Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
MARTY CLEARFall DanceScapes brings together students and professional choreographers for a diverse show that highlights their versatility.
TAMPA - Michael Foley has seen quite a few of the twice-yearly dance concerts at the University of South Florida by now, and he thinks the upcoming performance is among the best ever.
"There's just a lot of great dancing in it," said Foley, one of the area's most respected choreographers and a faculty member at the USF School of Theater and Dance. "A lot of academic dance just sort of contemplates its navel. But this concert has a lot of great dancing."
This year's edition of Fall DanceScapes brings together student dancers and professional choreographers, mostly from the USF faculty. Besides having some of the strongest dance technique in recent years, Foley said, it also shows off the surprising versatility of the dancers and the creators.
"It's incredibly eclectic," Foley said. "They're all very different pieces."
A glance at some of the titles bears out that assertion. It's a Go Go shares the stage with One Nation and La Bayadere.
One treat for audiences, Foley said, will be the work of USF senior Jermaine Terry, who performs a solo work called Joan.
"He's going to have a career in dance," Foley said. "I'd bet my life on it."
Foley originally choreographed Joan for himself. It's the first time he has given a solo work that he designed for himself to another dancer. The piece, about the last hours of Joan of Arc, is one of two Foley works on the program. The other is Under Combat Wear, a physically demanding, rapid fire and almost violent quartet that ends with the dancers in their underwear. It's another piece that Foley originally designed some years back for his own company.
New York-based guest choreographer Ronald K. Brown's One Nation is a new work about the losses of war and the responsibility to keep lost loved ones alive through prayer.
Another guest choreographer, Frankie Hart, offers It's a Go Go, a raucous modern piece for 10 dancers that blends African-Caribbean influences with athleticism.
Probably the most sedate work of the evening, and certainly the most traditional, is USF faculty member Gretchen Ward Warren's classical ballet piece, the divertissement from the first act of Petipa's La Bayadere.
PREVIEW: Fall DanceScapes, Friday through Nov. 13 in Theatre I at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, plus 8 p.m. Nov. 11-13. Tickets are $12 general admission and $6 for students and seniors. (813) 974-2323.