Bandaloop Scales Segerstrom Hall to Start Center’s 2010 – 2011 Int'l Dance Series

The Orange County Performing Arts Center's 2010-2011 Dance Series will begin with three breathtaking FREE performances by one of America's finest contemporary dance companies, San Francisco-based Project Bandaloop. The company will perform two works by the company's artistic director, Amelia Rudolph: the world premiere of IdEgo, with an original composition and performance by noted contemporary musician Dana Leong that has been commissioned by the Center for this season opener; and a re-visioning of a previous piece, retitled The Ninth Second. Performances will be on September 30, October 1 and 2 at 8:30 p.m. The performers - including dancers and Leong, will make the walls of Segerstrom Hall their dance floor altering our perspective on gravity and dance. All performances are also part of the Center's ongoing Free for All Series. Seating will not be available on the plaza, which will allow as many people as possible to gather on the Center's 46,000 square foot plaza and enjoy these spectacular events.

Prior to the opening piece and during intermission the audience will be asked to participate in the evening's art event through various means as signaled from the wall by projected messages. The interaction will enhance and deepen their experience of the work and invite them to be collaborators in the work itself.

The Center's 2010-2011 International Dance Series is made possible by The Audrey Steele Burnand Endowed Fund for International Dance, Jane and Jim Driscoll and The Segerstrom Foundation Endowment for Great Performances. The Center applauds Media Sponsors Orange Coast magazine and Classical KUSC 91.5. The creation of IdEgo is supported by the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Project Bandaloop made its Center debut in the 2007 Fall for Dance Festival, propelling dancers off and across the wall of Segerstrom Hall. For its return engagement, the Company will perform the first movement of a new work commissioned by the Center titled IdEgo. It will be danced to live music performed by musician/composer Leong and his band with Leong playing from a "perch" on the wall, created, along with other set pieces, by sculptor, Todd Laby.

The first movement of IdEgo investigates the tension between individual and group identity through the collision of site-reactive vertical movement, sculpture, text, light and music. The piece will include solos, duets and group work on the wall that looks at the relationship between the Id; the instinctive, primal sense of self and ego; the organized socially directed self. The new work explores the boundary between I and You and I and We. What is our identity? Are we not ourselves only in context? IdEgo is a collaboration between choreographer Rudolph, the dancers of Project Bandaloop, musician/composer Leong, lighting designer Jack Carpenter and set designer/sculptor Laby. Technical direction and rigging is by Thomas Cavanagh, with additional rigging by Hans Florine.

The Ninth Second is a re-visioning of a previous work created for the Detroit Symphony to the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The new work will draw on choreography made in that context which Rudolph and her dancers will deconstruct and then rework within a powerful visual framing of interactive projection and accompanied by a contemporary musical score. Projection artist Bart Kresa will collaborate with Rudolph and lighting designer Carpenter to create a stunning visual context for the dance.

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