Rennie Harris Puremovement image by Brian Mengini.

Rennie Harris, proclaimed “hip hop’s grandmaster” by Dance Magazine, brings his company, Puremovement, to launch the 30th annual Bates Dance Festival with greatest hits and new dances.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 13 and 14, in Bates College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Tickets cost $24 for the general public, $18 for seniors and $12 for students. Follow this link for more information or to purchase tickets online.

Tickets may also be purchased by phone at 207-786-6161 or by mail or in person. Learn more.

The company offers a free lecture-demonstration at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 10, in Schaeffer Theatre. A discussion with the artists immediately follows the July 13 performance. The following evening, dance writer Debra Cash offers an Inside Dance: Understanding Contemporary Performance lecture at 7:15 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre.

The Bates Dance Festival, a summer series of renowned contemporary dance, celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2012 by highlighting choreographers whose creative development has been nurtured by the festival.

Founded in 1982, the acclaimed festival brings together an international community of contemporary dance choreographers, performers, educators and students in a cooperative community to study, perform and create new work.

Marking its 20th anniversary, Rennie Harris Puremovement has established itself as a premier hip hop dance company, redefining the genre and transcending such divisive boundaries as race and class with universal themes. (This program is suitable for audiences of all ages.)

At the festival, RHPM will showcase both new works — “Breath,” “Nina” and “Four B-Boys and a Girl” — and three Harris classics, “P-Funk,” “Students of the Asphalt Jungle” and “Rome and Jewels.”

“Rome and Jewels,” developed during a 1999 residency at the Bates Dance Festival, was Harris’ first major work and toured internationally for more than eight years. The solo excerpt performed at Bates will feature a member of the original “Rome & Jewels” company.

In a society where hip hop is often portrayed as a violent, undisciplined counterculture, Harris and Puremovement both deconstruct popular perceptions of the medium and challenge its established boundaries, focusing on its essential spirit.

RHPM performances are complex, fluid and pioneering. “While deftly capable of entertaining the masses, Mr. Harris is also sly,” wrote a New York Times reviewer. “In his skillful hands you see the roots of hip hop and not just its commercial veneer.”

Harris received an honorary degree from Bates College in 2010. He has been recognized with a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Choreography, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a medal from the Kennedy Center as a master of African American choreography.

In 2010 Rennie Harris Puremovement was chosen by the U.S. State Department’s DanceMotion USA program as one of four companies to serve as cultural ambassadors in Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories and, this year, Jordan.

The video clips below feature Hansen introducing the 2010 honorands followed by comments by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout ’77; television journalist Jane Pauley; climate researcher James J. McCarthy; dancer-choreographer Rennie Harris, a recent Guggenheim Fellow; and fertility and oncology researcher Teresa Woodruff.

President Hansen introduces the honorands

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Elizabeth Strout ’77

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Jane Pauley

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James J. McCarthy

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Rennie Harris

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Teresa K. Woodruff

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The 2010 Bates honorands are:

• Rennie Harris, the choreographer who brought hip-hop to the mainstream world of dance
• James McCarthy, a scientist recognized internationally for helping to communicate the science of climate change
• Jane Pauley, the veteran television journalist
• Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and 1977 Bates graduate
• Teresa Woodruff, a researcher responsible for pioneering work in the care of women who will become infertile due to cancer treatment

Here are their remarks:

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“I saw this headline,” renowned television journalist Jane Pauley told the 455 members of the Bates College class of 2010: ” ‘Inspiration is everywhere, but you have to be looking.’

“Congratulations, and may you find inspiration everywhere you look.”

Pauley was one of five honorary degree recipients at the College’s 144th commencement ceremony, which began at 10 a.m. May 30 on the historic Quad.

The other honorands were Rennie Harris, the choreographer who brought hip-hop to mainstream dance; James McCarthy, a scientist recognized internationally for helping to communicate the science of climate change; Elizabeth Strout, a 1977 Bates graduate who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction last year for Olive Kitteridge; and Teresa Woodruff, a researcher responsible for groundbreaking research in caring for women who will become infertile due to cancer treatment.

• Text: Read the five honorands’ addresses
• Video: Watch the honorands’ addresses
• Video: Watch the honorand panel discussion on Saturday
• Slide show: Leading up to Commencement
• Slide show: Commencement Day

In her welcome, Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen looked back four years to the convocation ceremony that was her first address to this group of students. Joking that she “felt fairly confident that none of you remember what I said” on that occasion, she recalled her theme on that day in 2006: the value of the skills of listening and questioning.

“Four years later,” Hansen told the students, “you have not disappointed my expectation that at Bates you would develop into the incendiary listeners and tough questioners that the world needs.”

Harris, the Philadelphia choreographer, has proven to the world his conviction “that hip-hop can transcend boundaries of race, religion, gender and economic status,” Bates trustee Geri FitzGerald said in introducing him. “He has transformed not just the art of dance, but our very notion of what art is and where it comes from.”

In his remarks, Harris offered insights distilled from his decades in making dance. “Movement is the last manifestation of your reality,” he said. “What you do is who you are, not what you say.”

He also asked the students to remember that we are in this life “to understand love on many, many levels” — and that being so, “remember when you’re looking down at someone . . . make sure your hand is reached out to pull them up.”

Saying that a discussion of climate change would take him at least an hour instead of the five minutes allocated for each honorand’s talk, McCarthy instead borrowed a page from the script of the 1967 film The Graduate.

He cited the famous scene at a graduation party at which young Benjamin Braddock is offered a single word of advice: “plastics.” But the solitary word that the Harvard researcher held out to his Bates audience was, instead, “boundaries.”

He asked the Bates graduates to reflect on the boundaries they have sought out and crossed in their time here, discovering new interests and abilities, and a newly expanded sense of the human family. By pausing at the boundary between different worlds, he said, we can understand the commonalities between those worlds.

“This can be an extraordinary opportunity for creativity.”

Pauley, one of the best-known female broadcast journalists to emerge during the 1970s, exhorted her audience of exceptional achievers to always judge themselves fairly. She warned against the pitfall of comparing oneself unfavorably to others — a bad habit suffered by Pauley herself and, as she related, by writer Mark Twain.

Later, with a story about some advice that helped children’s book creator Maurice Sendak create the popular Where the Wild Things Are, Pauley asked her listeners to focus on their abilities, not shortcomings. “How often we get hung up on what we can’t do,” she told the seniors. “Think about what you can.”

Strout, who also wrote the best sellers Amy and Isabelle and Abide With Me, was introduced by college trustee David Foster, a Bates classmate, as the “most spectacular member of the class of 1977.”

Referencing the Bates tradition of plunging through a hole in the ice into the campus pond in the dead of winter, Strout called this occasion “a big-deal Puddle Jump day.” But her remarks in other ways, too, gave the alumni-to-be a bracing splash of rhetorical cold water.

She described, first, a doctor she knows who vows never to help with a medical emergency on a plane, lest the outcome be unpleasant. And second, a man taken ill on the roadside being looked after by numerous passers-by.

“The best part of what waits for you is that liberating prize of life, those remarkable moments when we understand that we are not the most important person in the world,” she said. “The man on the side of the road is. The person on the airplane suffering is.”

She concluded, “Look forward to that relief of not being the most important person in the world, and you really will be all right.”

Woodruff drew lessons for her audience from the transformational outcomes for women and families that have resulted from her research. “Create your opportunities” rather than passively responding to circumstances, she said. Remember the value of teamwork. And above all, maintain your optimism even in the face of seemingly intractable problems.

“You have a world of possibilities awaiting you.”

Of the 455 seniors that Bates graduated Sunday, 241 are women and 214 are men. Forty-nine graduates come from Maine, and 28 of the United States were represented in the class. Twenty-six of the graduating students come from other countries.

Psychology was the most common major among the class of 2010, with 55 graduates. Economics was a close second, with 54 majors, and politics was the third most popular, with 47. Twenty-nine women and 20 men took double majors. Two women and one man took three majors.

Sixty-seven members of the class of 2010 earned bachelor of science degrees, with the remaining 388 receiving bachelor of arts degrees.

The event concludes the undergraduate careers of some 456 members of the Bates’ class of 2010, representing 33 states and 33 countries.

The 2010 Bates honorands are:

• Rennie Harris, the choreographer who brought hip-hop to the mainstream world of dance
• James McCarthy, a scientist recognized internationally for helping to communicate the science of climate change
• Jane Pauley, the veteran television journalist
• Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and 1977 Bates graduate
• Teresa Woodruff, a researcher responsible for pioneering work in the care of women who will become infertile due to cancer treatment

With his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, this North Philadelphia native has been a pioneer in choreographing, teaching and expanding the scope of hip-hop. The troupe is internationally known for such works as the autobiographical Prince ScareKrow’s Road to the Emerald City; the spiritually driven Facing Mekka; and the critically acclaimed Rome and Jewels, a hip-hop opera that transports Romeo and Juliet into the world of rival B-boys and street gangs. (Harris previewed the work at the Bates Dance Festival in 1999.)

Harris began his performing career in the 1980s with the Scanner Boys, a group that he helped found, and in the mid-1980s he toured internationally with the Fresh Festival, the first hip-hop tour. He founded Rennie Harris Puremovement in 1992, and the company gained national visibility in 1995 through performances with Dance Africa America.

Honors that Harris has received in recent years include, in 2007, one of 50 United States Artists Fellowships and the Artist of the Year Award from the governor of Pennsylvania. Harris has also created works for The Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco), the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He has been likened to such choreographers as Ailey and Bob Fosse, and was described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as “Philadelphia’s greatest cultural export.”

A passionate public intellectual within the global climate discussion, McCarthy led the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability working group for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. After the Nobel Peace Prize went to the IPCC in 2007, McCarthy said the prize acknowledges that “if we really internalize and act on this statement about climate change, the world will be a more peaceful place.”

McCarthy is Harvard’s Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography and he has led many national and international committees and research programs relating to ocean and climate science. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 2008-09 served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

McCarthy researches the regulation of sea plankton productivity, focusing on regions around the world affected by seasonal and inter-annual climate variation. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Gonzaga University and a doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

During nearly three decades at NBC, Pauley covered events that have defined our time, from the fall of the Iron Curtain to the attacks of Sept. 11. At NBC, Pauley also anchored evening newscasts and hosted a weekly newsmagazine, Real Life with Jane Pauley, and MSNBC’s retrospective news program Time and Again.

Pauley has been honored with numerous awards including multiple Emmys, the Radio-Television News Directors Association’s prestigious Paul White Award and the Gracie Allen Award for outstanding achievement from American Women in Radio and Television.

She is widely admired for her openness about her personal struggle with bipolar disorder in the early 2000s, which she wrote about in the memoir Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue (Random House, 2004). In September 2009, she lent her name to the Jane Pauley Community Health Center in her home state of Indiana. Serving local residents regardless of insurance or income, the center emphasizes the integration of medical, dental and behavioral health.

Pauley received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University in 1972. A resident of New York City, she is married to Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

From this early introduction to the literary life, Strout has developed a career distinguished by three full-length fiction works (all published by Random House) nationally acclaimed for their power to conjure up captivating characters with complex emotional lives. 1998′s Amy and Isabelle won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and a Los Angeles Times award for a fiction debut, and was made into a movie for ABC television in 2001. Abide with Me (2006), the story of a small-town clergyman’s fall and redemption, was a national best seller and Book Sense pick. Olive Kitteridge, a “novel-in-stories,” won the 2009 Pulitzer for fiction and became a New York Times Best Seller.

All these works are set in Maine. Strout was born in Portland and spent much of her youth in Maine, a state that means “just about everything” to her, as she told Bates Magazine in 2006. Majoring in English at Bates, Strout earned her first fiction byline in 1982 and since then has published short stories in The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine and various literary journals.

While paying her dues as a writer, Strout worked a variety of jobs including waitress, mattress salesperson and nightclub pianist. She holds a law degree from Syracuse University and teaches in a low-residency writing program at Queens University, Charlotte, N.C. She lives in New York City.

The approach reflects Woodruff’s focus on the human condition in the context of research. “We’re trying to create a total shift in how we interact with female cancer patients to anticipate their lives as survivors and their ability to bear children,” she says of her work.

Woodruff is a Thomas J. Watkins Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine as well as professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She is chief of the newly created Division of Fertility Preservation and founder and director of the Institute for Women’s Health Research, and she helped to create and now runs the nation’s first Oncofertility Consortium, a National Institutes of Health-funded initiative that represents medical innovators from the oncology and fertility fields.

Her awards include the Endocrine Society’s Richard E. Weitzman Memorial Award for exceptionally promising young investigators, and she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Woodruff, who earned a doctorate in biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology from Northwestern, has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and 40 editorials and book chapters.

Spoken word dynamo Marc Bamuthi Joseph presents his latest full-evening work, Scourge, fusing hip-hop, spoken word, dance and live music. The Bates Dance Festival presents Bamuthi at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 28 and 29, in Schaeffer Theatre, 365 College St., Bates College. Tickets are $18/$12 (students and seniors) and may be purchased by calling 207-786-6161 after July 8. (This performance contains some strong language.)

In Scourge Bamuthi explores the narrow space between history, myth and speculation in a revolutionary look at the tragic history of his native Haiti. Breaking down the boundaries of racism and ignorance to reach a new kind of understanding, “Scourge” is a rich collaboration between Bamuthi, choreographers Rennie Harris and Adia Whitaker and director Kamilah Forbes. These artists, together with the voices and rhythms of three gifted musicians, create what Bamuthi calls “a theatrical exorcism.”

Bamuthi is a National Poetry Slam champion, 2003 GOLDIE award winner, former Stanford University Institute for Diversity in the Arts resident artist, Broadway veteran and a featured artist on the past two HBO seasons of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry. His previous evening-length work, Word Becomes Flesh, was called “remarkable” by The New York Times and “extraordinary” by The Washington Post, and prompted The Seattle Times to name him their “Cutting Edge Performer of the Year” in 2003.

Bamuthi’s performance schedule has carried him from dance apprenticeships in Senegal and Cuba to teaching fellowships in Bosnia and Japan. During the next two years, he will develop new projects with Le Centre Nationale de Dance, the National Dance Project and the International Theater Institute, where his work will be performed in France, Zaire, Germany and the Philippines. His proudest collaboration has been with Youth Speaks, where he mentors 13- to 19-year-old writers and co-curates the Living Word Festival for Literary Arts.

In addition to main stage performances, the festival offers a selection of free and low-cost events. Complete information is available at the website.

At press time the Bates Dance Festival gratefully acknowledges support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, Maine Arts Commission, Surdna Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Altria, Fisher Charitable Foundation, Sam L. Cohen Foundation, Androscoggin Bank, Cole Hahn, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Mechanics Savings Bank and TD Banknorth.

Philadelphia’s Rennie Harris, one of hip-hop’s leading ambassadors worldwide, brings his company, Puremovement, back to the Bates Dance Festival for the 2004 Maine premiere of Facing Mekka, a work co-commissioned by the festival and conceived at Bates in 1998. The festival presents Rennie Harris Puremovement in concert at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, July 22-24, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 25, in Schaeffer Theatre, College Street. Tickets are $25/$15 (students and seniors) and may be purchased by calling 207-786-6161 after July 10. (Facing Mekka is appropriate for people of all ages.)

Facing Mekka explores the global face of Islam through a collage of movement, rhythm, sound and image. In Mekka, Harris takes hip-hop beyond its commercial context to address a fractured world, linking the personal, political and spiritual to create a work unifying many peoples and cultures. Harris uses the positive energy of dance as a creative and spiritual force to present an epic journey through global hip-hop. “The message goes beyond the sensational dazzle of head spins and dives,” wrote a Village Voice critic. “It encompasses the wish to be identified and to identify oneself as an individual.”

The production features a star-studded cast of 17 dancers, turntablists, percussionists and vocalists, including Grisha Coleman, Philip Hamilton and “the human orchestra” Kenny Muhammad. Facing Mekka also features a Butoh-style hip-hop solo performed by Harris.

With Mekka, “Harris has built a wedge that will open the doors of America’s art centers, displaying hip-hop as clear cultural expression, compelling to all races and generations,” wrote a Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer. The work was premiered in 2003 at New York’s Joyce Theatre and continues to grow in importance and relevance as it tours nationwide.

Raised in North Philadelphia, Harris is a pioneer in performing, choreographing and teaching hip-hop, and is a long-time participant in the Bates Dance Festival’s Commissioning, Residency and Performance program.  Intrigued by the universality of hip-hop, he has brought the form’s vernacular from its urban North America roots to the concert stage, creating a cohesive dance style that finds a cogent voice in the theater.

He traveled internationally with the “Fresh Festival,” the first U.S.-organized hip-hop tour, starring Run DMC, Fatboys, Curtis Blow and Whodini. He has worked with Kool Moe Dee, West Street Mob, Salt ‘n’ Pepa and other noted hip-hop stars, and has taught workshops and classes throughout the United States. The recipient of numerous awards, including a Pew Fellowship, Harris was voted one of the most influential people in the last hundred years of Philadelphia history.

Rennie Harris Puremovement has performed for sold-out houses throughout the United States and abroad since its inception. Following the Philadelphia premiere of Rome & Jewels, a retelling of the classic romantic tragedies of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story through the cultural lens of contemporary urban youth, it became the longest running hip-hop production to grace American stages.

Washington Post dance critic Suzanne Carbonneau will give two pre-performance lectures on Harris’ work, at 7:15 p.m. Friday, July 23, and Saturday, July 24, in Schaeffer Theatre, College Street. Free and open to the public, the lectures are part of “Inside Dance,” an educational program of the Bates Dance Festival funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

At press time the Bates Dance Festival gratefully acknowledges support for Facing Mekka from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, LEF Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Altria, Banknorth Charitable Foundation, Cole Haan, Androscoggin Savings Bank, Mechanics Savings Bank and Liberty Mutual Insurance.

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