Utopia
Parkway a Collaboration of Improvisation
There is no telling what each
performance will bring during Utopia Parkway, an
evening-long work of dance, music and incorporation of other
elements.
That's because Utopia Parkway is
built around improvisation, of dance and live music, created
and performed live and in real time by dance faculty members
Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser.
Performances take place on Thursday
and Friday, Sept. 20-21, at 8 p.m. in Hallie Flanagan Studio
Theater, Mendenhall Center.
Utopia Parkway is inspired
by the poetic sensibility and creative process of visual artist
Joseph Cornell and the dream-like ways in which he transformed
space and time through the arrangement and deconstruction of
objects that he found or collected throughout his life.
"Our goal is to create a sense
of poetic theater through the interplay of dance, music, light
and set design," says Aiken, who, with Hauser, joined the Smith
faculty last year. "Each performance will be unique, inspired
by the interweaving of the artistic collaborators' improvisational
impulses combined with the energy and attention of the audience.
How the audience responds affects the choices we make on stage.
It is a relationship.
"We choose to work improvisationally
because of the dialogue it creates with emergent processes.
We are entering the unknown in order to create something that
is as new to us as it is to the audience."
Collaborating in the performances
with Aiken and Hauser are musicians Jesse Manno, vocalist and
multi-instrumentalist, and Robert Benford, percussionist, as
well as new media designer Eitan Mednelowitz.
Utopia Parkway is sponsored
by the Office of the Provost/Dean of the Faculty.
Tickets for Utopia Parkway are
$5. For more information, call 413-585-2787, or send email
to . |
