PAD to present Young Choreographers Showcase March 28 to 30

Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present its third biennial Young Choreographers Showcase March 28 to 30 in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio.

The concert will feature more than a dozen dancers in seven original works by student choreographers in the PAD’s Dance Program

Performances begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 30. Tickets are $15 and $9 for seniors, students and Washington University faculty and staff.

Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543.

“We have a really interesting mix of dances this year,” says David W. Marchant, senior lecturer in dance, who serves as co-artistic director for the showcase, along with senior Noelle Bohaty. “There’s a nice range of styles and groupings and relationships — from modern works to ballet, from abstract design to narrative stories, from solos to large group pieces and all configurations in between.”

All works are chosen by audition, a three-part process that began last fall with an initial, preliminary audition, followed by a selection round and then a final, pre-performance critique.

The selection jury is comprised of the PAD’s four full-time dance faculty — Marchant, Mary-Jean Cowell, Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal and Cecil Slaughter — as well as Bohaty and Henry Claude, the PAD’s music director for dance.

“The faculty really just serve as an oversight committee,” Marchant notes. “The artistic product, from choreography and performance to lighting and costumes, is realized by the students, and none of that could happen if they weren’t willing to dedicate a lot of hours to helping each other.

“The success of each choreographer depends largely on their peers, which is a remarkable testament to how this department functions.”

Bohaty, in addition to serving on the selection jury, choreographs and performs in The Gathering, a large ensemble piece for eight dancers. Adapted from a site-specific work titled in these walls, the piece was originally presented last fall as part of a senior thesis project.

Sophomore Corinn Williams choreographs and performs Tentatively Behind Closed Doors, a modern solo that “deals with surface appearances versus internal emotion and the contrast that exists between them.” Senior Shaina Goodman and junior Laurie Bonkowski perform Goodman’s Holding, which explores the ability of others to silence one’s own self-expression.

Senior Patricia Engel choreographs and performs in rewound, a modern point piece that includes a trio and two duos through which four dancers “explore their relationship to each other as well as their experience of the past, present and future.”

Anne Laue-Minden, a senior architecture major in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, choreographs and performs in Drawing Series: Line, Shadow/Object, Figure/Ground. Written for seven dancers, the piece is informed by both architectural and dance studies and serves as “a choreographic investigation of inhabiting and embodying space.”

Rounding out the program is a dance by senior Becky Hutt as well as Shattered Glass, an evocative duet — choreographed and performed by senior Heather Wigmore and junior Jackie Dodd — that examines “the relationships we can and cannot built during a crisis.”

The Annelise Mertz Dance Studio is located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call (314) 935-6543 or visit the PAD’s web site.