Lincoln, Neb.--The Glenn Korff School of Music’s dance program presents their annual Evenings of Dance performances Feb. 12-15 in the Lied Center for Performing Arts’ Johnny Carson Theater.
Performances are Feb. 12-14 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 15 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12 general and $7 students and are available online only at https://go.unl.edu/dancetickets. The Friday, Feb. 13 performance will be livestreamed on YouTube at https://go.unl.edu/dancelivestream (the link will be live the day of the performance).
This is the 21st anniversary of the renaming of the spring dance concert to Evenings of Dance. This year’s performances are directed by Associate Professor of Dance and Dance Area Head Susan Levine Ourada. The associate director of Evenings of Dance is Associate Professor of Practice in Dance Hye-Won Hwang.
Evenings of Dance features students performing in works by faculty and guest artists. It also includes the student-choreographed pieces that have moved forward to the American College Dance Association (ACDA) Regional Conference that students and faculty attend each spring.
Guest choreographers this year include adjunct hip-hop instructor Katie Heckman, a 2011 UNL dance graduate who moved to New York City and danced there professionally until returning to Lincoln, and Millie Heckler, who is recently from Vermont and has performed around the world. Faculty choreographers include Ourada and Hwang.
“I loved having the opportunity to work with both of our guest choreographers,” said senior dance major S.J. Eschliman of McCook, Nebraska. “Millie Heckler’s residency gave me the opportunity to have a week of miscellaneous hip-hop and house dance classes. I was given the honor of being cast for Katie Heckman’s guest artist piece and have nothing to say about her but amazing things. Katie has refreshed my love for modern contemporary, and we have bonded over our love for the UNL dance program, as she is a proud alumna herself.”
Heckman’s piece is titled “Into the Depths.”
“The piece is a quartet, primarily inspired by the way I love to move as a dancer,” she said. “It’s contemporary/modern, a mix of using the dancers’ cornerstones of their technical training and improvisation.”
Heckman appreciated the chance to return to UNL as a guest choreographer and instructor.
“It felt like coming back home to something I know so well, but re-familiarizing myself with a new space (My college dance days were spent in Mabel Lee Hall) and new faces,” she said. “It’s like a proud big-sister moment to see how the program has expanded and flourished and showing the university how the arts, especially dance, are showing up and demanding they be seen.”
The student choreographers include Talia Markussen, Meg Brady and Eschliman.
Brady’s piece is titled “Impressionism” and features lighting design by Reece McAdams.
“My work features 12 dancers and draws parallels between my time in the dance program and the Impressionist artistic movement,” said Brady, a senior dance and environmental and sustainability studies senior from Overland Park, Kansas. “I focus on using movement to convey how this time of my life looks from the outside compared to how it felt. The piece includes audio clips of videos from different memories that I associate with the dance program to try and bring the audience into the joy I’ve felt being involved in this program for the last four years.”
Brady said Evenings of Dance is a special show because it showcases student, faculty and guest choreographer’s work.
“I think it’s really special to see how the faculty’s own artistic style has impacted student’s voices and also how our students interact with outside artists,” she said.
She is excited for her piece to be performed at the ACDA conference later this spring.
“This has been a dream of mine since I was a freshman,” Brady said. “I’ve been lucky enough to dance in pieces that have gone to ACDA, but being able to send your own work is so surreal. Especially as a senior, it feels so bittersweet to end my dance career at UNL by sharing a piece with other schools in our conference about what this program has meant to me.”
Markussen’s piece is titled “Within Arm’s Reach” and features lighting design by Savannah Stermer.
“’Within Arm’s Reach’ explores the consequences of hyper-individualism,” said Markussen, a junior dance and advertising and public relations major from Omaha, Nebraska. “My choreography investigates how overly prioritizing the self-obstructs connection, and how community often reveals itself only at the moment we’ve already pulled away.”
Eschliman’s piece is titled “Impending” and features lighting design by Abbie Phelan.
“’Impending’ is my own attempt at creating the embodiment of the feeling of impending doom,” she said. “The stark lighting of the piece represents sudden feelings of apprehension and creates somewhat of a ‘deer in the headlights’ feeling for not only the dancers, but the audience as well. The dancers each have a gloved hand that initiates and shapes a lot of their movements. The gloved hand of the dancers represents the ‘doom’ that is impending.”
Markussen said audiences should expect a diverse array of works in Evenings of Dance.
“The work you will see at Evenings of Dance is work that has been made with pure love and dedication,” she said. “No two pieces you will see this year will be the exact same, and I think this is proof of how diverse an environment that is being cultivated in our program.”
