Richmond, VA – VCU Department of Dance and Choreography will present Kate Weare Company on Friday and Saturday, October 12th and 13th at 8:00pm at the Grace Street Theater, 934 West Grace Street, Richmond, VA. Tickets are $20/$15 students with valid I.D. and are available now at ShowClix or by calling 804-828-2020. New York-based Kate Weare Company is known for its startling combination of formal choreographic values and visceral, emotional interpretation. Weare’s dances explore contemporary views of intimacy, both tender and stark, by drawing on our most basic urges to move and decode movement.

The company opens the evening with The Light Has Not the Arms to Carry Us followed by Drop Down, a duet investigating ways in which a man and woman negotiate proximity and erotic power. The movement language springs from the mechanics of tango, with its revolving central axis, knife-like leg action and quick changing rhythms. Garden closes the program utilizing an arresting choreographic language of paired unison that ranges from sensuous and delicate to severe and propulsive. Drawing on primitive issues of origination, collective identity and safety amid the uncontrollable natural world, two men and two women frolic, flirt and fight in the wake of the unknown, eliciting a world of sensuality and innocence with some dark under currents. Weare will teach a Community Master Class by the School of the Richmond Ballet on October 8th from 6:30-8:00pm.

With both rawness and precision, Weare maps a humanism that is contemporary, disquieting and profoundly stirring. Raised by a painter and a printmaker in Oakland, California, she draws on visual art sources in her work, as well as a fascination with the fields of language, poetry, contemporary music and psychology. Weare earned her BFA from California Institute of the Arts and danced in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Belgrade and Montreal before settling in New York City to found her own company in 2005.

Kate Weare Company made its name after winning New York City’s 2007 A.W.A.R.D. Show, a series in which the audience votes for the best modern dance work, with Drop Down and has since been presented in New York by The Joyce Theater, Fall for Dance at New York City Center, Symphony Space, Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam and Danspace Project. Nationwide the company has been presented by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, ArtPower at UC San Diego, Dance Celebration Philadelphia. Company teaching residencies have included NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Long Island University, Marymount Manhattan College, Brockport College, Bates Dance Festival and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Weare, a 2009 Princess Grace award recipient, was recently commissioned to create new work on Scottish Dance Theatre, Australia’s Buzz Dance Theatre, CityDance Ensemble, Axis Dance Company.

Weare’s star dancer, Leslie Kraus, a VCU Dance alumna (2003) and graduate of Richmond’s Henrico High School Center for the Arts, returns to the Grace Street Theater an accomplished professional. Kraus danced with Curt Haworth and Robbinschilds as well as in her own work in New York after completing her BFA at VCU. After joining Kate Weare Company in 2006, she was recognized for outstanding dancing in Dance Magazine’s 2009 annual list “25 to Watch” and dance critic Deborah Jowitt of The Village Voice stated: “Kraus is amazing – demon and angel.” Kraus routinely acts as Weare’s assistant director, most recently for a commissioned work on dance students at the NYU Tisch School. She is a featured soloist in an opera Weare created with composer Barbara White that premiered at Princeton University in March 2012.

MASTER CLASS
Kate Weare Company Community Master Class
October 8, 2012
6:30 – 8:00 pm
Hosted by the School of the Richmond Ballet
407 East Canal Street
Richmond, VA

Season tickets may be purchased for only $80 per person! Call 804-828-2020 for details. For ticket and theater rental information, contact the Grace Street Theater:
934 West Grace Street
Richmond, Virginia
Phone: 804-828-2020
Fax: 804-827-0154
arts.vcu.edu/gracestreet/

Reserve tickets online at Showclix.com.

The presenting program of VCU Dance is committed to building and engaging dance audiences in the University and Richmond communities while providing opportunities for artists to present and create work. The presentation of Kate Weare Company is made possible in part by grants from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

AUDITIONS
2013-2014 Academic Year
Friday, November 16, 2012
Friday, January 25, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013

For information on applications and auditions, visit arts.vcu.edu/admissions/how-to-apply/undergraduate/

Recognized by professional dancers and choreographers as “a place where things are happening,” Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Dance and Choreography offers a vibrant and stimulating atmosphere where students prepare for careers in dance. VCUarts is ranked the #1 public university arts and design program in the country according to US News & World Report.