Dear family and friends,

Thank you for attending our 2022 Spring Dance Concert. Once again, our wonderful team of faculty, production designers and performers has created a captivating program of dance for you tonight. Six works will be presented this evening including here,after by New York dancer and choreographer Ginger Cox, and Batucada Fantástica by Venezuelan choreographer Vicente Nebrada, restaged by Johan Rivera, associate artistic director of Ballet Hispánico. We are grateful to the generous gift given by Marjorie Lewis for the Ballet Hispánico residency with the Dance Division.

In addition, faculty members Tiffanie Carson and Daniel Padierna present new and restaged works for you tonight. Carson's Strike a Pose celebrates the iconic song Vogue by singer-songwriter Madonna, where the dancers honor the trend setting music by living it up on the dance floor. In Lustrous Collapse, Carson conjures up visions of iron reacting to oxygen and water; imagining what happens when metal turns to rust, with flakes of deterioration collapsing from the corrosion. Wings in the Grass by Padierna was an original commission by the National Education Association in support of Dance Against Cancer. The ensemble is driven by the migration of fireflies, traveling by day and illuminating by night. HOUSE is centered around Padierna’s first experience during the resurgence of New York City nightlife post pandemic, introducing his relationship between formalism and club culture.

Dance is a universal form of expression that strives to communicate; be it to form community, worship, philosophize, entertain, share histories, express emotions or give visualizations on aspirations, struggles and triumphs. In all cases, there is a sharing of information that happens when the performing body moves and is viewed by others; and that identification of meaning is based on many factors that the viewer, you, bring to the “performance.”

I hope you enjoy the performance.

Maurice Fraga
Dance Division Chair
Associate Professor of Dance