The Middlebury College Department of Theatre and Dance will present a Fall Dance Concert, an evening of new works titled “Future Felt,” this Friday, Dec. 1 and Saturday, Dec. 2 at the Mahaney Center for the Arts. Six dances will make up an evening of work that celebrates the sharing of Middlebury dance students’ creative processes and research. The performance is coordinated by artist-in-residence Julian Barnett.
The choreographers’ work explores the art form of choreography as an act of social, political and artistic inquiry. The evening traverses rich emotional and conceptual landscapes and presents individual perspectives of beauty, faith, transformation, society and resistance by interrogating personal layers of identity, meaning, memory, perception and experience.
Barnett will begin the evening, at 8 p.m., by presenting the “Newcomers’ Piece,” an annual work featuring dancers new to the Middlebury College Dance Program. This year, Barnett explores the act of choreography as a way of building community around a shared interest for moving into the unfamiliar. “New to You” explores the possibilities of how curiosity creates encounters that can dissolve assumptions and expand the scope of what we see, feel and learn.
The performance continues with work by five emerging choreographers.
“A Reprogramming” is a piece created by Roxy Adviento ’18. It is a highly self-aware piece that experiments with the mechanics of creating “humans” who create performances.
“What We Do with the Rest of Our Time,” choreographed by Matea Mills-Andruk ’18.5, visually describes the love and complexity of connections within protest culture and displays the coexistence of the mundane, the silliness and care found in friendship, and the seriousness of protest demands.
“BoUnd,” choreographed by Asia M-Funches ’18 and dancers, calls upon the individual. This duet will rhythmically reveal the fragmented navigation and awareness of identity within the confines of relationships and boundaries in life.
Loosely based on the book of Hosea, the piece “Hesed,” choreographed by Deborah Leedy ’18, uses improvisation to explore what faithfulness and unfaithfulness looks like onstage. The simplicity of trust contrasts the complexity of human interactions and begins to delve into the meaning of faith.
“Hype,” choreographed by Maggie Phillips ’19, is for the curious, the experimental, and the self-expressive trying to make sense of the invigoration and frustration of polarized emotions.
Come experience “Future Felt” this Friday and Saturday, at 8 p.m., in the Dance Theatre of the Mahaney Center for the Arts in Middlebury. Tickets are $12; $10 for Middlebury College ID card holders; and $6 for Middlebury College students. For tickets or information, call (802) 443-MIDD (6433) or visit go.middlebury.edu/arts.