UCSB Dance Company to Present FULL CIRCLE at the Hatlen Theater in March

The UCSB Dance Company will offer a gorgeous palette of contemporary dance, both revived and newly minted, in its season running from March 9 through 11, for its first full program at the Hatlen Theater, UCSB. Choreographers, composers, dancers, costume and lighting designers all feed into the wash of talent that sweeps the stage in the season opening of Full Circle. As a circle both encompasses and expands, Full Circle offers a program of all women choreographers, all with circular ties to the Department of Theater/Dance over a fully rounded span of years.

The program includes three commissioned works for the UCSB Dance Company, with two composers creating original music, and four remounting of successful works. The roster of choreographers includes: Christina McCarthy, a graduate of the department, and now a multi-disciplinary artist and faculty member at UCSB; Nancy Colahan, a former professional dancer, beloved choreographer, and recently retired faculty member; danah bella, a graduate of the department, now Professor and Chair of Dance at John Hopkins Peabody Institute; Weslie Ching, a UCSB graduate and an independent choreographer in Santa Barbara; Gianna Burright, a UCSB graduate, is most recently a 2023 Carmel Dance Festival Choreography Fellow; Madison Olandt, a guest choreographer from Los Angeles, co-choreographed a work for the UCSB Dance Company last season and returns to create a new work on the female and non-binary comprised company; Amanda Tran, received her BFA in Choreography and Performance from UCSB and now lives and works in LA. A broad spectrum of human sensibility, seen through the lens of these female choreographers, promises to entice the senses and the mind through prisms of intelligence, insight, and beauty.

Gianna Burright has been commissioned to create a new work for the company, with music composed by Sio Tepper. Still untitled, Burright's work grapples with both the beauty and devastation that encompasses the human experience. Exploring love, dreams, relationships, nightmares, joy and ordinary experiences, asking the question, "how did we end up here? Gianna is a California dance artist who holds a BFA in Dance and an MFA in Choreography from Trinity Laban. Most recently, Gianna is a 2023 Carmel Dance Festival Choreography Fellow, a 2022 Jacob's Pillow Choreography Fellow, Bates Dance Festival Scholar and UCSB Guest Lecturer of Modern Dance Technique. She was also awarded the Dance Gallery Festival Residency to keep developing the piece created at Jacob's Pillow into an evening-length work. Gianna has presented her work in fifteen different countries including locations such as Jacob's Pillow, The Bonnie Bird Theater, The Pace, Turner Contemporary Gallery, Waterloo East Theatre, STEPS and the International Edinburgh Fringe Festival, ZOO venues.

Luna, choreographed by Madison Olandt, is centered around the complexity of the divine feminine - the transformation of the menstruating female form and its relation to the cyclical rhythms of the moon, as well as how that connects to societal expectations. Madison takes a closer look at performing femininity versus harnessing the essence of it. Water, as a means of purification and a representation as transformation, is 80% of our physical form. As the moon is scientifically proven to affect the rise and fall of the ocean tide, we take a closer look at how our moods might be directly influenced. Musical composition for Luna is from Michael Wall who creates an altered iteration of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as well as an extended original composition. Her work Luna, is a performance art piece that undresses human emotions in their relation to the moon cycle; the constant transformation of the female form and its plasticity in relation to creation. Madison Olandt is a choreographer and movement artist from Los Angeles, CA. She received her degree in both Dance and Psychology from UCLA. In her dance career, she has striven to dabble in as many different communities as possible, working with Diavolo, Jacob Jonas The Company, Google, Academy of Villains Contemporary, Kanye West, Katy Perry, Dallas Black Dance Theater, Whim W'Him Seattle Contemporary and performing on stages such as The Kennedy Center, Ahmanson Music Center, The Hollywood Bowl, The Wallis BH, The Staples Center, America's Got Talent, and World of Dance. As a director, some of her short dance films have been featured on Marquee TV streaming platform, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, as well as the Focus Art Film Festival at the Louvre in Paris. In her teachings, she incorporates modern, floorwork, improv, theater, and most importantly, a sense of play.

Christina McCarthy's The Letter focuses on the power of language and how what we say to one another can create division or deep connection. What do love letters and hate mail have in common and how are they diametrically opposed? What aspect of humanity do each of these modes of communication bring out in society? Viewed through the lens of the "sad clown" this dance takes on serious social dynamics with a sometimes humorous and sometimes melancholy twist with a constant undercurrent of athletic and quirky movement. Christina McCarthy is a Lecturer SOE at UC Santa Barbara where she teaches contemporary dance technique, choreography, dance on film and puppet design. Ms. McCarthy often collaborates with her colleagues in theater as a dance/movement advisor for the theatrical performances staged at UCSB. She creates new concert dance works for the students in the dance department and her choreography has been part of the repertory for this dance company in past seasons. She has choreographed over forty musicals and her contemporary choreography often includes video projection, aerial dance and puppets. Recently she collaborated on a dance/puppet interpretation of the opera The Magic Flute with Dr. Isabel Bayrakdarian from the Department of Music at UCSB, performed at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall in Santa Barbara in February 2022 and for New York City K-12 students in Manhattan in May 2022. Her new projects include creating multiple large- and small-scale puppets for Westmont Theater's production of She Kills Monsters in Fall 2022 and a new concert dance work in collaboration with the UCSB Percussion Ensemble in spring 2023.

Lush, sweeping swaths of movement and color cover the stage in Nancy Colahan 's

No Freedom Like a Dance (2012) revived by alumnus Derion Loman during a guest residency in Fall 2022. Nancy Colahan danced professionally for 31 years, having performed in the choreography of major modern dance choreographers and companies, including Alvin Ailey Repertory Dance Theater, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, and American Repertory Dance Company. She has many guest artist appearances (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Jose Limon Dance Company, Huston Grand Opera, the Royal Danish Ballet) and dance film credits to her name, encompassing performing venues such as rehab centers, prisons and block party events in NY City, to the Neolithic ruins on the island of Gozo, to the opera houses of the world. Nancy retired from teaching at UCSB in Spring 2022.

danah bella is an acclaimed choreographer who has performed, presented work and been artist in residence at festivals and universities throughout the United States and abroad. Her duet ama performed by two women to music by Steve Reich, is a mesmerizing physical tour de force and an embodiment of the negotiation that takes place with a loved one. danah is the artistic director of d a n a h b e l l a DanceWorks, a modern dance company focused on reclaiming evocative movement as social practice, and a founding member of Colectivo Caliban, an artist collective that transgresses disciplinary borders through sound and movement. danah is currently the Director of the BFA Dance program at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the Artistic Director of the award-winning Peabody Dance Ensemble. She was named one of Baltimore Sun's 25 Women to Watch in 2018 and recently received the Maryland Dance Education Association's 2021 Higher Education Dance Educator of the Year Award. danah was awarded an MFA in Performance from the Ohio State University and a BA in Dance and Asian American Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Weslie Ching's spare, quirky quintet The Entirety of Us, was restaged by Nicole Powell, member of the professional company in residence at UCSB, Santa Barbara Dance Theater. Weslie holds a BA in Dance from the University of California, Santa Barbara where she was a Regent's Scholar and recipient of the Chancellor's Undergraduate Research Award. She has been working as a Santa Barbara-based choreographer since 2014. Her work favors walking patterns layered with repetitions of quick, idiosyncratic gestures and abstract themes inspired by scientific principles. She is a formalist - interested in creating work that stimulates via visual and energetic patterns rather than narrative or overt emotion. Weslie's work has been shown at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, ARC Pasadena, Ruth Page Center for the Arts (Chicago), Dixon Place (NYC), and ODC Theater (SF). In 2016 and 2019, she was the recipient of the Santa Barbara Independent "Indy" award for excellence in choreography.

Forbes 6 by Amanda Tran indulges in hedonistic and misogynistic behavior as a path to achieve personal happiness. Cynical and vigorous, it explores the one percent and the inevitability of the fall. Amanda Tran is a Southern California native and a classically trained ballet and modern dancer. Her passion for dance and movement brought her to University of California, Santa Barbara where she completed her BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography. During her time at UCSB, she performed as an apprentice for Santa Barbara Dance Theater, and was a member of the UCSB Dance Company. Upon graduation, she joined Kybele Dance Theater and performed works at various dance festivals throughout LA county and the US for two years. Amanda found a new love and passion for Pilates and has been teaching for four years.

The UCSB Dance Company is a pre-professional dance company in residence in the Department of Theater/Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The company performs throughout the Santa Barbara community and tours throughout California. The company has traveled to Mexico twice to perform and to Washington, D.C. to perform in the Gala Performance for the American College Dance Festival. The company, under the artistic direction of Delila Moseley, has toured to Europe ten times, visiting eleven countries, performing in over twenty cities. This spring the UCSB Dance Company will make its eleventh annual tour to Europe, performing in Norway, Prague, Latvia, Poland and Italy.

Audiences will not want to miss this season of the UCSB Dance Company at the UCSB Hatlen Theater, before they make their way on their eleventh European tour. Full Circle runs from March 9 through 11, 2023. Join us for a pre-show talk-back with the choreographers on Friday March 10 at 7:00pm. Tickets can be purchased online by clicking here, or by phone 805-893-2064.

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