CANCION DEL CUERPO Set for UT's B. Iden Payne Theatre

The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre & Dance and Texas Performing Arts invite you to experience a vibrant evening of dance, expression and cultural exchange with the presentation of Canción del Cuerpo (Song of the Body), March 5 - 7 at UT's B. Iden Payne Theatre.

This very special program presents five original dance pieces including new choreography from the cross-cultural collaboration with Colombian choreographer Álvaro Restrepo of El Colegio Del Cuerpo from the city of Cartagena, UT's Lyn C. Wiltshire, Yacov Sharir and Andrea Beckham, and guest choreographer José Luis Bustamante. Dance majors in the University's Dance Repertory Theatre and company members of Restrepo's El Colegio del Cuerpo will perform both separately and together.

Canción del Cuerpo is the culmination of more than two years of collaboration between the University of Texas and eCdC. Initiated by the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas and LLILAS, this ongoing project has seen students and faculty from across the University of Texas community interact with members of eCdC, both in Austin and Cartagena, on topics ranging from dance and corporal education to human rights advocacy and law to photo-journalism and anthropology.

El Colegio del Cuerpo or "The College of the Body," is Colombia's first contemporary dance choreographic formation center, a dance school for disadvantaged children, and a professional dance company. Based in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, eCdC was co-founded by Álvaro Restrepo and Marie France Delieuvin in 1997. With more than ten years in practice eCdC has developed a philosophy and methodology that uses contemporary dance grammar and techniques, among other pedagogical tools, to convey artistic, social and human values to young people in a country devastated by multiple forms of violence, social and political degradation.

Original pieces featured in Canción del Cuerpo (Song of the Body) are:

ZoomInn

by Co-Artistic Director and Professor in Dance, Yacov Sharir

ZoomInn explores the use of American Sign Language as a means to generate pedestrian movement material. It enhances the emotional content and humanizes the work with its formal construction. Every work in this piece is unique and represents a different sensibility and further investigates the formal dancing that drives the construction of this choreographic work.

My Shadow Is Crooked / Shadowplay

by Senior Lecturer in Dance, Andrea Beckham

Originally conceived of and performed as a solo, My Shadow Is Crooked / Shadowplay is based on a desire to promote compelling performance from within. It incorporates ideas from Carl Jung regarding the shadow self (unconscious, undeveloped, repressed, denied aspects of self) and from The Pregnant Virgin - A Process of Psychological Transformation by Marion Woodman.

Three Tangos

by guest choreographer, José Luis Bustamante

A suite of dances choreographed to Tango music

The Famished Road

by guest choreographer, Álvaro Restrepo

The first three paragraphs of Nigerian writer Ben Okri´s The Famished Road created a starting point of this "dramaturgy of dance laboratory" originally directed in Hamburg's Kampnagel Theatre in 2004. More than 40 dancers from 15 countries participated in the experience including groups from the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers (France), EL COLEGIO DEL CUERPO in Cartagena (Colombia), local dancers, and students of John Neumeier's School.

Restrepo further explains the pieces creation, "Each dancer received an empty wooden frame and the three paragraphs I mentioned. Each one had to learn it by heart, in their own language, and had to 'incorporate' it to make it part of his body and movement. With the frame and the text they had to create short sequences of movement that served as the raw material that I later wove into a dance piece, with the co - direction of Marie France Delieuvin. The choreography turned out to be like a game where chance and pre-established combinations of the different languages, dance vocabularies and costumes became like a theatrical Babel Tower." Austin audiences will experience an excerpt of The Famished Road performed by the five ColombIan Male dancers that have participated in the Canción del Cuerpo project.

The Rope: Tres Momentos

Conceived by Joe Randel of ÁrtesAmericas and Lyn C. Wiltshire
Choreography by Álvaro Restrepo and Lyn C. Wiltshire

The Colombia Project piece performed by Dance majors in the University's Dance Repertory Theatre and company members of Restrepo's El Colegio del Cuerpo.

This performance is presented as part of Texas Performing Arts' ArtesAméricas program.

Texas Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Austin's ArtesAméricas program promotes cultural dialogue in the Americas through the performing arts. The ArtesAméricas program brings exceptional Latin American and US Latino artists to Texas Performing Arts for exciting performances as well as collaborations with University students, faculty and Austin audiences. For more information on ArtesAméricas, please visit www.artesamericas.org.

CAMPUS & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES:

FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 7:00PM
Pre-Performance Lecture with Lyn C. Wiltshire (Associate Professor), Yacov Sharir (Associate Professor), Joe Randel (Director of ArtesAméricas) & Karen Engle (Director of The Rapoport Center For Human Rights and Justice; and Professor at UT's School of Law); Opening Night Reception immediately following the performance.

LYN C. WILTSHIRE has performed and toured with notable dance companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

YACOV SHARIR is a multiple recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographic Fellowship, founder of both the American Deaf Dance Company and the Sharir Dance Company, a professional dance company of the UT College of Fine Arts.

SATURDAY, MARCH 6 & SUNDAY, MARCH 7
Post-performance talkback with ArtesAméricas Director, Joe Randel immediately following the performance.

JOE RANDEL serves as the Director of ArtesAméricas at Texas Performing Arts. He helps curate an annual performance series of Latin American and Latino music, theater, and dance performances, as well as related educational and cultural exchange programs at The University of Texas at Austin

Photo: El Colegio's Ricardo Bustamante and Sophomore Yvonne Ferrufino practice a duet

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