Festival Unites Trinity College, Charter Oak Cultural Center, and the Artists Collective
HARTFORD, Conn. — Beyond City Limits: A Hartford Festival of Dance is a showcase for three unique performances in diverse venues that explore global and urban themes by dance-theater artists Judy Dworin, Lesley Farlow, and Lorelei Chang. The festival events take place the last weekend of March and the first week of April.
Beyond City Limits consists of the official debut of dancEnlight Modern Dance Company, newly founded by Lorelei Chang; the world premiere of “Dreamings” by the Judy Dworin Performance Project; and the Theater and Dance Department of Trinity College dance concert and symposium curated by Lesley Farlow.
Beyond City Limits is sponsored by the Center for Urban and Global Studies of Trinity College.
Trinity College Department of Theater and Dance presents Pulse of the People: Celebrating Katherine Dunham, a dance concert featuring a collaboration between Trinity and The Artists Collective with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance from Denver, Colorado. Katherine Dunham’s Ragtime from Scott Joplin’s Tremonshina will be staged by Cleo Parker Robinson Dance and performed jointly by students from Trinity College and The Artists Collective. The concert will include guest artists Paul Dennis, dancing a solo by the Fist & Heel Company’s Reggie Wilson, Brazilian dancer Gleide Cambria, Hartford choreographers Deborah Goffe, Tony Olivares, and Abdoulaye Sylla. Outreach will include master classes, a performance by Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, an exhibition of paintings by Haitian artists, and a symposium at Trinity entitled Merging Art and Culture, which will feature a performance by Haitian anthropologist and performance artist Gina Athene Ulysse.
The Ragtime project is supported by an American Masterpieces: Dance – College Component grant from Dance/USA and the National Endowment for the Arts, and administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Performances are Friday and Saturday, March 27 and 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Austin Arts Center on the Trinity College campus, Hartford. Tickets are $15, $10 for seniors and students with ID, free to Trinity ID holders.
For tickets, please call the Austin Arts Center box office at 860-297-2199. The symposium takes place on Saturday, March 28, 1:00-5:00 p.m., at The Performance Lab at Trinity Commons, 240 New Britain Avenue. Admission to the symposium is free. For more information, visit www.trincoll.edu/artsattrinity.
DancEnlight Modern Dance Company, founded by Lorelei Chang, makes its debut with the world premiere of Ink Passion. An evening-length work inspired by the ancient living art of Chinese calligraphy, Ink Passion emphasizes how the elements of choreography and performance—line, shape, rhythm, accent or punctuation, flow of energy, and relation to space—are shared with brushwork.
The dual choreographers of Ink Passion, Lorelei Chang and her twin sister Mai Nakanishi, are accomplished Chinese calligraphers—both winning awards at the Tokyo National Museum in January. Examples of their ideograms will be displayed in an accompanying exhibition, which also includes dance photography by Ron Compton, Zoe Macerollo, and Sachiko Nagata. For information on dancEnlight, visit http://dancenlight.org.
Ink Passion will be presented Friday and Saturday, March 27 and 28, at 7:30 p.m. at Charter Oak Cultural Center, 21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford. Tickets are $25; $15 for seniors and members of Charter Oak and Let*s Go; $10 for students with ID. Reservations are strongly suggested; please call 860-249-1207. www.charteroakcenter.org.
Judy Dworin Performance Project presents the world premiere of Dreamings, an evening-length work that emerged from an arts residency at York Correctional Institution for Women in Niantic, Conn. This ambitious collaborative work joins the voices of the women at York with the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, the a cappella trio Women of the Cross, women who have completed their prison sentences, and children whose relatives are still serving time. Dreamings gives voice to inmates and connects them with those who are free, and reminds us of our common humanity.
Best-selling novelist and prison educator Wally Lamb describes Dreamings as “a performance piece in which professionals carry the inmates’ lives past the prison walls—that excites, moves, and educates audiences, and enhances the public’s understanding of crime and punishment in America,” as it delves into its impact on those in prison, their families, and society in general.
Dreamings will be presented Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, April 2-4, at 7:30 p.m. at Charter Oak Cultural Center, 21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford. Tickets are $20; $10 for seniors and members of Charter Oak and Let*s Go; $5 for students with ID. Reservations are strongly suggested; please call 860-249-1207. For more information visit www.charteroakcenter.org. For information on the Judy Dworin Performance Project, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, visit www.judydworin.org.
Free performances of “Dreamings” for Hartford public school children will take place on Thursday and Friday, April 2 and 3, at 10 a.m. Please contact Carla Iovinella at jdppinc@gmail.com for further information.
For more information on any of the above events, please visit www.trincoll.edu/artsattrinity.