GIMP dance performance is Oct. 29 at Lied

Aerialists performing with GIMP.
Aerialists performing with GIMP.

Revolutionary dance company GIMP will perform at the Lied Center for Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 29 as part of a week-long residency with the College of Fine and Performing Arts' Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium.

GIMP is a company of mixed-ability dancers, some with physical challenges including muscular dystrophy or prosthetic limbs. The performance will be followed immediately by a discussion between GIMP artistic director Heidi Latsky and Joan Acocella, a writer for The New Yorker magazine.

"Gimp" is a taboo word in today's society, just as unacceptable as staring at people who have physical disabilities. But the dance company GIMP also transforms it to mean "fighting spirit," "interwoven fabric" and "trembling with ecstasy." It is all of those meanings that truly define GIMP, which challenges all accepted notions of dance, performance and body image.

GIMP tickets are free for all UNL students as part of the Lied Center's "Free for All" program. Tickets for the general public are $16 and are available at http://www.liedcenter.org or by calling (402) 472-4747 or (800) 432-3231.

As a complement to the week-long GIMP residency, Acocella, an award-winning author and writer, will hold a separate, public lecture on the art form of dance at 5:45 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Van Brunt Visitors Center.

Acocella is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she reviews dance and books. She edited the first unexpurgated edition of "The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky." Her other books include "Mark Morris," a critical biography of the choreographer; "Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism," and "Creating Hysteria, Women and Multiple Personality Disorder." Acocella also edited "Andre Levinson on Dance" with Lynn Garafola.

Acocella's recent collection of essays, "Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints," now in paperback (Vintage), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism and winner of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She also received the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research from the Congress of Research on Dance, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. Acocella was a Guggenheim fellow and is a fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities.

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium is sponsored by the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. It is presented in part by the Lied Center for Performing Arts and funded in part by the Hixson-Lied Endowment. For more information, go to http://www.unl.edu/ias.

- Shannon McClure, Lied Center for Performing Arts

More details at: http://www.liedcenter.org