Wednesday, July 21, Alumni Gym, 8 p.m.
Lecture/Demonstration/Workshop with Rennie Harris PureMovement
Rennie Harris leads a journey through the history and culture of hip hop, demonstrating the spectrum of dance styles and inviting participants to get down.

Friday, July 23, Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m., $14/$8*
Performance: DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS Internationally acclaimed choreographer Doug Varone and his eight-member company perform “Bel Canto,” a comic jaunt set to operatic music of Bellini; excerpts from the “Nyman Trilogy,” set to the dramatic music of British composer Michael Nyman; and other new works. Followed by a post-performance discussion with the artists.

Saturday, July 24, Schaeffer Theatre, 7:15 p.m.
Pre-performance Lecture with Suzanne Carbonneau.
Performance: DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS, Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m., $14/$8*
(See Friday listing)

Saturday, July 31, Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m., $14/$8*
Performance: SARA PEARSON/PATRIK WIDRIG & CO. This versatile and dynamic six member company previews÷”If Wishes Were Horses Than Beggars Would Ride,” a community dance project exploring personal stories of change using movement, text and video, as well as Widrig’s magical duet “Muezzin’” with composer/vocalist Philip Hamilton. Followed by a post-performance discussion with the artists.

Sunday, Aug. 1, Schaeffer Theatre, 7:15 p.m.
Pre-performance Lecture with Suzanne Carbonneau.
Performance: SARA PEARSON/PATRIK WIDRIG & CO., Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m., $14/$8* (see Saturday listing)

Thursday, Aug. 5, Olin Concert Hall, 7:30 p.m.
Performance: THE COMPOSER’S CONCERT
An annual favorite at the festival, this eclectic concert features
multi-instrumentalists Tigger Benford, Peter Jones, Jesse Manno and Mike Vargas, pianist Clark Stiefel and percussionists Gilles Obermayer and Shamou in a program of original and improvised music.

Friday, Aug. 6, Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m. $14/$8*
Performance: RENNIE HARRIS PUREMOVEMENT
This group of hip hop masters returns to Maine to preview their new work “Rome & Jewels.“ Puremovement takes on the classics with this full-evening, hip hop ballet that mixes the tragic love stories of “Romeo and Juliet” and “West Side Story” with contemporary hip hop dance, music, the voice of the DJ and the spoken work of the MC/rapper. Followed by a post-performance discussion with the artists.

Saturday, Aug. 7, Schaeffer Theatre, 7:15 p.m.
Pre-performance Lecture with Suzanne Carbonneau.
Performance: RENNIE HARRIS PUREMOVEMENT , Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m. $14/$8*(see Friday listing)

Monday Aug. 9, Alumni Gym, 8 p.m
Performance: MOVING IN THE MOMENT
An evening of improvisational dance and music with contact improviser Nancy Stark Smith and members of the Festival dance and music faculty. An annual crowd pleaser full of delicious surprises, hilarious vignettes and moving moments.

Thursday, Aug. 12, Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m., $14/$8*
Performance: NEW WORKS: SEÀN CURRAN & VICTORIA MARKS
Sharing the stage are the devilish postmodern choreographer Seàn Curran and members of his company, as well as choreographer and filmmaker Victoria Marks. The concert features engaging new dances by Curran and award-winning films and solos by Marks.

Friday, Aug. 13, Schaeffer Theatre, 8 p.m., $12/$8*
Performance: DIFFERENT VOICES
New works by artists from around the world. Featuring Kaczo Takemoto (Japan), Jecko Siompo (Indonesia), Teresa Prima (Portugal) and Simon Ellis (Australia), along with emerging choreographers Karinne Keithley and Paule Turner ‹ all in one dynamic program.

Saturday, Aug. 14, Schaeffer Theatre, 1-5 p.m.
Informal Performance: Young Choreographers/New Works
An adjudicated, informal showing of more than 24 new works by talented Festival participants from around the world. Faculty members will provide insightful, critical feedback throughout the afternoon.

Performance: STUDENT FINALE, Alumni Gym, 8 p.m., $5/$2*
A celebration of diverse dance traditions. Come for an evening of
modern, jazz and tap works created by Doug Varone, Sean Curran, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Cornelius Carter and margaret Morrison and performed by Festival students. Highlighting the program will be a performance by local youth participating in the Festival’s Youth Arts dance and music program under the direction of Jane Weiner.

*Admission for full-time students and senior citizens.
All events take place at Bates College.
All events are free unless otherwise noted.
Advance reservations: 207/786-6161, beginning July 5, 12-5 p.m.

Contact: Laura Faure, director 207-786-6381

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.