Posted March 26, 2007

Dance faculty recital offers “Hidden Treasures”

On Friday and Saturday evenings, March 30–31, the Boyer College of Music and Dance’s Department of Dance will present “Hidden Treasures,” one of the most ambitious faculty dance recitals since the department was founded in 1962.

Returning to Temple’s 450-seat Tomlinson Theater for the first time in eight years, the Boyer faculty dance recital will feature works by seven current faculty artists — Eva Gholson, Philip Grosser, Kun-Yang Lin, Joellin Meglin, Merián Soto, Keith Thompson and Kariamu Welsh — as well as a performance of Martha Graham’s reconstructed classic “Steps in the Street” by 12 Temple dance students.

Keith Thompson
Photo courtesy Keith Thompson
Keith Thompson, assistant professor of dance
   

“This recital is a celebration of our artistic diversity,” said Welsh, dance department chair. “The range of emotional, stylistic and cultural expression is so exciting: from epic to intimate, from innovative to traditional and from the streets and parks of American cities to Asia and Africa.”

“Hidden Treasures” includes several premieres and debuts. Recent faculty recruit Keith Thompson (right) will make his first public performance since arriving at Temple when he dances with his company danceTactics, which in 2006 was hailed by the New York Times as “exhilarating” and for its ability to “show dance as a reason unto itself.”

Kariamu Welsh will premiere her “Double Dutch Chronicles,” a contemporary African dance work about the transition from girlhood to womanhood.

Merián Soto, a Bessie Award winner, will present an excerpt from her recently created “States of Gravity & Light 2,” part of a series of dances with tree branches developed in northwest Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Park.

Other new works to be performed include Kun-Yang Lin’s “Crossing,” inspired by the his recent move from New York to Philadelphia and funded in part by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Eva Gholson’s “Heron Dances: Love Poems to God,” a dance suite she says is “inspired by the art of contemplation.”

New Theater Department faculty recruit and veteran lighting director John Hoey (a 1991 M.F.A. graduate of the School of Communications and Theater), who has designed more than 20 operas for the Opera Company of Pennsylvania and nearly 100 ballets for the Pennsylvania Ballet, will be the lighting designer for the recital.

“Hidden Treasures” begins at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 30, and Saturday, March 31, in Tomlinson Hall, N. 13th and E. Norris streets, at Temple’s Main Campus.

Tickets are $10 general admission, $8 for senior citizens and students (free for Temple students with OWLcard), and may be purchased at the Liacouras Center Box Office (cash only) at 1776 N. Broad St. (open Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.); online at www.liacourascenter.com; or by calling 1-800-298-4200.


Members of the media may contact Linda Fiore, Boyer’s director of college relations and external affairs, at 215-204-8307.

webcomm