Theater and Dance Season
Welcome to the 2021-22 Theater and Dance Season at Bates College and to once again gathering together to experience live theater and dance! We’re grateful to be delving into these incredible stories by these incredible writers and composers. We’re also thrilled to be able to collaborate with several professional guest artists throughout the year.
Starting off the Theater Season, Professor Cliff Odle, making his directorial debut at Bates, brings us Luck of the Irish by Boston playwright Kirstin Greenidge. Professional actress Destini Stewart and Dialect Coach Charles Linshaw join the creative team. Olivia Dimond (‘22) directs Gina Gionfriddo’s “intensely smart, immensely funny” Rapture, Blister Burn as part of her Honors Thesis in Directing. In a first for the Department, Noah Pott (’22) is both directing and musical directing 35mm-A Musical Exhibition, with music and lyrics by Ryan Scott Oliver, in part fulfilment of his joint Theater and Music thesis. Last, Professor Tim Dugan in collaboration with Affiliated Artist, Figures of Speech Theatre, and with guest artist and professional set designer, Marie Laster, directs Anne Carson’s Antigonick.
The Dance Season begins with the Back to Bates Concert featuring an eclectic mix of performances, independent choreographers, alumni and the First Year Piece choreographed by senior dance majors. The Fall semester concludes with the Marcy Plavin Fall Concert, a showcase of the work by faculty Brian J Evans and guest artists Cameron McKinney and Noelle Price working with the Dance Repertory and Repertory Styles courses, performances by the Flamenco teacher, Lindsey Bourassa, and by Visiting Assistant Professor Maho Ishiguro performing Indonesian Dance.
In the cold of winter we take Bates Dance to downtown Lewiston with FAB 17 at the Gendron Center, presenting works by students, faculty and a wide range of Maine dance artists. Spring semester culminates in the Spring Dance Concert weekend featuring student choreography. This concert is usually 14-17 pieces made by three levels of composition courses, DANC 251, 351 or 360, and thesis. This concert includes volunteer dancers who have committed to rehearsals with the choreographers in those courses, plus lighting designers in THEA 232, sound designers in MUS 223, and student stage managers, sound/light board operators, and run crews. The total of students involved is often 70+ contributors. This year will feature Isabel Honigman ’22 and Talia Kurlansky ’22 presenting their thesis works.
We cap the year with the Short Term Variety Show, run by the Dance Club and featuring works by independent choreographers and dance clubs.
Admission is free, with a suggested $5 donation, except where noted.
Tickets to all performances are available through the Bates Theater and Dance Eventbrite page.
UPCOMING – WINTER 2022
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PAST 2021-22 PERFORMANCES
Spring Dance Concert
12:00 am
Spring Dance Concert features the senior thesis pieces by Isabel Honigman ’22 and Talia Kurlansky ’22 and works by student choreographers in Making Dances II, and level III independent studies.…Antigonick
12:00 am
By Anne CarsonDirected by Professor Tim Dugan Anne Carson’s radical translation of Antigone invites us to reconsider Sophocles’ all-too-familiar characters. Politically incisive, emotionally raw, and frequently deadpan, the play shatters our…
35mm: A Musical Exhibition
12:00 am
Music and Lyrics by Ryan Scott OliverBased on photographs by Matthew MurphyDirected by Noah Pott ’22 If a picture can tell 1000 words, can it inspire a song? From a southern…
Rapture, Blister, Burn
12:00 am
By Gina GionfriddoDirected by Olivia Dimond ’22 Catherine and Gwen, former best friends who have since gone their separate ways, feel equally unfilled: Catherine with just her academic career, Gwen with…
The Marcy Plavin Fall Dance Concert
12:00 am
Marcy Plavin Fall Dance Concert this year presents performances by the student of Dance Repertory and Repertory Styles in works created by Assistant Professor Brian J Evans and by guest…
Luck of the Irish
12:00 am
By Kirsten GreenidgeDirected by Professor Cliff Odle When an upwardly mobile African-American couple wants to buy a home in an all-white neighborhood in 1950’s Boston, they pay a struggling Irish family…
Back to Bates Concert
12:00 pm
A multi arts event on Back to Bates weekend featuring works by faculty, independent performers, dance clubs and the Repertory class. Tickets Admission is free, with a suggested $5 donation. Tickets are available…