The four works of ‘Dancers’ Viewpointe 8’ are founded in traditional ballet techniques but incorporate contemporary movement and style into their choreography.
Photo by Courtney Bryant
Harvard News Office
Student dancers will take to a new stage next week for the annual spring show of the Dance Program of the Office for the Arts at Harvard. “Dancers’ Viewpointe 8” will feature close to 25 dancers from the program performing four works.
For the first time the group will dance at the New College Theatre, the recently renovated home of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals on Holyoke Street, for four performances, April 4, 5, 11 and 12. The theater offers not only more audience space, but also a sunken orchestra pit that will allow the dancers to perform one of the works with live musicians.
The premiere of “Three Penny Opera Suite,” created by the group’s dance director at the Office for the Arts, Elizabeth Bergmann, will feature another first: the collaboration with the Harvard Wind Ensemble. The 21-member musical group will accompany the performers with music by the German composer Kurt Weill.
“Having the real instruments is really exciting for everybody,” said Bergmann. “The sound is different. … All that modulation is so different, it’s such a different experience. It’s an interchange and interaction that doesn’t happen when you are just putting on a CD.”
The program will also feature “Aureole,” the seminal work by the prominent American choreographer Paul Taylor, danced to music by George Frideric Handel. Dramatic arts Visiting Lecturer Ruth Andrien, who is teaching a course at Harvard on Taylor’s technique and who restaged the piece for the performance, also danced the piece as a former principal dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
Taylor’s work is being produced with the aid of a grant from American Masterpieces: Dance, a program of the National Endowment of the Arts, which is administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with Dance/USA.
Included in the program is a work by choreographer Trey McIntyre. While in residence with Harvard’s dance program for a week in January, McIntyre created the piece “Old Aunt Boyd,” with music by Loretta Lynn, which will also make its premiere in the show. To open the program, the students will dance the tango-inspired work “fallen, falling,” choreographed by one of their contemporaries, Larissa Koch, ’08-’09.
The four works are founded in traditional ballet techniques but incorporate contemporary movement and style into their choreography, said the show’s producer and the dance administrator for the Office for the Arts, Susan Larson, who called the show “a great, well-rounded program.”
‘Dancers’ Viewpointe 8,’ New College Theatre, 10-12 Holyoke St., 8 p.m. April 4, 5, 11, and 12. Tickets $12 general; $8 students/senior citizens. Harvard Box Office (617) 496-2222.
© 2008 The President and Fellows of Harvard College