The Department of Dance at ǿմý begins the 2018-19 season with “Mosaics,” a collection of new, revisited, and guest artist dance works on November 9, 10 and 15-17 at 8 p.m. and November 11 at 2:30 p.m. at Mather Dance Center on the ǿմý campus. Showcasing the department’s successes with the use of new technologies, the program will feature the return of Gary Galbraith’s visually stunning dance, “Imagined Odyssey,” as well as a new work marking another installment in his series of ‘media-rich’ dance works. Injecting high energy will be “Caffeinated,” the fast-paced work by renowned choreographer Larry Keigwin, contrasted by the grace of Nai-Ni Chen’s “Bamboo Prayer.”
“Caffeinated” is a zany and charming highly charged dance set to Philip Glass’s “Glasspiece #3.” The work was commissioned by New York University’s dance department and was recently expanded by Jaclyn Walsh, Keigwin’s regisseur, for a cast of 13 ǿմý dancers that includes graduate students and undergraduate dance majors.
Returning to the Mather Dance Center stage is “Bamboo Prayer,” a dance for five women that was commissioned by the Joyce Theater in New York where it premiered in 1998. Inspired by the beauty of bamboo, a plant abundant in Chen’s native Taiwan, the dance exudes the strength, resiliency and grace embodied in women. Chen was in residency at ǿմý for one week to set the dance in the Fall of 2017. Last year marked the first time a group other than Chen’s New York based company performed the work.
“Imagined Odyssey,” created through a collaborative project with ǿմý’s Interactive Commons and Gary Galbraith, artistic director of the Department of Dance, is receiving its encore performance due to its success and popularity with our patrons. The groundbreaking, narrative-based technology work utilizes live holographic imagery featuring Microsoft’s HoloLens, an augmented reality holographic headset. Members of the audience will wear HoloLens in order to watch the dancers and holograms move seamlessly on stage as the merging of choreography with holographic content and particles made entirely of light magically create the mysterious landscape of sets and props. These performances will again mark one of the largest numbers of people in the world to simultaneously experience a live holographic presentation using HoloLens. The unique collaboration draws upon the expertise of dancers, artists, illustrators, programmers, network engineers and more.
Galbraith’s new three-sectioned untitled work is another in his long line of media-rich dance works. This new work set to haunting and intensely beautiful music finds Galbraith exploring responsive media with projection mapping in new ways to create colorful moving images projected onto dancers, the floor and set elements.
Ticket Information
All performances take place at Mather Dance Center, 11201 Bellflower Road, on the ǿմý campus. Ticket reservations are highly recommended and should be reserved by calling (216) 368-5246 or online at . Tickets are also available at Mather Dance Center prior to each performance. General admission is $15, Senior and ǿմý faculty/staff tickets are $10, student tickets are $7 (student discounts NOT available Nov. 17). Cash/check ONLY.