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Dance, collaborative drama signal new direction
BY SALLY ACHARYA
It’s not often that students in the performing arts get to see their own professors perform—outside the classroom, at least.
And it’s not often that faculty from different disciplines can be found together, in the same production.
This fall, though, the Department of Performing Arts will launch the academic year with a collaborative production of Ariel Dorfman’s wrenching drama of human rights abuse, Death and the Maiden, that features faculty in the key roles and a dance segment choreographed by artist-in-residence Vladimir Angelov, CAS/MA ’96.
The play is about a woman who was raped and tortured as a political prisoner, and many years later puts her torturer on trial in her isolated country house.
The dance segment, added for the AU production, is included to reflect the protagonist’s emotional state, and to show the abstract power of dance in theatre. “Much of this play is extraordinarily confrontational, but it has overtones of poetry at the same time,” said department chair Gail Mardirosian. “As you see the actor and dancer, you see multiple aspects simultaneously.”
While most parts will be performed by faculty members, the dancer is student Leah Rothschild who spent several years with the Joffrey Ballet before coming to AU.
The inclusion of dance as a theatrical device signals a new direction for the department. “This is a big stretch in a new direction, since AU has been like many programs in the U.S.—it has been predominantly modern dance,” Angelov said. “We’re trying to incorporate all genres and open up the box, and also incorporate theatre, and be a little open-minded.
“This is very dramatic, deep material. We’re looking for a different dimension, a different level of implementing dance into
theatre.”
Angelov will also choreograph the spring ’08 dance concert, which will feature choreography by all the adjunct dance faculty. “That will be the first time we’ve done anything like that, highlighting each of the dance instructors’ work,” Mardirosian said of the spring concert, which is expected to include African dance, tap, ballet, modern dance, jazz, and possibly other forms.
This year there will be a heightened level of collaboration between the performing arts departments, Mardirosian said. The fall production “will communicate the unity of the department, and how faculty can model a collaborative and cross-disciplinary richness,” she said.
“I think with this first production,” Angelov added, “we’re saying that we don’t only work under one roof (the Katzen). We can also work on one production.”
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