The University of SC Dance Company will present a selection of innovative dance works
during its Spring Contemporary Concert, February 21-24 at Drayton Hall Theatre.
The concert includes cutting-edge works by guest artist Shaun Boyle (Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, BalletMet), Associate Professors Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis, and dance instructors Olivia Waldrop and Stephanie Wilkins.
UofSC Dance Artistic Director Susan Anderson calls Shaun Boyle’s Honor and Ash “brilliant, different and dark,” while praising the piece as being a highly technical
piece of choreography. “It’s a perfect blend for us,” she says. In addition to its
inclusion in this concert, Anderson says the piece is also slated to be performed
by the USC Dance Company at the Southeastern conference of the American College Dance
Festival in March 2018.
Boyle describes the work, which she originally created in collaboration with dancers
at the University of Utah, as centering on the theme of war/violence and its aftermath.
“What resulted,” she says, “was movement language that I believe embodies internal
conflict, collective turmoil and tension, and, at times, a sense of surrendering.”
UofSC dance Associate Professor Tanya Wideman-Davis says her still-untitled piece
fuses movement with wearable sculpture to explore how women are “cultured into not
taking up space, not having agency, and not really feeling like you’re not an object
in the space.” The work will feature original sculpted “skirts,” created by sophomore
dance major Julia Maxwell, whose visual art talents Wideman-Davis noticed in the Choreography
and 3-D Sculpture class she co-taught in the Fall 2017 semester with Assistant Professor
Naomi Falk from the School of Art.
The piece will be set to music of rock icon Prince, whose passionate performances
Wideman-Davis says perfectly embody the theme of challenging cultural restrictions.
“You can’t just lull into [Prince’s music]. You have to hit the mark of the music,”
she says. “If you’ve been told not to take up space, to only be small and genteel,
then you can’t fully embody your potential. And when I hear Prince’s music, he makes
me embody potential.”
A similar theme of questioning how clothing influences individuality permeates Bare, choreographed by university dance instructor Olivia Waldrop. “Typically, costuming
is one of the last pieces of the puzzle in creating dance,” she says. “For this work,
we almost immediately started working with costumes, so they could influence the movement
of the dancers.”
Dance instructor Stephanie Wilkins says her as-yet-untitled “athletic contemporary”
work, set to Barber’s Adagio for Strings, takes inspiration from the process of overcoming personal obstacles. “It’s kind
of an epic emotional journey about setbacks and comebacks,” she says. “And my mantra
now has been that the comeback is always stronger than the setback.”
Associate Professor Thaddeus Davis’ Black Gazing, originally created and performed for the USC Dance Company Fall 2017 concert, will
be reprised on this concert. In Davis’ emotive work, inventive movement is juxtaposed
with evocative visual projections and the powerful music of Nina Simone to “reconsider
taboo relationships in an ever-changing world.”
Show times are 7:30pm for the February 21-23 performances and 2pm for the February
2 performance. Tickets are $15 for students, $20 for USC Faculty/Staff, Military
and Seniors, and $22 for the general public, and can be purchased online, by phone
at 803-777-2551, or in person at the Longstreet Theatre box office, located at 1300
Greene St. Physical box office hours are 12:30pm - 5:30pm, Monday through Friday,
beginning February 14. Drayton Hall Theatre is located at 1214 College St., across
from the historic UofSC Horseshoe.
For more information about the USC Dance Company Spring Contemporary Concert or the
dance program at the University of South Carolina, contact Kevin Bush by phone at
803-777-9353 or via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu.
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- Spring Contemporary Concert | Feb. 21-24