LPAC 10th Anniversary Gala

Location:

Pearson-Hall Theatre

Date:

May 3, 2002

Times:

8 pm

Goshinji

Reconstruction by Isaburoh Hanayagi, Directed by Kim Arrow

Performers:
Jennifer Holzer, Lisa Huang, Alyson Jones, Adena Killian, Joseph Small

Costumes:
Susan Smythe

Masks:
Mum Puppettheatre
based on traditional designs

Funding for masks provided in part by The Friends of Music and Dance

The Swarthmore College Taiko is a component of the Dance Program's Dance/Drumming Ensemble. Begun in fall 2000, we have been busy building Taiko drums, raising funds for the purchase of additional drums, and acquiring repertory by composing new work ourselves. We brought in a guest artist, Isaburoh Hanayagi, from Tamagawa University in Tokyo, who has set on us a traditional Taiko work, Goshinji, and a new work, Tamagawa Taiko. We look forward to the return of one of our students, Sarah Gladwin, who is currently abroad for a semester, studying dance and Taiko in Sydney, Australia. In September, she will share her experience in a wide range of Taiko styles and repertory. Additionally, two members of this semester's Taiko ensemble, Lisa Huang and Alyson Jones have recently received departmental funding to study with Taiko master Kenny Endo and his company in Hawaii this summer.

Not, Not Forget

Choreography by Christopher Caines
Music Composed by Antonin Dvorak
Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 90 "Dumky", Movements I, II

Dancers:
Emily Clough, Gregory Holt, Laurel Kean, Julie Lindenberg

The Midnight Quintet:
Rachel Kane, piano; Lisa Huang, violin; Oliver Hsu, cello

Lighting Design:
James Murphy

Costume Design:
Susan Smythe

Christopher Caines, a native of Nova Scotia, has been working in New York since 1986. Early in his career, he danced for more than 20 New York choreographers, also performing as a singer, actor, and drummer. Caines began to present his own work in 1990, and, in 1995, founded the Christopher Caines Dance Company, which performs exclusively with live music—"A one-man theatrical band" (Elizabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice). In 1996, he made a sound installation for the Atlanta Olympics comprising the voices of 100 New Yorkers speaking more than 60 languages, which was heard by about 75,000 people. He also works as a theater director, most recently with Canadian actor-writer Peter Aterman and director-writer Ping Chong. Caines' recent commissions include The War Council, produced by Dancing in the Streets, and Where You Walk, created for an ensemble of student dancers at Princeton University this year.

Lisa Huang, Oliver Hsu, and Rachel Kane are members of Swarthmore College's Midnight Quintet, founded by students in 1999 and fully sponsored by the Department of Music and Dance. Currently coached by pianist Marcantonio Barone, their name comes from the late hours they keep while rehearsing. The Quintet's annual recital will be held on Saturday, May 4th at 8pm in Lang Concert Hall - where they will be playing the entire "Dumky", as well as the Schumann Piano Quintet.

The Dance Program traditionally invites a notable choreographer to campus in the spring to work with a group of students for the semester to create or to restage a work. Recent projects have included the restaging of Dan Wagoner's "Dan's Run Penny Supper", in spring 2001.

Poetry reading by Cynthia Lee

Cynthia Lee is the 2000 winner of the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize given annually by the English Literature department. She is a senior majoring in English, with a minor in dance. Cynthia enjoys tasty imagery and flinging flaying sound, working with a variety of poetic forms ranging from prose poems to sapphics.

Poetry reading by Kara Levy and Sara St. Vincent

Kara Levy, the 2001 winner of the Lois Morrell prize, is a medieval studies major from Bethesda, Maryland. She writes short fiction as structured exercises and poetry when it feels right.

Sarah St.Vincent is the 2002 winner of the Lois Morrell prize. She is a sophomore from Newville, Pennsylvania who writes mostly free verse and hopes someday to make a career as a writer.

Scenes from I Want a Baby

By Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov
Translated by Stephen Holland
The action is set in and around an overcrowded apartment block in Moscow in spring, 1926

Ensemble:

Milda Grignau, a cultural education worker: Felicia Leicht
Angelica, a tenant: Lashanna Lawler
Yakov Plumer, a building worker: Petar Lazarevic
Olympiada (Lympa), Yakov's girl friend: Kate Hurster

Tenants:

Maria Alvarez, Rebecca Ennen, Emine Fisek, Keetje Kuipers, Adrienne Mackey,Elisa Matula, Dale Mezzacappa, Elizabeth Nolte, Audrey Pernell, Hunter Wells, Elizabeth Zimmerman

Director: Ulla Neuerburg-Denzer
Scenographer: William Marshall
Composer Musician: Ralph Denzer
Assistant Director: Jessica Nakamura
Assistant Designers: Costume and Make-up: Erica Cartmill
Assistant Designer: Set and Props: Eileen Estes
Assistant Designer: Lights and Projections: Kate Nelson-Lee
Dramaturgy Lobby Display: Jessica Nakamura, Elizabeth Nolte
Stage Manager: Guy LeBas

Milda, a cultural education worker, decides that she wants to have a baby — without a father or a family, bred from best proletarian stock of her choice. The child is to be raised by the communal child-rearing organizations that Milda herself is helping to establish as part of the Bolshevik's effort to construct the ideal socialist state. Doing her best to ignore the meddling and scorn of the unruly co-tenants in her crowded Moscow apartment block, Milda sets out to complete her mission. Eventually she fulfills her dream after a laborious, comic, melodramatic, and tragic journey.

Written in 1926, I Want A Baby is a controversial work by constructivist Russian playwright, poet and cultural critic Sergei Tretyakov. Divided into 14 episodes, the play is constructed following the principles of "the Montage of Attraction." Prismatic or kaleidoscopic in structure, it centers on an overcrowded apartment complex in urgent need of renovation. Conceived as a "discussion play", the planned productions in Moscow and Leningrad were censored, re-censored, and finally indefinitely postponed. Issues the censors picked up on were the graphic depiction of violence and unrest in Soviet society as well as the play's sexual explicitness.

The Theatre Studies Program is proud to present Junior Company in the American premiere of I Want A Baby. Junior Company is the model for a new class — a faculty-directed and -designed play that involves students from all fields within the theatre in the making of a collaborative project. By utilizing the many options the mainstage has to offer, Theatre Studies is finally able to add faculty production to its curriculum. Housed in the Lang Performing Arts Center, the program has been almost exclusively working in the Frear Ensemble Theatre but feels that working on the mainstage challenges the students to a greater and thus far unexplored extent.

When Trees Dance...

Choreography by C. Kemal Nance '92
Music by Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers

Performers:
Hernease Davis, Talia Haynes, Lela Patrick, Kim Pinckney, Teresa Pontual, Moriah Radin, Malik Wright, Jaime Yassif; Understudy: C. Kemal Nance '92

Costume Design & Construction: Susan Smythe

Lighting Design: James Murphy

In an African worldview, there is a life force that exists in all living things. Jahn calls it bintu. Highly inspired by the landscape of Swarthmore's campus, When Trees Dance... is a choreographic exploration and celebration of the life force that exists in trees.

C. Kemal Nance '92, a native of Chester, Pennsylvania, is an associate in performance in the College's Program in Dance and the Project Director for the TRIO Upward Bound Program. During the spring of his junior year and the inaugural semester of the performing arts center, Kemal mounted an African American Performance Project called What We Desperately Want Is Sun featuring college, high school, and junior high school performers from Swarthmore College and Chester Community schools. Since that time, the LPAC has always provided Nance with a forum for artistic and professional development and a vehicle for cultural expression and social change.

In the 10 years since then, Nance has spent countless hours creating work in the dance lab and mounting it in the Pearson-Hall Theatre. The LPAC has been the physical space housing the confluence of Nance's passions for dance making, dance teaching, and community outreach. As a student, he performed in many Student Dance Concerts and TOVA's Hometales directed by Paula Sepinuck. After graduation in 1992, he returned to Swarthmore's mainstage to perform with Kariamu & Company: Traditions as a principal dancer in February of 1993. In 1996, he returned to perform with the Seventh Principle Performance Company, which he co-founded. Joining the dance faculty in 1994, he has subsequently mounted original choreography on his technique and repertory students every spring. Each summer since 1989, he has mounted original dance theater works on Upward Bound students, staff, and alumni. In February 2003, Nance and dance partner and fellow Upward Bound alumnus Stafford Berry, Jr. will mount a new collaborative work, "The Generations Project", which will feature dancers from both Chuck Davis' African American Dance Ensemble and Kariamu Welsh Asante's Kariamu & Company: Traditions.

"Floating Walls" by Katherin McInnis '95

Katherin is the 1992 winner of the Lois Morrell poetry prize. She is an artist who works with film, video and digital media, and she has recently completed an MFA at The California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco.

"If You Could See Her" (from Cabaret)

Book by Joe Masteroff
Music and Lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb

Emcee: J. Marty Griffith
Gorilla: Nick Malakhow
Accompanist: Hans Bowman

Director: Tiffany Lennon
Musical Director: Kathy Liu
Choreographer: Julie Lindenberg
Dance Captain/Ass't Choreographer: Caitlin Hildebrand
Costume Designer: Audrey Chan
Assistant Costume Designer: Rebecca Ennen

Cabaret was produced in March 2002 by Drama Board, the student-run theatre group on campus. All productions are entirely staffed and created by students. Generally, the group sponsors four to five productions a year, with a major production in the spring semester. Recent productions have included The House of Yes, Arcadia, Safe Sex, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Cabaret is presented through special arrangement with Tams-Witmark Musical Library, Inc.

"Pemungkah" (excerpt), "Seketi" and "Sekar Gendot," performed by the Gender Wayang Ensemble of Gamelan Semara Santi

Musicians:
Marié Abé '01, Sean Finney, Sorelle Friedler, Lisa Huang, Liz Leininger, Thomas Whitman '82

Gamelan Semara Santi is one of several ongoing musical ensembles led by Swarthmore's music faculty. It performs once each semester, specializing in traditional music and dance genres from Bali, Indonesia. The word "gamelan" refers collectively to a set of musical instruments and, by extension, to the people who play them. In its full configuration, Gamelan Semara Santi includes drums, cymbals, and gongs as well as 12 xylophone-like instruments with bronze keys; its members include 25-30 musicians and dancers.

The smaller ensemble you will hear tonight is known as Gamelan Gender Wayang; it is primarily used to accompany the Shadow Play in Bali. The first piece we will play, "Pemungkah", is the overture to the Shadow Play; during this music, the spirits of the shadow puppets awaken so that they may begin the play. "Seketi" is one of several compositions used for scene changes or to accompany dialogue. "Sekar Gendot" is independent of the Shadow Play proper. It can be performed as a preliminary entertainment before the Shadow Play, and it is also played at such common ceremonies as tooth-filings and cremations.

"Shenandoah" Traditional American Folk Song sung by Lucy Lang

Accompanist, Marié Abé '01
Lucy Lang studies voice with Julian Rodescu, and attended the Florence Voice Seminar in summer 2001. She is a political science major and history minor, with a concentration in interpretation theory.

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning, read by Stephen Lang '73

Stephen Lang has distinguished himself both as a leading man and a character actor in theatre and film for the past 28 years. Broadway appearances include Death of A Salesman, A Few Good Men, The Speed of Darkness, Wait Until Dark, and the title role in Hamlet at the Roundabout. Off-Broadway includes 36 Views, Killers Head, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Awake and Sing, and Oedipus. He has worked at many of the nation's finest theaters, including The Guthrie, The Goodman, Yale Rep, BAM, Circle in the Square, The Kennedy Center, The McCarter, Sundance Theatre Lab and a score of others, in works by Ibsen, Molière, Williams, Miller, Gogol, Shakespeare, Shaw, Shepard, O'Casey, and Beckett. He has received the Joseph Jefferson Award, the Helen Hayes Award, and nominations for Drama Desk Outer Critics Circle and Tony Awards. His many films include Tombstone, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Gettysburg, Manhunter, The Hard Way, Fire Down Below, Shadow Conspiracy, Guilty as Sin, and Twice in a Lifetime. In fall 2002 he stars as fabled Confederate hero "Stonewall" Jackson in Gods and Generals, a Warner Bros. release. Lang is on the Board of Directors of the Actors Studio. A 1973 graduate of Swarthmore, he is the father of Lucy Lang '03.