The Glenn Korff School of Music’s dance program presents their annual Evenings of Dance Concert April 20-23 in the Lied Center’s Johnny Carson Theater.
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. April 20-22 and at 2 p.m. April 23. Tickets are $12 general, $10 seniors and $7 students/youth and are available online only. In addition, the April 21 concert will be live webcast.
This year’s Evenings of Dance concert will feature seven dances, including three works that were presented at the American College Dance Association Conference that was held at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln campus in March.
Two of these dances were put forward for adjudication, and for only the second time in Nebraska U dance’s history, both were selected by blind review for the culminating Gala Concert. Those two works included “Grasping Nostalgia and Dreadful Progress” by senior dance major Lanie Allen and “… for the case of spirit and community” by acclaimed Los Angeles dance artist Bernard Brown. Brown visited the program in October for 10 days of teaching and choreography.
“This piece is a movement exploration of physical and mental manifestations of burden,” said Allen of her work. “It explores some of the difficulties I’ve encountered in my journey with mental illness. Pushing, pulling and lifting, the eight dancers struggle with escape, recovery and relapse.”
Allen, a senior dance major from Lincoln, was excited about the work being selected for the conference Gala concert.
“It’s always amazing to be recognized for your work, especially for a piece so dear to me,” Allen said. “I was so excited to share the news with the amazing cast—they are as important to this piece as I am. I felt so supported by them and my professors. I can’t think of a better outcome for my final ACDA conference with UNL.”
A second student work, Mariela Hernandez’s “Can you hear me? Can I…” was also presented at the conference’s informal concert, held in the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts to an audience of more than 300 people.
“It is a piece that seeks to capture the difficulty of the act of communication, the feeling that words escape us or are insufficient to express what we feel or think,” said Hernandez, a post-baccalaureate dance major from Pachuca de Soto, Hidalgo, Mexico. “The window of hope that opens when we discover ourselves trying to listen to ourselves and to list to another.”
Hernandez was grateful for the experience of having her work performed at the conference.
“It gave me a lot of joy that our work was part of the sharing between colleges,” she said. “One never knows the impact we can have on others through our movement. As a person who grew up and has lived in another country, [the dance conference] has been one of my best experiences as a student at UNL. It gave me a frame of reference regarding the concerns of this generation of student-dancers in this area of the country.”
In addition to those three dances, there will be work by two additional guest artists—Jordan Patt and Veronica Santiago Moniello. Patt (B.A. 2018) is a dance program alumna who moved to New York City after graduation and has been successfully navigating a dance career there since 2018. Moniello is a multimedia dance artist from Venezuela who also lives and works in New York City.
The remaining two works on the program are choreographed by Associate Professor of Dance Susan Ourada and Associate Professor of Practice in Dance Hye-Won Hwang.
“Dr. Hwang’s ‘Namoo’ is a beautiful and meditative piece combining music and poetry in the score,” Ourada said. “My lighthearted dance is my annual work with senior majors and minors, for whom this will be their final performance in Evenings of Dance.”
Additionally, the Nebraska U Dance Alumni Board is hosting a post-performance meet and greet for dance alumni following the 7:30 p.m. April 22 performance at Screamers Dining Cabaret, 803 Q St. in Lincoln. Dance alumnae Cary Twomey, Kari Swanson Neth, and Shelley Brackhan Fritz will be hosting. The event includes light hors d’oeuvres, conversation and time to connect with alumni and current dance students. For more information on this event, e-mail unldancealumni@gmail.com.
