Dance performance reflects on family, nature, altered perspectives
Assistant Professor of Dance Lisa Race has reversed the normal course of events in her latest performance, “Home/Welcome.” Rather than hosting a reception after the multimedia dance show, the audience will be received into an outdoor home created in the Martha Myers Dance Studio for a special — yet unspecified — occasion, complete with snacks and drinks.
Nature, including the Long Island Sound, plays a role in the production, which erupts from a family gathering to include duets, quartets and solo pieces as well as two films Race filmed in New London and Waterford with Assistant Professor of Dance Shawn Hove. The dances are ruminations on relationships and, for Race in particular, the tangled emotions of growing into an older performer. In one she imagines her mother and aunt as children in the 1930s, and another serves as a remembrance of her father.
Race has reformed her acclaimed company, Race Dance, for the performance, populating it with Connecticut College alumni Alicia Hollowell ’08, Raja Kelly ’09, Kaitlin Morse ’08 and Lily Ockwell ’10.
“I am thrilled to work with these four wonderful graduates of Connecticut College, who have taken New York by storm in recent years,” said Race. “I'm also very pleased to present this evening of dance and film — which includes scenes shot in the home of Martha Myers, a former chair of the dance department and mentor to many — in the studio that bears Martha's name.”
Race has shown her work at venues including Danspace Project and Dance Theater Workshop in New York, and in more recent years in France, Russia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, North Carolina and Wyoming. She was the recipient of a 2009 Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and in 2012-13 received a Research Matters Grant from Connecticut College enabling the performance of “Home/Welcome.”
“The tradition of dance runs deep here at Connecticut College, the longtime home of the American Dance Festival,” she said. “I am honored and inspired to take part in that tradition, and to get to dance daily in the same spaces where our modern dance trailblazers, such as Martha Graham, Jose Limon and Merce Cunningham, have taught, rehearsed and performed.”
“Home/Welcome” will be performed on Friday, Sept. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the Martha Myers Dance Studio on the third floor of the College Center at Crozier-Williams. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $5 for students and seniors, and are available through the box office in Palmer Auditorium and at the door on the evening of the performance. The event is sponsored by the Connecticut College Department of Dance.
September 10, 2013