Winter Works 2022 Dance Concert
Purdue Contemporary Dance Company
Friday, December 9 - 7:30pm
Saturday, December 10 - 2:30pm & 7:30pm
$16.00 adults - $12.00 students – $8.00 Child 12 & under
Purdue Campus Box Office – 765.494.3933
The Purdue Contemporary Dance Company, housed in the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance in Yue-Kong Pao Hall, presents six new works by dance faculty, two select student artists and a PCDC Alumni Artist. The Division of Dance and Theatre Department faculty and students collaborate intensively to create original art on the stage, and to prepare students for careers in these performative disciplines. Original movement is created in the studio for each work over the course of the entire semester. All works are accompanied by original music/sound created specifically for these dances by students in the Theatre Department’s Sound Design program in collaboration with choreographers. Rueff School light-design students worked with choreographers to craft special light designs on the Hansen Theatre stage. Additionally, a Costume Design student worked collaboratively with one choreographer to design and construct their costumes this semester.
Embers Under Urban Skies, choreographed by faculty member Carol Cunningham-Sigman, is a sonic and visual montage-like work depicting women in resistance groups defending their country. The women demonstrate strength and courage alongside their emotional struggle as they fight against invading forces.
The Constant Risk of Crumbling Growth, a new work by faculty member Kathleen Hickey, explores the idea of continual backsliding after social growth and change throughout history. Featuring eleven dancers, this piece navigates the stage space communicating humanity, empathy, struggle, and resilience with repetitive, sharp, focused, and weighted movement.
Faculty member Holly Jaycox created the new work Between Breath and Flesh, set on a small cast of five. In this meditative work, the dancers embody levels of being a human, that of the muscles and bones living in the present space, and that of the living organism that is deeply woven into the larger ecosystem of life on earth.
A Continuum of Relentlessness was created by Kelly Penrose, a Mechanical Engineering senior. This work observes people moving through their lives amid the support, or lack thereof, from those around them. The question becomes: who notices when you fall?
Return to Mothership is choreographed by Bird Thurman, a junior in aerospace engineering, and dance minor. This humorous work explores the imaginary moment when a tentative friendship develops between a couple of cowboys and a group of aliens who invaded their land.
Andrea Ridge, PCDC Alumni Artist Choreographer, created the work Tidal. This high-energy, athletic dance explores the use of gravity and momentum. The sequence of movement that allows the most ease can be determined by asking “What does my body naturally want to do from here? Where is my weight falling, and where do I want to go?” In this dance the movers grapple with these questions, finding how momentum and gravity supports dancing as easy and pure as waves rolling across the sea.
Photo Credits: Photographer: Rebecca McEwen, photographer; Title of Dance: W-A-T-C-H-E-D; Choreographer: Carol Cunningham; Dancers: Miyu Hino, Claire Kedzierski, Anna Morton, Andreya Rollins, Bird Thurman, Ally Willis
December 2022