Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium launches 2010-11 season

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium in the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is set to open its second season with the theme "Technology, Prosthetics, and the Body in Performance."

The season showcases artists who stretch, alter, or question the limits of the physical body through technology -- including electronics, cinema, surgery, prosthetic limbs, biogenetics, digital photography, and even haute couture.

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium is part of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. Founded and directed by Rhonda Garelick, it aims to place the performing arts in a broader, more meaningful context, to create a diverse audience for performances and to bring world-class performance and scholarship to UNL and Lincoln.

"We have two main, related goals: To turn Lincoln into a destination for those seeking the finest, most thought-provoking performing arts and, through our new IAS book series with the University of Nebraska Press, to make UNL one of the nation's leading centers for the publication of exciting new writing in this field," Garelick said.

IAS is has a four-pronged approach: a theme-based public performance series with artists in residence; a free public lecture series to complement the performances in collaboration with the Lied Center; a seminar for UNL students devoted to the season's theme; and a new book series with the Nebraska Press, edited by Garelick.

IAS 2010-11 season artists include Jody Sperling's Time Lapse Dance, recently back from performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, where its performance was called "one of the most hypnotically beautiful works on the Fringe" (Julia Dawson, Edinburgh Spotlight). Time Lapse Dance will perform at the Lied Center for Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 23. Tickets to Time Lapse Dance and all Lied Center performances are available at www.liedcenter.org or (402) 472-4747. Sperling, founder and artistic director of the company, will also deliver a public lecture and several outreach activities with UNL students and the local community as part of her visit in Lincoln.

Heidi Latsky Dance's GIMP company, featured at the National Endowment for the Arts, National Summit at the Kennedy Center in July 2009, will perform on the Lied Center stage at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 29. By showcasing dancers with prosthetic limbs, muscular dystrophy, and other significant challenges creating stunning and elaborate movement, GIMP challenges all of our preconceptions of what a "normal" body might be. The company will also conduct workshops and outreach activities with UNL students and the local community.

Internationally acclaimed French artist ORLAN will deliver a free, public lecture/performance at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Sheldon Museum of Art, to accompany her new exhibition. This exhibition, which blends biotechnology, fashion, film and design, and which will travel nationally, showcases ORLAN's use of the harlequin's patchwork motif as a metaphor for ethnic diversity and multiculturalism. A catalogue, "Fabulous Harlequin: ORLAN and the Patchwork self," forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press and edited by Garelick and Sheldon Director Jorge Daniel Veneciano, will accompany this exhibit, featuring articles by scholars from Spain, France, India, Vietnam and the United States.

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium collaborates with the Lied Center to provide a free lecture series to accompany the performances and educational outreach opportunities, where renowned scholars -- including Joan Acocella, dance critic at The New Yorker -- provide a deeper knowledge of the artist and the art form from an international and historical perspective. Acocella will speak at the Van Brunt Visitors Center at 5:45 p.m. Oct. 28.

IAS is sponsored by the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, presented, in part, by the Lied Center for Performing Arts, and funded, in part, by the Hixson-Lied Endowment. IAS 2010-11 season activities are supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information about IAS performances and programs, see www.unl.edu/ias.

WRITER: Shannon McClure, Director, Marketing and Public Relations, Lied Center, (402) 472-5928