Contact: Sherena Geariety, Dance Program coordinator, (360) 650-7293, sherena.geariety@wwu.edu
BELLINGHAM - The Western Washington University Dance Program will present a reconstruction of Susan Marshall's seminal work "The Most Dangerous Room in the House" as part of its annual faculty dance concert May 8-11 in the Performing Arts Center (PAC) Mainstage Theatre.
Susan Marshall, an internationally renowned movement artist, has received both a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her achievements as an American choreographer. "The Most Dangerous Room in the House," which premiered in 1998, examines the inner life of a woman through layers of memories, thoughts and fears. It explores the need to ascertain control in one's life and to protect ourselves as well as those closest to us.
This is the second year WWU's Dance Program has received a major grant to support the reconstruction of a master work by a prominent American dance artist.
New works by Penny Hutchinson and Richard Merrill will also premiere in the May concert, which will include special appearances by WWU Dance faculty members Merrill, Kraig Patterson and Susan Haines.
According to Artistic Director Nolan Dennett, of WWU's Dance faculty, the message of the concert is powerful and universal. "I have a vision of dance as an integration of music and drama and movement - a vision of an art that is capable of documenting man's inherent grief as well as his sublime ecstasy.
"For this reason, I invite artists to work with our students who can compose works that reveal the basic tragedy, as well as the grandeur of the soul that is at the core of the human experience."
Dennett said the concert will "dig beneath the surface of pretty costumes, empty gymnastic tricks and the commercial sexuality" of contemporary American dance and "delve far beneath such slick surfaces in order to drown the audience in the raw beauty of ordinary human gestures - to reach a place of inner truth where we may find a mother reaching to comfort her hurt child or a man turning to caress the cheek of his loved one."
The performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, May 8-10 and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 11.
Tickets are available through the WWU Box Office and are $10 Students, $12 Senior and Faculty/Staff, and $15 Adult. The Western Box Office is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and one hour prior to the performance. For individual tickets or disability accommodations, contact the WWU Box Office, (360) 650-6146 or visit http://www.tickets.wwu.edu/. A limited selection of tickets will be also available at Village Books and the Community Food Co-op.
The reconstruction of "The Most Dangerous Room in the House" is made possible by American Masterpieces: Dance, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, which is administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with Dance/USA.
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