Bates Modern Dance Company. Photograph by Audrey Ouellette.

Choreography by the director of the Bates College dance program and by three of the program’s first graduating dance majors is featured in the 2012 Winter Dance Concert.

Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 30, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 1 (Program A); and 5 p.m. Saturday, March 31, and 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 2 (Program B).

Performances are held in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. A ticket to either Program A or B is also good for admission to the other program.

Admission is $6 for the general public and $3 for students and seniors. Tickets are available at batestickets.com.

For more information, please contact 207-786-6161 or 207-786-8294.

Program A comprises senior thesis works by dance majors Victoria Lowe and Lauren Christianson; four student pieces made for an advanced composition seminar; a trio made by Sonja Favaloro, a sophomore from Princeton, N.J.; and two works by Bates dance director Carol Dilley set to music performed live by acclaimed cellist Madeleine Shapiro.

Program B consists of choreography by 10 students in a dance composition course — students in all four class years whose majors range from physics to dance. All told, the two programs and four performances will feature more than 50 Bates students.

“The choreographers in Carol’s composition class and my advanced composition class work on their dances for much of the semester,” says Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance Rachel Boggia. “The pieces go through many drafts and are very strong by the time they are performed.

“It’s wonderful to see the choreographers’ visions come to life with the help of their peers, as well as our design faculty and staff.”

Dance majors Lowe and Christianson have taken the challenges of the creative process to a new level in their thesis works. “My piece explores us/them dichotomies, the problems with colorblind ideology and the beauty of difference within the context of monster theory,” said Christianson, a double major in dance and rhetoric from Madison, Wis.

“This process has been much different from anything I’ve done before because I’m using improvisational scores more than set choreographed phrases. I’ve learned to let go a bit and allow collaboration with my talented dancers to make my piece much richer than if I had choreographed every single movement.”

“To sketch out an idea in one’s mind and then try to translate it to one’s body, clearly enough that a whole bunch of people with very different bodies can paint the picture you sketched out, can be daunting,” says Lowe, of New York City, a double major in dance and American cultural studies. “Sometimes ideas get lost in translation. This was where my process lay and where I found my piece.”

“Dance is the point defined by the meeting of the intellectual mind and the intellectual body,” she adds. “It embodies the culturally and socially lived experience both literally and figuratively, allowing us to challenge core ideas rooted in our society such as race, gender and sexuality.”

Carol Dilley and Rachel Boggia, both of the Bates dance faculty, perform "Phantom Ice" during the first performance of the New York Bates Alumni Dance Concert, on Feb. 24, 2012. Photograph copyright © 2012 by Ebbe Sweet '11.

Dilley’s works grew from her long interest in collaborating with Shapiro, an innovative cellist who teaches, performs solo recitals and works with ensembles concentrating on contemporary music.

“My efforts to get on stage with Madeline have culminated in two semester-long choreographic endeavors for this concert,” says Dilley, associate professor of dance.

She and Boggia will perform “Phantom Ice,” for which Dilley commissioned faculty composer Bill Matthews, Alice Esty Swanson Professor of Music, to write the score that Shapiro will play. “Phantom Ice” was premiered at a Bates dance alumni concert in New York City in February. Dilley’s choreography for 13 students, called “Wetlands,” is set to a piece from Shapiro’s repertory.

Bates established a major in dance, the first at a Maine college devoted solely to dance, in 2011. The Friday and Sunday programs include work by three of the inaugural class of four Bates dance majors who will graduate in May. The third, in addition to Lowe and Christianson, is Yasin Fairley, of Newark, N.J. The fourth major, Kristen Gavin of Lewiston, performed her senior thesis composition last fall, as did Fairley, who offers a new work this time around.

Admission for the performance, titled “Home & Away III,” is free. For more information, contact this cdilley@bates.edu. Additionally, there will be an open modern dance class in Plavin Studios at noon with Jody Weber.

This is the third exchange between Jody Weber of Bridgewater State College and Dilley, director of Bates’ dance program. The pair began in 2007 with an exchange of student companies, each sharing a class and a combined performance in the home studio of the other. The second exchange was professional works by the non-student companies of the faculty members.

Through these exchanges, Dilley and Weber have developed a supportive network of performance and feedback opportunities between colleagues. Students have the opportunity to perform in the professional working environment of their dance faculty and the faculty choreographers have the opportunity to meet new audiences and interact with peers.

Weber received a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 1988, influenced by teachers Sarah Stackhouse, Kevin Wynn and Mel Wong. In 1992, she received a master’s from American University focusing on dance history. At American University, she received a full teaching fellowship. Over the past 18 years, she has performed in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Boston.

Dilley, who is organizing the event, joined the Bates dance program in fall 2003. She has been an international choreographer, performer and teacher for nearly 20 years. Based first in New York, then Barcelona, Seattle, Sydney and now Maine, she has worked with many companies and independent choreographers as well as her own companies, Radio Suec and Carol Dilley & Co. She has performed her work in the U.S. and Europe both as a solo artist and as director and choreographer.

An original composition by a Bates senior from West Virginia is featured in a concert by the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

“Gamelan” refers to a broad genre of traditional Indonesian music played primarily on percussion instruments. Barbara Byers, an interdisciplinary major in music and dance from Elkins, W.Va., composed and will dance a piece titled “Monkey” that’s included on the program. Byers studied various traditional performance disciplines, including gamelan, while in Indonesia last summer on a Phillips Fellowship from Bates.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The program comprises a variety of instrumental and vocal music, including a contemporary arrangement of a traditional lullaby. Also included is a solo masked dance that originates in Cirebon, a city on the north coast of West Java, and portrays a character from the Hindu epic “Ramayana.”

Assistant Professor of Music Gina Fatone directs the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra. The ensemble is composed of students and faculty members Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance, and Jennifer Woodruff, visiting assistant professor of music. The concert will also feature the vocals of a Bates alumna, Lisa McClellan ’09.

Bates College has gamelan instruments from Central Java and West Java, Indonesia. The instrument set named Gamelan Mawar Mekar (“Blossom of Inspiration”), acquired by the College in 2001, is composed of iron and brass pieces and was made in Central Java in 1997.

A smaller bronze chamber ensemble from West Java, of a type called gamelan degung, was donated to the college in 2007. The concert will feature both sets.

In addition to its public performances, the orchestra makes a distinctive contribution to ceremonial events at Bates and is increasingly integrated into the arts and cultural curriculum.

Readers, please note: The schedule of performances has been changed since the concerts were first publicized. A show Friday, Oct. 2, has been canceled and the Sunday show added.

These Parents & Family Weekend events are open to the public at no charge.

On the program: students in the course “Studio Dance: Advanced Jazz Repertory” with several new works; a modernist piece choreographed by dance program director Carol Dilley; and work in a variety of styles choreographed and performed by Bates students.

For more information, please call 207-786-8294.

Members of the Massachusetts-based troupe Weber Dance perform at Bates on Saturday.

The Bates College dance program hosts Home and Away, a performance featuring dance program director Carol Dilley and colleagues from Portland and Boston, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, in Bates’ Marcy Plavin Studio Theater, on the second floor of Merrill Gymnasium, 141 Russell St.

The program includes work by Dilley and her frequent creative partner, Portland choreographer Jill Eng, and by Jody Weber, a dance teacher and choreographer whose company Weber Dance is a familiar presence on Boston stages.

The event is open to the public at no cost. Parking is in the Merrill Gym lot on Russell Street between Central Avenue and Lafayette Street. For more information, please call 207-786-8294.

Dilley, Eng and Bates music professor James Parakilas will present a new work in a program hosted by Weber Dance at the Green Street Studios in Cambridge, Mass., next month.

This weekend’s event represents a spirit of collaboration and community-building typical of Bates. “Jody and I have enjoyed sharing programs on a number of levels over the last three years,” says Dilley.

“Our students have alternated hosting each other for informal shared showings at Bates and in Boston, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to share our professional choreographic work as well,” she says. “We first met in a shared concert in Portland and saw immediately that we were a good mix.”

Weber has been working with a group of Portland dancers who will take part in one of her dances at Bates. In addition, six dancers from Weber Dance will come with her to Lewiston.

“We’re looking forward to presenting Jody’s company here at Bates and to share our collective work with new audiences in both places,” Dilley says.

The event coincides with Bates’ Short Term, a five-week semester that allows students to concentrate on a single course. Students from Dilley’s Short Term unit “Tour, Teach, Perform,” based on the presentation of dance in local schools, will attend “Home and Away” rehearsals and the performance as part of their course work.

Carol Dilley supports Jill Eng in one of their joint compositions.

Dilley joined the Bates faculty in 2003. She has been a choreographer, performer and teacher for more than 20 years, based in New York, Barcelona, Seattle, Australia and now Maine. She has performed with many companies and choreographers, directed two companies and founded performance series in Europe and Australia. She works internationally in live performance and, more recently, digital media.

Eng is a modern-dance choreographer and performer who has also worked in Boston, North Carolina and New York. She has been the artistic director of Jill Eng/Forward and Up Dance Company since 2005, has danced for many other choreographers in the East and has produced several dance concerts.

Weber Dance has performed at various Greater Boston venues including Green Street Studios, Mobius, First Night and Boston University. Weber’s work has received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and Boston Phoenix.

An avid dance historian, Weber worked with the Boston Dance Alliance to establish an archive of local dance history, and in 2005 completed her doctorate in the field at Boston University. She is assistant professor of dance at Bridgewater State College and teaches community classes at Green Street Studios.

The Harward Center for Community Partnerships has awarded three Publicly Engaged Academic Project grants to Bates faculty members, the first of two rounds of awards for 2007-08. These “PEAP” grants are designed to offer faculty and staff significant support for publicly engaged teaching, research, cultural and other community projects. In the current round, three faculty-led projects received grants totaling $11,223.

“The diversity of the projects funded by these grants underscores the creativity with which Bates faculty link public engagement to their teaching, research and artistic work,” noted David Scobey, director of the Harward Center. “These grants fund work in dance, cultural studies and environmental research. The range of publicly engaged academic work represented in these grants is impressive.”

The three PEAP recipients and their proposals are:

• Myron Beasley, visiting assistant professor of American cultural studies and African American studies, for “What Androscoggin County Eats,” a Short Term course that will investigate local foodways across different cultural communities and stage a “performative meal” at the Bates Mill in partnership with Museum L-A;

• Carol Dilley, assistant professor of dance, for “FAB: Franco-American Bates Dance Showcase,” a regional dance showcase co-produced by the Bates dance program and the Franco-American Heritage Center, including Bates student dancers and leading Maine choreographers and presenters;

• Mike Retelle, professor of geology, for “An Environmental Archive of Seawall Beach,” which will pair Bates students and Midcoast conservation advocates to monitor and research the historical effects of climate and tidal changes on beach, dune and salt marsh ecosystems at the beach near Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area.

“It’s exciting that these projects not only connect faculty with community partners, but also involve Bates students in important public work,” Scobey said. “I’m proud that the PEAP grants can support such innovative parts of the Bates education.”

The Harward Center has offered the second round of PEAP grants for this year. New proposals are due on April 18. For more information, please visit the Harward Center website, or contact David Scobey.

The Bates College Modern Dance Company, directed by Carol Dilley, offers a program called “Move Out” in performances at 5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2; 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4, in the college’s Schaeffer Theater, 305 College St.

Admission is $6 for the general public and $3 for children, seniors and full-time students. For more information, please call 207-786-6161.

The company will perform six pieces. Two are by guest choreographers from New York City: Jodi Melnick, whose dance is titled “Russett Shock,” and Jennifer Archibald, with “In the Dark,” a piece that examines the plight of homeless teenage girls. Also on the program is “The Veil” by Maine choreographer Louis Gervais.

Sarah McCormick of the Bates dance faculty contributes the duet “Contained,” which she will perform with Dilley; and a work about the Sistine Chapel titled “Michelangelo Said,” featuring original music by Bates senior Kevin Cox of Worcester, Mass.

The sixth piece is “Light Stepping,” choreographed by Dilley and with lighting design by Michael Reidy, also of the Bates faculty.

The dancers will include 19 Bates students.

Melnick has been a featured dancer with Twyla Tharp and Irene Hultman, and in summer 2006 was part of a trio with Mikhail Baryshnikov that premiered a work by Donna Uchizono, commissioned by the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Melnick’s own choreography has been shown in New York, Japan, Ireland, Estonia and Russia. In 2001, she was honored with a Bessie award for sustained achievement in dance.

Currently, Melnick works with Susan Rethorst, Sara Rudner and Vicky Shick, and since 1993 has worked with such New York choreographers as Tere O’Connor, Dennis O’Connor, Yoshiko Chuma, Yves Musard and Trisha Brown.

Archibald is the founder and artistic director of Arch Dance company. She has performed across the United States, in Europe and Canada. She has staged off-Broadway shows, choreographed musicals for professional theater and served as a movement specialist and choreographer for actresses Sarita Choudury and Audrey Tautou (“Amelie”). She teaches contemporary jazz and hip hop, and is on faculty at the Bates Dance Festival.

Gervais, of Waldoboro, began his professional dance training at the first Bates Dance Festival, in 1983. Since then, he has appeared with more than 30 dance companies across North America, including those of Lar Lubavitch and Marie Chouinard. He has created works for dance companies and colleges, as well as award-winning theatrical solos and interactive performances for children. In recent years, Gervais has incorporated original music, storytelling, commedia dell’arte masks and puppetry into his work. He teaches at New Dance Studio in Portland.

It’s a rich long weekend of music and dance performance at Bates as the college’s choir and its Modern Dance Company hold a total of six performances over four days.

The Bates College Choir performs Mozart’s “Requiem,” the composer’s final work and one of the most intense and finely drawn interpretations of the Roman Catholic Mass, in concerts at 8 p.m. Friday, March 31, and Saturday, April 1, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concerts are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

In four performances from March 31 through April 3, the Bates Modern Dance Company presents new dances and dance videos in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. Because of an extraordinary output by student choreographers, the company’s annual spring concert of new works has been divided into two programs, collectively titled “Interior Dialogues.”

Featuring work by students in the course “Dance Composition” and videos from the course “Atelier,” Program A is offered at 8 p.m. Friday, March 31, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 2. Program B features dances made by students in an advanced composition seminar, by faculty member Sarah McCormick and by Bates dance program director Carol Dilley, who collaborated on a piece with choreographer and teacher Jill Spiewak Eng. The program is offered at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 1, and Monday, April 3.

Tickets are $6 for the public at large and $3 for seniors, children and full-time students. For reservations, please call the Schaeffer box office at 207-761-6161.

The college choir is directed by John Corrie, lecturer in music and a member of the Bates faculty since 1982. For the Mozart program, the 80-voice choir will be accompanied by a 25-piece orchestra.

“This year is the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth,” says Corrie, “so our second-semester concert focuses on his last composition. His student and assistant Franz Xaver Sussmayr completed the edition that we’ll be performing, and it is by far the most familiar of the completions of the work.”

Mozart composed most of the “Requiem” on his deathbed in 1791. A masterpiece of the choral repertoire, the work is “an unlikely but unforgettable alloy of ecclesiastical grandeur, Baroque fugue and the subtlest mood painting,” wrote a Portland Phoenix reviewer in 2001.

“Known for operatic music that can convey scene or character with a handful of notes, Mozart used that skill here to portray a believer facing death: feeling dread at the end of this life, anxiety at the prospect of judgment, abject yearning for forgiveness.”

The Modern Dance Company, meanwhile, includes 40 student dancers and 11 student choreographers from the two composition courses, as well as five video artists from “Atelier,” a course in the music and dance programs that explores the use of high technology to foster creative collaboration.

Sarah McCormick received her bachelor’s degree in world arts and culture from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her master’s from State University of New York in Brockport, where she has taught as an adjunct lecturer. McCormick studied with Bella Lewitzky and Alwin Nikolai, who both encouraged her to choreograph.

Her company Tyndale/Sarah Pogostin produced works in New York and abroad. Her work has been featured at various universities and festivals including the Bates Dance Festival.

Carol Dilley joined Bates College in 2003. She has been an international choreographer, performer and teacher for nearly 20 years, based in New York, Barcelona, Seattle, Australia and now Maine. She has performed with many companies and choreographers, directed two companies of her own and founded performance series in Europe and Australia.

Dilley continues to make work internationally as well as locally. Recently she premiered a piece with the National Dance Company of Costa Rica, and will soon begin a piece for the Dirty Feet Dance collective in Sydney, Australia.

Jill Spiewak Eng has studied, performed and made dances in Boston, North Carolina, New York City and Maine since 1989. She founded a dance collective in North Carolina called Independent Dancemakers in 1996. She teaches dance at New Dance Studio, Portland, and has taught at Bates and Bowdoin colleges.

Saturday brings something of a cultural feast on the Bates campus, with performances by the Bates College Orchestra, former Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and the Modern Dance Company — which also performs Sunday and Monday.

In its debut performance conducted by award-winning musician Hiroya Miura, the orchestra offers music by Bartok and Beethoven at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, in Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Please note that contrary to some published reports, 7:30 p.m. is the correct concert time.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

In a sold-out show, this time in the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building, Anastasio also takes the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. The concert will showcase music from Shine, Anastasio’s first full-length album of new material since Phish broke up in 2004. Also on the program is the up-and-coming Bay Area band Tea Leaf Green.

For Open Borders, its annual fall concert, the Modern Dance Company’s program includes work by two internationally known visiting choreographers and by Carol Dilley, director of dance at Bates. Performances are at 5 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13, and 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Admission is $6 ($3 for seniors, children and non-Bates students). For more information, please call 207-786-6161.

Miura and the Bates orchestra will perform Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Both pieces were at least partially inspired by folk music, Miura says. “I thought it would be interesting to program pieces together that were composed almost exactly 100 years apart — 1812 and 1915,” he says.

“It’s a 19th-century composer’s take on Hungarian folk dances, and an early 20th-century Hungarian composer’s take on Romanian folk dances. It’s fun to start my concert career at Bates with all these dancy tunes.”

New to the faculty, Miura has worked as a composer, conductor and improvisational musician in Canada and the United States. In addition to his conducting duties, he teaches composition and music theory at Bates.

Miura is a native of Sendai, Japan. His works have been performed by artists including such acclaimed groups as Speculum Musicae, the New York New Music Ensemble and So Percussion. He is a founding member of the electronic improvisation unit, NoOneReceiving, whose debut album The Release of the Wandering-Eyed Girl (Grain of Sound, 2002) earned critical acclaim in Europe and the United States.

As for the dance company, the visiting choreographers are Seàn Curran, a respected presence in the New York City dance scene, and Carlos Ovares, director of the National Dance Company in San Jose, Costa Rica. The dances are Curran’s “Allegro & Allegro,” Ovares’ “Ella y sus Demonios” and Dilley’s “On Your Own Feet” and “Piano & Us.”

Dilley’s works are set to music composed by William Matthews, the Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at Bates. Curran’s piece will be performed to live music composed by Mozart and played by Akiko Doi, a pianist and Bates senior; Jessica Gagne-Hall, a violinist and 2004 Bates graduate; and Emily Thomas, a cellist who lives in Cumberland.

“It’s a rare and wonderful experience for both the dancers and the audience to get live music for a dance concert,” said Dilley.

Curran comes to Bates through a National College Choreographer Initiative grant to facilitate greater interaction between professional choreographers and academic institutions. He has performed and choreographed dances for venues across the United States and in Europe, and received a 2002 Choreographer’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Curran has taught at the American Dance Festival, Harvard Summer Dance Program, Bates Dance Festival and the Boston Conservatory.

Ovares, internationally renowned as a choreographer, actor, teacher and dancer, is director of the National Dance Company of Costa Rica, and comes to Bates as part of an exchange between the two institutions. His work has been featured in Europe, Canada and Israel, and he has performed in Spain, Austria and Germany.

Dilley, artistic director of the Bates Modern Dance Company and director of the college’s dance program, has performed, choreographed and taught internationally for nearly 20 years. Her piece “79% de un Salario” will be performed in Costa Rica by the National Dance Company a week after the Bates performances, and again during a Central American tour in spring 2006.