The performers in Headlong Dance Theater’s “Avalanche,” from left: Carol Dilley and Michael Reidy, of Bates College; Todd Coulter, Colby College; Rachel Boggia, Bates; and Annie Kloppenberg, Colby. Photograph by Andrew Simonet/Headlong Dance Theater.

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Faculty from Bates and Colby colleges perform the Maine premiere of a piece by Philadelphia’s Headlong Dance Theater at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, May 28-29, at Space Gallery, 538 Congress St., Portland.

Tickets cost $10, and are available at the door and at the Space website. For more information, please call 207-828-5600.

Titled “Avalanche,” the performance piece explores the performer’s body over a lifetime of performing, and the idea of an ordinary life. “Avalanche” was developed by Headlong lead director David Brick, co-director Amy Smith and company dramaturg Mark Lord, in collaboration with the five performers — Todd Coulter and Annie Kloppenberg of Colby, and Rachel Boggia, Carol Dilley and Michael Reidy of Bates.

The piece has been developed with support from a CBB Mellon Faculty Enhancement grant and from the Bates Faculty Development Fund. It will be performed in New York at Danspace June 6-8.

If you keep performing, “Avalanche” proposes, you find something new — something bigger and wilder, and more ordinary. You find your actual body.

“There’s something about being middle-aged now where I feel my body more, in all ways, including its lumpy, tender messiness,” says Brick. “Somehow it seems important to put that awareness together with the sensation of space itself — the ubiquitous substance that is not our bodies, but that presses against us wherever we are.”

Coulter and Kloppenberg are assistant professors of dance and theater at Colby. Boggia is assistant professor of dance at Bates, Dilley is associate professor and director of the Bates dance program, and Reidy is senior lecturer in and managing director of theater and dance.

The CBB Mellon grant made possible an extended residency at the colleges from 2011 to 2013. The faculty were interested in Headlong’s creative approach, which engages artists with fundamentally different training and backgrounds in a process where differences are resources for thinking, but not endpoints of style.

Research is at the center of this hybrid performance that not only combines dance, theater and storytelling, but also represents scholarship and builds on the professional experiences of the cast.

As Dilley says, “This piece is a logical continuation of 35 years of performance research.”

The stories in “Avalanche” twist to become at once hilarious and heartbreaking. Ultimately, the piece celebrates and laments the body in ways haunting, visceral and exquisitely formal.

“Bury them in an avalanche of love,” says a dancer in “Avalanche” as she recalls her younger self — “the love you have and the love you want.

“Look across the wings at your friends, say a little prayer to lose 40 pounds instantly and enter.”

Twenty years later, she tells herself, “Your fingers love texture. Everything in your being loves deep pressure, like being squished by a hat or a partner. When taking a bath you will be tempted to bring the laptop into the bathroom to watch ’30 Rock’ on Netflix.

“Don’t.”

Headlong Dance Theater

Brick and Smith founded Headlong Dance Theater with Andrew Simonet in 1993. Over the years, Headlong has created more than 40 dances, which often actively involve the audience and are known for their witty views of contemporary culture.

Recent projects include “This Town is a Mystery,” a series of potlucks hosted by ordinary Philadelphians performing in their own homes; “Explanatorium,” an audience-participation meditation on the inexplicable, performed in an abandoned Christian Science church; and “CELL,” a performance journey for one audience member at a time guided by a cell phone.

Informed by a deep commitment to collaboration, humor and formal experimentation, Headlong has won many fans and much acclaim including a Bessie Award and a Pew Fellowship.

Hailed as “fiendishly inventive” (The New Yorker) and “bright and brash” (The New York Times), Headlong’s work has been presented at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York’s Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122 and Central Park Summerstage; the Jade Festival and the Kyoto Arts Center in Japan; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and the Portland (Ore.) Institute for Contemporary Art.

Ambrosino, who has the role of Gabey (Gene Kelly’s part in the 1949 film version of the Broadway play), tells Boston Spirit Magazine blog that while he recalls being “enthralled by the performances”  when he watched the movie as a boy, no one should expect him to channel Kelly.

Chip (Phil Tayler), Ozzie (Zachary Eisenstat) and Gabey (John Ambrosino ’01) in a scene from the Lyric Theater’s production of On the Town. Photograph by Mark S. Howard.

“I’m going to stay away from the movie now and let [director] Spiro [Veloudos] lead us down the road.”

Thus far, media reviews of the play have been positive.

Ambrosino says the Lyric is taking an “awesome artistic risk” by staging the play that was first produced on Broadway in 1944. “It’s so infrequently done because it’s a difficult show to do,” says Ambrosino.

• View post on the Boston Spirit Magazine blog, May 5, 2013.

Matthew R. Auer becomes vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Bates on July 1. Photograph by Kendall Reeves.

Bates President A. Clayton Spencer announced today that Matthew R. Auer will become dean of the faculty and vice president of academic affairs, effective July 1.

Auer, dean of the Hutton Honors College and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, succeeds Pamela J. Baker ’69, Helen A. Papaioanou Professor of Biological Sciences and longtime faculty leader at Bates.

“Matthew Auer is a leading scholar and globally engaged expert in the arenas of environmental policy, energy policy, sustainable development and foreign aid,” Spencer said, in announcing the appointment. “He is also a dynamic and effective academic leader who has focused his energies on improving programs for undergraduates at Indiana University, first as director of undergraduate programs in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and for the past five years as dean of the Hutton Honors College. I am so pleased that we have found a scholar, teacher and collaborative leader of Matt’s stature to lead our faculty in this time of great challenge and promise in higher education.”

“The curriculum’s academic rigor is legendary and its action-oriented, self-reflective approach to experiential learning is path-breaking,” Auer said.

“I am thrilled and honored to join Bates,” said Auer. “Bates has been on my radar screen for years. The faculty of talented teacher-scholars is dedicated to the personal and intellectual development of the college’s diverse student population. The curriculum’s academic rigor is legendary and its action-oriented, self-reflective approach to experiential learning is path-breaking. Bates’ faculty enters a period of major generational renewal in the short years ahead even as higher education is transformed by new technological, pedagogical and curricular innovations. It’s an exciting time to lead the faculty, and I can’t wait to get to work.”

Auer has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on environmental policy. His paper, “Communication and Competition in Environmental Studies,” published in Policy Sciences in 2010, earned the Harold D. Lasswell award for best article in that journal. His edited 2004 volume Restoring Cursed Earth: Appraising Environmental Policy Reforms in Eastern Europe and Russia was nominated for the International Studies Association’s Sprout Award for best book in global environmental studies. Auer has taught since 1996 at Indiana University, where he has earned numerous teaching awards, including IU’s highest honor for instruction, the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Auer has served in a variety of public policy roles at national and international levels. He was senior adviser to the U.S. Forest Service from 2001 to 2006, and during that time was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Forum on Forests and to the International Tropical Timber Council. For more than 20 years he has developed, implemented and evaluated energy and environmental aid programs for the U.S. Agency for International Development and for foreign aid agencies in, among other countries, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Poland, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.

Auer has raised academic standards in the honors college and aligned the college’s course offerings with the university’s revamped general education requirements.

At Indiana University’s Hutton Honors College, which offers a rigorous academic experience for undergraduates within the larger research university, Auer leads a staff of 19 professionals. He is the college’s principal recruiter of faculty who teach hundreds of honors courses in various units at IU. He has raised academic standards in the honors college and aligned the college’s course offerings with the university’s revamped general education requirements. Auer has also raised resources for study abroad programs and helped develop an undergraduate research scholarship program at IU.

Auer received a doctorate in forestry and environmental studies from Yale University in 1996. His other academic degrees include an M.S. (1994) and M.Phil. (1993) from Yale, a master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (1990) and an A.B. magna cum laude in anthropology from Harvard University (1988).

Auer’s appointment culminates a national search carried out by a search advisory committee composed of faculty, staff and the president. The search included visits to campus by finalists, who spoke in large forums and small meetings about their research interests, administrative experience and vision. Auer’s visit received an overwhelmingly positive response from the Bates community.

“I am grateful to Pam Baker for her leadership of the Bates faculty and her partnership during my first year at Bates,” said Spencer. “I am also grateful to the faculty and staff who worked with such dedication on this search, and whose vision for the college has led us to this outstanding appointment.”

Auer will come to Bates with his wife Anne and their 12-year-old twins.

Choreographer and dancer Erin Gottwald ’98 joins rapper, writer, actor and director Postell Pringle ’98 to lead longstanding Short Term unit “Tour, Teach, Perform,” in which students create a dance piece and teach it to pupils in local schools. Video produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

More about ‘Tour, Teach, Perform’

For the second year, the theater and dance department at Bates College and the local arts agency L/A Arts have teamed up to bring the dance program “Tour, Teach, Perform” to local elementary schools in May.

A course created by Bates in 1973, “Tour, Teach, Perform” brings Bates students to public schools in the Lewiston-Auburn region every spring to offer a performance and an arts lesson.

This year’s performance piece is “Welcome to Illyria (a 12th Night Story),” a multidisciplinary adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” The piece was written by Postell Pringle and created by Pringle, choreographer Erin Gottwald and L/A Arts’ director of arts in education, Joshua Vink, who is teaching the course.

“Tour, Teach, Perform” will travel to 11 schools, presenting performances to more than 2,300 students and workshops to more than 1,400. The visits began May 8 and continue through the 23rd. Please note that the school performances are not open to the general public.

Postell Pringle ’98, center rear, and his classmate Erin Gottwald (in green) led these students in creating a piece for the 2013 “Tour, Teach, Perform” unit.

Pringle and Gottwald are performance collaborators and members of the Bates class of 1998. Pringle is a playwright, hip-hop artist-producer, actor and director. He is one of the four Q Brothers, a troupe that creates new musicals, recordings and multi-disciplinary productions using the tools of hip hop.

Pringle recently played the title role of the Q Brothers’ acclaimed multimedia production “Othello: The Remix,” presented in Chicago, London, Germany and Edinburgh. He has performed on and off Broadway, in film and in such television programs as “Rescue Me,” “Law & Order” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”

Gottwald, a dancer and choreographer, has worked throughout the United States. She has taught dance for more than 15 years, and since 2005 has taught at Spoke the Hub Dancing in Brooklyn, where she is co-director of the Young Artists Program and producer-curator of the annual performance series, Gowanus Guest Room.

“Tour, Teach, Perform” is a course presented annually during Bates’ five-week spring Short Term. Students create a production and learn how to teach an arts lesson to K-6 graders. When they visit the elementary schools, they perform their show and then fan out to teach a 45-minute lesson in 10 classrooms, giving the pupils a chance to explore the elements of performance for themselves.

Bates is an important partner in the arts in Lewiston-Auburn, with hundreds of performances open to the public on campus each year and multiple partnerships off campus. Bates is also home to the internationally renowned Bates Dance Festival, which offers six weeks of performances on and off campus by recognized artists from around the world, as well as the Youth Arts Program for young people from the region.

L/A Arts is the designated arts agency for Lewiston-Auburn. For “Tour, Teach, Perform,” L/A Arts has provided outreach to the local schools and supported transportation and accommodations for Gottwald and Pringle, who were in residence for the first two weeks of Short Term.

Firefighting technology at work at a Pierce Street apartment building in Lewiston on May 3, 2013. The fire engulfed four buildings and was the second of three multi-building fires in the city between April 29 and May 6. Photograph by Michael Bradley/Bates College.

Three fires in downtown Lewiston since April 29, 2013, have destroyed 10 buildings and displaced nearly 200 Lewiston residents.

The details have been reported in the Lewiston Sun Journal.

As the Lewiston-Auburn community rallies to support the victims, Bates is coordinating campus efforts to participate in the relief initiatives. A Bates response webpage listing events, volunteer opportunities, most-urgent needs, local charities and fundraising initiatives will be updated as needed. Please direct any questions to Kristen Cloutier of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at kcloutie@bates.edu or 207-786-6202.

Bates Director of Security Tom Carey said that his team is actively monitoring campus buildings and remains in close touch with the Lewiston Police Department. As a precautionary measure, Bates Security has enhanced its overnight coverage of the campus and immediate environs, he said.

• See resources for the fire relief effort.

All Bates residence halls and campus buildings are tied to a central fire reporting station, which goes directly to the Lewiston Fire Department. Bates Security also receives notification and responds immediately when a smoke alarm is set off. Carey has urged the campus community to contact Security at 786-6254 immediately if anyone or any situation appears to be out of the ordinary. 

Kristen Cloutier of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships (kcloutie@bates.edu, 207-786-6202) is coordinating the campus response. In addition to the efforts outlined below, Bates is working to bolster the relief efforts in as many ways as possible, including volunteer recruitment and transportation, food provision for shelter residents, and campus fundraisers. This page will be updated with additional information as it becomes available.

Key Locations: Lewiston fires and the Bates and community response

How to Help

Donate

Given that donation needs are changing daily, some charitable organizations are currently encouraging the public to provide monetary and gift card donations.

On campus, monetary and gift card donations will be accepted at the Harward Center during regular business hours (8am-4:30pm M-F). Donations of clothing and other goods will be accepted at OIE (9am-10pm M-F and 12-10pm on weekends), the Student Activities Office (7am-7pm throughout the week), the front lobby of Pettengill Hall (7am-5pm M-F and 10am-5pm on Sat), the entrance to Commons (during regular meal hours) and the Harward Center (8am-4:30pm M-F).

Maine Governor Paul LePage has chosen United Way of Androscoggin County to administer the Lewiston Fire Relief Fund. Donations can be made online at volunteermaine.org or in person or by mail at United Way of Androscoggin County, 66 Ash Street, PO Box 888, Lewiston, ME  04243 (hours are 8am-4:30pm M-F). Checks should be made out to United Way of Androscoggin County and indicate Lewiston Fire Relief Fund in the memo line.

Additional avenues of support

• The American Red Cross – United Valley Chapter is accepting monetary donations. They may be made through the website or mailed c/o Executive Director Jennifer Gaylord, 1180 Lisbon St., Lewiston, ME. Memo line: Lewiston Downtown Fires.  Rainbow Federal Credit Union is also accepting donations for the American Red Cross at its Main Street location, 381 Main Street, Lewiston, ME  04240.
• The Salvation Army is accepting clothing donations dropped off at their thrift store location at 720 Main St., Lewiston (hours are 9am-6pm M-Sat). The Salvation Army is also accepting nonperishable items and toiletries at its facility at 67 Park St., Lewiston (hours are 9am-2pm M-F). Contact number for other items: 207-783-0801.
• The Starbucks in Auburn is accepting donations of school supplies through the end of the school year for students at the high school who were affected by the fires.  Donations can be dropped off at the store at 35 Mount Auburn Ave., Auburn (hours are 5:30am-10pm M-F, 6am-10pm Sat, and 6am-9pm Sun).
• Revelation Massage in Auburn is collecting donations of new, wrapped pillows through May 29th.  Catholic Charities of Maine will be distributing these pillows to victims of the fires who need them most.  Donations can be dropped off at their location at 600 Turner St., Suite 3, Auburn (hours are 9am-9pm M-F, 9am-5pm Sat, and 12-4pm Sun).

Volunteer

The Androscoggin Emergency Management Agency has been tasked with the distribution of material goods to fire victims as they move into their newly-leased apartments. Volunteers are needed to help deliver items like new mattresses to these apartments. If you are willing to receive volunteer requests for such work during the next 2-3 weeks, please email kcloutie@bates.edu with your name and preferred email address. You will be added to an email list that will only exist for 2-3 weeks for the sole purpose of recruiting and mobilizing volunteers for short stretches (less than a half day) of volunteer work.

Student volunteers will be organized by the Harward Center’s Student Volunteer Fellows and Bonner Leaders in partnership with other student organizations and leadership programs.

Additionally, Maine Housing and other agencies are asking landlords with vacant apartments to post their vacancies for free on MaineHousingSearch.org. MaineHousing also maintains a list of subsidized housing units in Maine.

Turn out

Wednesday, May 22, at 5:30pm: Lewiston Unites Community Discussion at Longley Elementary School, 145 Birch St., Lewiston.  This is a follow-up forum to the healing ceremony held in Kennedy Park on 5/13.  The community is invited to have open dialogue about their concerns and issues, and to start to look forward to solutions.

Hathorn Hall is silhouetted against a Bates fireworks display. Photograph by Ken Zirkel.

Residents in the neighborhood around Bates College shouldn’t be surprised to hear and see some pyrotechnics this weekend.

A student group at Bates will present fireworks over the college’s Lake Andrews starting around 9:15 p.m. Sunday, May 12.

An organization promoting Asian and Asian-American awareness, identity and fellowship at Bates, Sangai Asia sponsors a fireworks show near the end of every academic year.

The lecture concludes the series City, Neighborhood and Society: Social Science Approaches to Urban Issues. This series has been sponsored by the Department of Sociology with support from the Program in Environmental Studies, the Division of the Social Sciences, the Office of Intercultural Education and the Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Diversity and Inclusion.

Additional support for specific speakers in the series has been provided by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the departments of politics, anthropology and history, the Program in Women and Gender Studies, and OUTFront.

For more information, please call 207-786-8296.

Dominguez is an associate professor in the department of sociology and human services at Northeastern University. She is also a faculty fellow at the Urban Health Research Institute, the Gender and Sexuality Program and the Brudnick Center for the Study of Conflict and Violence at Northeastern.

A forensically trained psychotherapist, Dominguez is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Division on Global Psychiatry. She helped developed the 2009 National Mental Health Policy for the Republic of Liberia.

A Ford Foundation and Woodrow Wilson fellow, she chairs the Latino Section of the American Sociological Association and has been recognized by the United States Census Bureau as an ethnography expert on low-income populations. She holds degrees in sociology, psychology, forensic social work and social welfare policy.

The Hot Club of San Francisco. Photograph by Lenny Gonzalez.

The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall is the setting for two don’t-miss jazz performances in May.

Masters of the sophisticated French-Gypsy swing pioneered by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, the Hot Club of San Francisco presents its Cinema Vivant film-and-music program in a joint presentation with L/A Arts at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 10.

Led by a guitarist who “combines an astonishing command of the fingerboard with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention,” according to Soundstage, the Sheryl Bailey 3 performs in an Olin Arts Alive presentation at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 17.

Tickets for the HCSF show are $20 by reservation at the L/A Arts ticketing site. Tickets for Bailey are $12, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students who make a reservation at olinarts@bates.edu.

The Olin Arts Center is located at 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6163 or email olinarts@bates.edu.

Hot Club of San Francisco

Jazz guitarist Sheryl Bailey.

The Hot Club of San Francisco, a quintet of accomplished and versatile musicians, celebrates the music of Reinhardt and Grappelli’s pioneering Hot Club de France.

The HCSF borrows the instrumentation of violin, bass and guitars from the original Hot Club while breathing new life into the music with innovative arrangements of classics and originals by lead guitarist Paul Mehling. The band features the amazing violin of two-time Grammy Award winner Evan Price and a swinging rhythm section.

To hear the ensemble is to return to the 1930s, the intimate jazz clubs of Paris and the elegant lounges of the Hotel Ritz. Often called Gypsy jazz, the music of the Hot Club of San Francisco has entranced audiences around the globe for more than 20 years.

“We have a swing-or-die approach to the music that’s distinctly American,” says Mehling.

At Bates, the band presents Cinema Vivant, an evening of silent films accompanied by live Gypsy swing. Two films are by European filmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz, a pioneer of stop-action animation: The Cameraman’s Revenge, a charming piece about the marital troubles of beetles, and The Mascot, an adventure story about lost toys.

From the other side of the Atlantic comes There It Is, a recently rediscovered film by American Charley Bowers, who revolutionized film in the 1920s by combining animation with live action.

Sheryl Bailey 3

“The most essential quality in a jazz musician is one’s sense of groove — time,” Bailey told guitarnoise.com writer David Hodge. “Listening to a lot of jazz is also important to get the ‘sound of jazz’ in your ear, and also, your heart.

“If you treat jazz as a science experiment, it will always sound like that — falling in love with the music is the key to open the door.”

A composer and player ranked among the foremost bop-based guitarists to emerge in the 1990s, Bailey brings organist Ron Oswanski and drummer Ian Froman to Bates for a night of hard-swinging contemporary jazz. It’s a melodic collaboration that Allaboutjazz.com reviewer Elliot Simon describes as a “communal musical journey.”

Bailey has toured extensively in the U.S. and around the world as a member of David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness and the Jazz Guitars Meet Hendrix quartet. Her 2011 CD For All Those Living (PureMusic Records) is the most recent of her eight CDs as bandleader, and her catalog also includes the concert DVD The Sheryl Bailey 3: Live in NYC (2008, Mel Bay Records).

Bailey was chosen as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department in 2000 for a South American tour, and earned third place in the Thelonius Monk International Jazz Guitar competition in 1995. Hailing from Pittsburgh, Bailey studied at Berklee College of Music, where she now teaches.

Seth Warner.

The BatesDowntown concert series presents an evening of classic country, folk, blues and other roots music by the Seth Warner Trio and the duo Day for Night at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 11, at 22 Park St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required, available at batestickets.com. To learn more, contact 207-786-6163 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The Seth Warner Trio plays folk, blues, Americana and old-time country. Guitarist-singer Warner, whose performances have been described as “ethereal” by the Portland Press Herald, has appeared at venues as diverse as the Stockholm Folk and Blues Connection, the Boston Early Music Festival, WGBH radio and recently at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

Highlights from his two-decade career include performances and collaborations with the Parker String Quartet and tours with the extraordinary blues singer Francine Reed. Warner manages the Olin Arts Center at Bates and has served as executive producer for several internationally acclaimed classical recordings.

Also in the trio are Michael Desrosier, who plays electric guitar, and Tim Webb, who performs on upright bass.

Day for Night.

Hailing from northwest Portland, Doug Hubley and Gretchen Schaefer are Day for Night. They support their harmony singing with guitar and mandolin. Their inspirations include Merle Haggard, Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and some of country’s premiere brother acts — the Stanley Brothers, the Everly Brothers, the Louvin Brothers.

The pair, who first made music together in the 1990s as members of the Cowlix and the Boarders, combine wry humor with a bedrock reverence for musical tradition as they cover about three decades’ worth of country music — in addition to a growing list of Hubley originals, including “Bittersweet” and “The Ceiling,” both available on their ReverbNation site. “The Ceiling” is also for sale on iTunes.

Day for Night is a popular attraction at the annual Cornish Apple Festival and performs regularly at the Portland wine bar Blue. The band has also appeared at the Cornish Inn; the Frog and Turtle Gastropub, Westbrook; the Last Church on the Left, Portland; and in a variety of Bates productions.

Like Warner, Hubley is a Bates employee — college writer in the Bates Communications Office.