of the common man as well as dissecting the flaws of larger-than-life tragic figures. Among his many works in addition to Mazurkas are Missa Brevis La Malince, Danzas Mexicanas, There Is a Time, The Exiles, The Traitor, Emperor Jones, and, of course, The Moor's Pavane, which celebrated dance critic, John Martin, described as "one of the major works in the contemporary dance repertory."
Janet Pilla received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theater from Syracuse University and her Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Temple University. She toured nationally and internationally as a soloist of Ann Vachon/Dance Conduit (a company dedicated to the preservation of the José Limón Style) for 12 years. She was featured in performances in Czechoslovakia as a soloist, and in England, Scotland and Taiwan as a company member of both the Terry Beck Troupe and Ed Groff/Jin Wen Yu Dancers.She has also performed with The Arden Theater, Group Motion, Dancetellers, SCRAP Performance Group and Trapezius, and most recently with Jeanne Ruddy Dance, Dancefusion, Melanie Stewart Dance Theater, and Kun-Yang Li
She has restaged Limon’s works for the Limon Institute was involved in the reconstruction, restaging and performance of Symphony for Strings and Mazurkas by José Limón and Day on Earth and Dawn in New York by Doris Humphrey. In addition to teaching Limon repertory at numerous colleges and universities, Ms. Pilla has been an adjunct faculty member at Temple University and Drexel University and is currently on the adjunct faculty at Arcadia University where she directs and choreographs productions and teaches theater improvisation and dance.
3) Nearly New! Also returning for her second choreographic project with our students in Ballet Ensemble is Heidi Cruz. Heidi dances with the Pennsylvania Ballet, but beyond her excellent dancing she is demonstrating that she is also an up and coming choreographer. Heidi has been commissioned to create works for Franklin and Marshall College, Repertory Dance Theater, and Ballet D'errico. Ms. Cruz has also had her work performed annually since 2000 for Shut Up & Dance. She was a winner of Ballet Builders 2004 in NYC where she showcased The Glistening. She performed and created works with the internationally renowned spoken word/recording artist Ursula Rucker and she was awarded a New Edge Residency from the Community Education Center of Philadelphia for 2004-2005 to create a full evening of her own work. Two years ago, she created a beautiful quartet for our advanced dancers and we're looking forward to what she'll do in the Spring.
4) We are also welcoming Lester Tomé, a dance scholar and dance artist. who will teach a new course, Nation, Gender and Class in Latin American Dance, in the Spring semester (Click here for syllabus and course description). This course will look at social and theatrical dance in Latin America, focusing on salsa, tango and ballet as samples of native, imported and exported forms practiced on the continent. It highlights how dance embodies issues of nationality, class and gender relevant to Latin American countries, including Cuba, Argentina and Puerto Rico. It's a 200 level course open to students who have had a Dance lecture/seminar course, or a course in Sociology, Anthropology, or Latin American Studies, or who receive permission from the instructor to enroll. The course will include readings, visual media, class discussions and presentations, guest lectures, field trip, and some instruction in salsa/tango. A syllabus will be posted in late August. Check the faculty page for Professor Tomé's bio.
5) Other new or nearly new instructors who will join our roster of terrific faculty include:
CHRISTINE COX....dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet, choreographer, and co-director of the cricitally acclaimed BALLET X
MICHELE TANTOCO...who has performed with European choreographers as well as with some of Philly's best. Michele is a 2001 BMC grad.
NIA EUBANKS...from Chuck Davis' AFRICAN AMERICAN DANCE ENSEMBLE as well as URBAN BUSH WOMEN brings her dance and choreographic talents to BMC
and TANIA ISAAC, director of TANIA ISAAC DANCE whom critics have described as a 'multitalented artist whose work both explores and expands the boundaries of contemporary Dance Theater'(J. Cooper Robb) and a performer whose 'stage picture is intelligent, voluptuous, witty, and political, all in the same breath'(Dixon-Gottschild)
Check out the FACULTY/STAFF page for more info on these talented artists.
Nicole Canuso in Fail Better
From Canuso's work... We Spar Down the Lane (photo features dance alum Alison d'Amato--HC '02, left )
Photo of Janet Pilla performing Waldstein Sonata as a member of Dance Conduit (mid-1980s). Gold star if you recognize the dancer on the left!
Janet Pilla
Lester Tomé
