Victoria Lowe ’12, a double major in dance and American cultural studies, discusses her Short Term experience with “Tour, Teach, Perform” and her goal of advancing arts education in the schools.

In its first-ever concert held during the academic year, the internationally acclaimed Bates Dance Festival collaborated with the Bates College Concerts Committee to present Beautiful Me by the renowned South African company Vuyani Dance Theatre on Oct. 16 in Bates College’s Schaeffer Theatre. The performance kicked off the troupe’s North American tour.

A global fusion of rousing live music sets the pace for this solo tour de force by the exquisite dancer and choreographer Gregory Maqoma, a rising star on South Africa’s dance and theater scene. Beautiful Me speaks honestly about the profound task of finding one’s authentic voice and redefining our notion of postmodern African choreography.

During his week in residence at Bates, Maqoma and his company members — Isaac Katlego Molelekoa; violin; Mandla Madienkosi Nhlapo, percussion; Bongani Kunene, cello; and Poorvi Bhana, sitar — offered a noonday concert, gave master dance workshops, spoke to music and anthropology classses and with members of Amandla!, and met with faculty members whose teaching focuses on Africa.

For a glimpse of his experience at Bates, watch the following short video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Buraczeski is best described as a classic jazz dance stylist, whose company has performed at leading concert halls and festivals in more than 30 states, in Europe and the Caribbean. Propelled by the rhythms of jazz, Buraczeski’s formal explorations and sophisticated musicality distinguish him as one of the most original voices working in the form. JAZZDANCE delivers “simply the most ebullient, dynamic and all-out energy-sapping dance around,” says The Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Downright terrific,” says The New York Times.

Drawing on a background in ballet and modern in addition to jazz, Buraczeski has helped redefine what was once considered a limited form – jazz dance. After a career on Broadway, appearing in such musicals as Mame with Angela Lansbury and The Act with Liza Minelli, Buraczeski formed the original New York-based JAZZDANCE by Danny Buraczeski in 1979. Based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul since 1993, JAZZANCE is a regular guest at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and New York’s Joyce Theater.

In addition to the complete repertory of JAZZDANCE, Buraczeski has created works for the Boston Ballet, Seattle’s Spectrum Dance Company and many repertory companies and university programs around the nation. Among other awards, Buraczeski has received multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the McKnight Foundation.

During a four-week residency at the 1998 Bates Dance Festival, JAZZDANCE by Danny Buraczeski will teach master classes and continue to work on Ezekiel’s Wheel, a National Dance Project commissioned by the Walker Art Center and the Bates Dance Festival and slated to premiere this fall. Buraczeski discovered the life and work of James Baldwin while living in Europe in the late 1970s. According to the choreographer: “Baldwin’s personal ‘gospel’ of recognition, responsibility and redemption was like a lighting bolt, illuminating the dark chambers of the human heart. A writer of power and grace, Baldwin’s voice became a crucible in 1960s America for issues of equality and identity — between races, sexes, generations — issues which continue to galvanize our society.” After meeting composer Philip Hamilton at Jacob’s Pillow in the early 1980s, and working together at the Bates Dance Festival several more times, Hamilton and Buraczeski decided to create a work together based on Baldwin’s fictional writings.

Audiences are invited to attend Inside Dance: Understanding Contemporary Performance, a talk by noted dance historian, writer and educator, Suzanne Carbonneau. The Bates Dance Festival presents this series of pre- and post-performance talks in an effort to enhance understanding and increase appreciation for contemporary dance. Carbonneau will discuss the Buraczeski’s work and its place in the context of American jazz dance. This free half-hour talk will take place July 25 at 7:15 p.m in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives on Campus Avenue at Bates College.

In addition to its critically acclaimed mainstage performance series of 13 concerts, the festival offers two intensive training programs, one for pre-professionals and one for younger dancers. For more information, or to request a brochure, call the Bates Dance Festival at 207-786-6381.

Set to the energetic music of the swing generation, including tunes recorded by Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Lionel Hampton and Woody Herman, the witty 1996 hit features a post-performance audience dance party.

The dance depicts structures and forms of popular American social dances from the 1940s, while the choreography is purely contemporary. The New York Times said “Mr. Varone winds through the evening like a rubber-bodied, enjoyably manic Lindy Hopper who has just been dropped into a modern dance performance.”

The performances, developed for a cast of 20 festival dancers and local participants, with original score by composer Robert Een, will take place at 7 p.m. Aug. 13 and at 2 p.m. Aug. 16 at Maine Audubon Society’s Gilsland Farm Sanctuary in Falmouth.

Audience members are encouraged to bring a picnic supper to enjoy in the north meadow Aug. 13, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $8 and $4 (for children under 12) and can be purchased in advance at the Maine Audubon store located in the new Environmental Center building at 118 U.S. Route 1, Falmouth, or by calling Maine Audubon at 207-781-2330 or at the gate.

Following a highly successful project in 1995, international touring artists Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig & Company return for a five-week Bates Dance Festival residency highlighted by this premiere. Pearson and Widrig’s most recent environmental work, Love Notes to Central Park, included a movement-sound treasure hunt along a stream and waterfall, dances in rowboats viewed from the lakeshore and dancers scaling cliffs in unison. For this new work, the artists are planning an hour-long walking tour through the woods, meadows and gardens of the Gilsland Farm sanctuary, opening with a group section involving 40 local extras in the north meadow. Vignettes evolve amid the woods and trees leading to a formal piece in the peony gardens, culminating in a joyous finale around the pond. The audience will accompany the artists on this dance tour, stopping periodically to enjoy the beautiful setting, the sound of accordion music by choreographer/dancer/musician David Dorfman and other stringed instruments, and dancers moving in relationship to the natural surroundings.

A pre-performance lecture focused on the site-specific work will be given by Washington Post dance critic Suzanne Carbonneau at 6:15 p.m Aug. 13 at the Gilsland Farm Sanctuary. Free and open to the public, the lecture is part of a Bates Dance Festival educational program, “Inside Dance,” funded in part by the Maine Humanities Council.

In addition to the performances, Dancing Out-of-Doors, a workshop for children aged 8-12 to explore the sanctuary environment with choreographers Pearson and Widrig, will take place at the Gilsland Farm Environmental Center from 10:30 a.m. until noon Aug. 2. Participation is $6 for Audubon members and $8 for non-members. A lecture demonstration for adults titled Creating An Environmental Performance is scheduled in the afternoon from 1 to 2:30 p.m. and tickets are $6 for members and $8 for non-members. In this workshop the artists will show excerpts from their work-in-progress and discuss how they draw inspiration from the site, develop the movement material and handle the unique and sometimes humorous challenges of creating work outdoors. Information and reservations for these workshops are available by calling the Maine Audubon Society at 207-781-2330.

The Bates Dance Festival is a founding member of the Environmental Performance Network (EPN), established in 1993 in collaboration with Dancing in the Streets, New York; Wagon Train Project, Nebraska; and the Arts Festival of Atlanta, Ga. This pioneering network is the first national structure which connects the resources of arts presenters and environmentalists to enable performing artists to create and perform site-specific works in natural settings. EPN activities offer diverse audiences a heightened awareness of place and a range of ecological concerns as experienced through the lens of the contemporary performing arts. These site-specific works have the power to inspire audiences to understand the primacy of an important rural or urban place, or to take action when these spaces are threatened.

In Pearson’s words: “Participants become more conscious of their habitual ways of seeing and being and experience space and place with fresh eyes. Without having to take a trip around the world, participants take a vacation into deeper levels of the self, experiencing community in a new way: not sport, not religion, not traditional socializing, it is a creative, playful, respectful way of coming together that discovers and celebrates that which they have lived side by side with all their lives.”

Pearson and Widrig have collaborated since 1986. Earlier site-specific work includes Common Ground, with music by Robert Een, performed at Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and Wave Hill; Ley Lines performed at Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace; and Breath Chant at Coney Island. All of these projects were commissioned by Dancing in the Streets.

Together they have toured throughout the United States as well as Mexico, South Korea, New Zealand, India, Greece, England and Switzerland. They are on the faculties at New York University and Montclair State College, and their work is supported by  onal Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, Arts International and numerous other foundations and foreign agencies, including the United States- Mexico Fund for Culture, administered by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Pearson, named by The New York Times as “one of the most talented and delightfully unpretentious performers in the current dance world”, is the recipient of a 1989 American Choreographer Award and a New York Foundation for the Arts Choreographer’s Fellowship.

Her work has been commissioned by more than a dozen companies and universities and documented in video specials produced by the national networks of Tunisia, Italy and India.

Widrig is a native of Switzerland, where he taught elementary school before moving to New York in 1984 to dance professionally. He trained at the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab and has studied the Alexander Technique with Ann Rodiger and Regina Wray.

In addition to its critically acclaimed mainstage performance series of 17 concerts, the festival offers two intensive training programs, one for adults and one for younger dancers. For more information, or to request a brochure, call the Bates Dance Festival at 207-786-6381.

The Environmental Performance Project is funded through generous grants from Tom’s of Maine and the LEF Foundation.

Paula Josa-Jones Performance Works is a Boston-based company of six dancers that has gained a national reputation for risk-taking and adventurous dance theater. Josa-Jones has been called “one of the country’s leading choreographic conceptualists” by The Boston Globe. The Village Voice describes her work as “powerful, eccentric and surreal.” She creates theatrical works that combine rich imagery, virtuosic movement, evocative visual designs and an idiosyncratic use of music.

For the Bates Dance Festival engagement, Josa-Jones presents a new solo and group work, as well as a re-staged version of her acclaimed 1996 work “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a study based on early feminist writings about a young woman’s descent into madness.

Tickets for the performances are priced at $12 and $8 (for full-time students and seniors) and can be purchased at the door or in advance by calling 207-786-6161.

Dance historian and critic Suzanne Carbonneau will deliver a pre-performance talk on Josa-Jones’ work, free and open to the public, at 7:15 p.m. July 29 in Schaeffer Theatre. The lecture is part of educational program of the Bates Dance Festival, “Inside Dance,” which is funded in part by the Maine Humanities Council.

Since 1985, Paula Josa-Jones Performance Works has carried her audiences to the “borders” of gender, sexuality, age, humanness and culture. Josa-Jones has produced more than 30 works of dance theater and created several works for video, often collaborating with visual and media artists. At the core of her work is a fascination with the ways individuals are fed, starved and consumed by habits and relationships. Her work with African dance master Charles Moore and Eiko & Koma helped her develop a form of visually charged dance theater built on the sensuous experience of the body as landscape and source for movement, image and voice.

Paula Josa-Jones has received two consecutive two-year choreography fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Her teaching work in Mexico from 1993-96 was supported by the NEA United States/Mexico Cultural Exchange Fellowship and Fund for Culture. She is the recipient of two New Forms grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, and an Artists Foundation Fellowship in Interarts for her video dance collaborations with Vin Grabill.

The company has received commissions from the Joyce Theater and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in New York, Jacob’s Pillow and Dance Umbrella in Massachusetts, and the Flynn Theater in Vermont.

As a master teacher whose classes focus on composition, improvisation and the integration of voice and movement, Josa-Jones has taught in the dance program at Tufts University, and in the opera department at Boston University. She has been in residence at Performance Space 122 (New York), Dance Umbrella (London and Boston), Yellow Springs Institute (Philadelphia) and Tangents, Inc. (Montreal).

In addition to its critically acclaimed mainstage performance series of 17 concerts, the festival offers two intensive training programs, one for adults and one for younger dancers. For more information, or to request a brochure, call the Bates Dance Festival at 207-786-6381.

The Bates Dance Festival receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Maine Humanities Council, the Maine Arts Commission, Harkness Foundations for Dance, Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation, the Bingham Betterment Fund, G.G. Monks Foundation, the Shapiro Family Foundation, the Sequoia Foundation, Tom’s of Maine, LEF Foundation, L.L. Bean, Portland Newspapers, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Androscoggin Savings Bank, Mechanics Savings Bank, Liberty Mutual Insurance and People’s Heritage Bank.

David Dorfman returns to Maine with three dynamic and entertaining new works combining text, live music and athletic dancing, including “Gone Right Back,” a richly layered piece made and performed in collaboration with musicians Elaine Buckholtz and Shannon McGuire; “Job,” a hilarious duet with David Dorfman and longtime friend and collaborator, musician Dan Froot; and “Sky Down,” a purely physical piece set to funky music by Amy Denio. Tickets for the performances are priced at $14 and $8 (for full-time students and seniors) and can be purchased at the door or in advance by calling 207-786 6161.

A pre-performance lecture focused on Dorfman’s work will be given by Washington Post dance critic Suzanne Carbonneau at 7:15 p.m. Aug. 2, in Schaeffer Theatre. Free and open to the public, the lecture is part of a Bates Dance Festival educational program, “Inside Dance”, funded in part by the Maine Humanities Council.

First premiered at the Joyce Theater in New York in February 1997, Dorfman’s latest work received critical acclaim. According to Jennifer Dunning, dance critic for The New York Times, these recent pieces “suggest Mr. Dorfman has come of age as a major modern dance creator.”

The program centerpiece, “Gone Right Back,” with dancers Jeanine Durning, Tom Thayer and Curt Haworth, is a continuous stream of movement and talk that turns the traditional duet on its head. Dorfman explored the creation of “Gone Right Back” during previous teaching residencies at the American Dance and Bates Dance festivals. The daring piece “Job” suggests friends from school days and deals surrealistically with love, respect, admiration and trust, while the fragmented duets in “Sky Down” are more purely physical.

Among the festival’s extensive roster of artists, Dorfman is one of its most popular performers and frequently requested instructors. A Chicago native, Dorfman is a musician and athlete who became a dancer after earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Washington University.

He is the recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, the first Paul Taylor fellowship from the Yard and four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dorfman’s choreography has been produced in New York by The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen and Dancing in the Streets. His project “Familiar Movements” (The Family Project) won a 1996 New York Dance and Performance Award for outstanding choreographic achievement.

One of the company’s best known works involving local volunteer athletes, “Out of Season” (The Athlete’s Project, 1994), blurred the line between sports and dance and challenged the audience’s perceptions of who should and should not dance on stage. Since its founding in 1985, David Dorfman Dance has performed extensively in New York and throughout North and South America, Great Britain and Europe.

In addition to its critically acclaimed mainstage performance series of 17 concerts, the festival offers two intensive training programs, one for adults and one for younger dancers. For more information, or to request a brochure, call the Bates Dance Festival at 207-786-6381.

Support for this New England Dance Project concert is provided by the New England Foundation for the Arts, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Maine Arts Commission.

Tickets are $14/$8 (students and seniors) and may be purchased by calling 207-786-6161. A pre-performance lecture focused on Harris’ work will be given by Washington Post dance critic Suzanne Carbonneau at 7:15 p.m. July 26, in Schaeffer Theatre. Free and open to the public, the lecture is part an educational program of the Bates Dance Festival, Inside Dance, funded in part by the Maine Humanities Council.

Rennie Harris PureMovement bridges the disparate worlds of street and theater in a synthesis of drama and dance-defying categorization. Blending African retentions with American improvisations, the company displays remarkable technique. The Philadelphia-based choreographer uses the various forms of hip-hop as a vehicle for tough messages about racism, street shootings and prison. Closely related to the complex and driving rhythms of “street” music, the company’s dance style challenges and uplifts as dancers tumble, spin, intertwine and hurl their bodies through space.

In “Fallen Crumbs from the Cake,” the opening piece in the Bates Dance Festival, Harris blends experiences from his own residency in a Pennsylvania prison with projections, film, funk music and monologues. Harris’ solo performance “Endangered Species” offers a powerful lament about molestation, while the final work, “Students of the Asphalt Jungle,” is “virtuosity,” according to The Boston Globe, inspired by Harris’ travels in Africa. According to Harris, the piece is: “an affirmation of our African-American heritage through movement, which we believe has been handed down through spirit and instinct.”

Critics consider Rennie Harris a visionary pioneer in the evolution of hip-hop dance and well-versed in the vernacular of popping, step, break and house dance and other styles that have emerged spontaneously from the black community. “Harris bridges the usually disparate worlds of street and theater, self-empowerment and artistic inspiration. He is an exceptional artist,” The San Diego Inquirer said.

Self-taught, Harris has designed his own unique moves since he was eight years old. He and his group PureMovement have performed with Run DMC, Curtis Blow, and LL Cool J, and were featured in videos such as Ricky Scaggs’ “Country Boy.”

The recipient of many distinctive awards, Harris has received a Philadelphia Repertory Dance Initiative grant from the Pew Charitable Trust, a 1996 Pew fellowship in choreography and a 1996 Dance Projects Commission made possible by the Rockefeller Foundation.

In addition to its critically acclaimed mainstage performance series of 17 concerts, the festival offers two intensive training programs, one for adults and one for younger dancers. For more information, or to request a brochure, call the Bates Dance Festival at 207-786-6381.

The Bates Dance Festival receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Maine Humanities Council, the Maine Arts Commission, Harkness Foundations for Dance, Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation, the Bingham Betterment Fund, G.G. Monks Foundation, the Shapiro Family Foundation, the Sequoia Foundation, Tom’s of Maine, LEF Foundation, L.L. Bean, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Portland Newspapers, Androscoggin Savings Bank  and People’s Heritage Bank.