A modern dance concert, directed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Associate Professor of Dance Susan Ourada, will take place on four consecutive days April 25-28 in the Lied Center’s Johnny Carson Studio Theater — it’s the 14th annual Evenings of Dance.
This year’s concert will feature world premieres of five professionally choreographed dances, in addition to three works by students. Junior dance major Maren Schuttler’s work, “we must pray for the woman,” was honored in March at the American College Dance Association North Central Regional Conference by being selected for inclusion in their prestigious Gala Concert. In addition, two other acclaimed student works that were also presented at this conference will also be featured.
The Dance Program in the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts Glenn Korff School of Music was delighted to host three amazing guest artists this year. Among them was Dr. Melissa Templeton, who in addition to choreographing a quartet, also taught several modern dance courses this spring. Dan Schuchart, who is on faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, visited Lincoln for one week in the Fall Semester and choreographed a large group work on the students. Also, Lauren Simpson, who currently lives in San Francisco, set a piece on the UNL dancers and in very exciting news will be moving to Nebraska in the near future. You can plan to see more of Simpson’s work on our stages!
The Dance Faculty, Dr. Hye-Won Hwang and Professor Ourada, create new pieces annually for the UNL dance students. Interestingly, they each decided (separately) to work with classical works by Ravel and Gorecky, respectively.
Rounding out the concert will be a short piece choreographed by Ourada featuring several UNL Dance alumni. This work was commissioned by the N150 project and included a world premiere chamber composition by Dr. Garrett Hope.
As always, students from the Johnny Carson School of Theater and Film are integral to the production of this concert. Several MFA candidates, along with undergraduates, studying lighting will be designing for the show and it will be stage managed by a student from Stage Management and Direction program, as well.
The concert starts at 7:30 Thursday, Friday and Saturday and at 2:00 on Sunday. Tickets are General admission $12; UNL Faculty/Staff $10; Students/Seniors $7; available at the door one hour before the performance. The performance on Friday, April 26, will be live webcast. Visit music.unl.edu the night of the performance for the direct link.