VCUarts Dance + Choreography presents VCUarts Dance NOW 2023, Thursday 2/16, Friday 2/17, and Saturday 2/18 at 7:30pm at the Grace St. Theatre. Tickets are free and can be reserved using this link.
The annual performance features new choreographic works by professors Sinclair Emoghene, Robbie Kinter, Autumn Proctor, Eric Rivera, Judith Steel, and guest artist Christian von Howard.
Funding for guest artists in the 2022-2023 dance season has been provided in part by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
A Letter to Myself, is a contemporary dance work created by New York based choreographer Christian von Howard. It explores a community in the aftermath of the height of the pandemic. It is a visual landscape reflecting introspective memoires and reactions to culturally specific events of the past and present; moments that continually affect our roles as global citizens.
Yes, I Will Marry When I Want is a contemporary dance performance by Sinclair Emoghene that draws inspiration from the 1970 East African play, “Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want),” written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ngugi wa Mirii. The play deals with themes of class struggle, poverty, gender, culture, religion, and the tension between modernity and tradition, specifically in relation to marriage and family. Through this contemporary dance, we aim to explore how the themes and context of the play can be translated into movement, and to examine the ways in which our dancing bodies navigate the complexities and constraints imposed by societal expectations and predisposed identities. We question how the limitations of diversity can inhibit the evolution of rich and diverse experiences.
Are You A Robot? was created by the dancers under the direction of Robbie Kinter. Each section was created using improvisational scores. Robbie and the cast divided the work into two sections; interpersonal relationships and work life. Through the work, we are looking to find balance, harmony, and joy within the different aspects of our lives.
Through a series of improvisational and structural explorations and physicality involving different forms of boundaries, Autumn I. Waddell’s work Broken Chords Still Can Sing A Little creates spatial and personal tension through energetic blocks within the human experience related to the heaviness in the many layers of grief. Broken Chords Still Can Sing A Little explores these various challenges of the physical disconnect that evolves from change we cannot control or direct. Gestural intricacies and unique spatial texture mold the maze that unfolds within while chasing the unraveling sense of loss and letting go.
“Viaje al Interior,” by Eric Rivera, is in memory of my lifelong friend Roberto De la Torre, who lived beautifully and loved with no measure. You are missed every day Ballollo, my beloved friend. To wander amidst the unknown, searching from home and still resisting this uncanny silence that resignifies all. And yet, your absence holds me tight.
Something Came Up… choreographed by Judith Steel.
Three dancers find a way to begin. Stories rise and fall with each breath. In the moment where they are, they find a way to navigate. As Mary Oliver says in one of her poems “Eleven Versions of the Same Poem: Am I lost?’,
“Am I lost?
I don’t think so.
Do I know where I am?
I’m not sure”