The Department of Dance will present its final performance of the Spring Student Dance Showcase tonight at 8 p.m. at the Knickerbocker Theatre in downtown Holland.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The bi-annual showcase of student choreography is designed to highlight the creativity, ingenuity and vibrancy of the student dance artists at Hope. The concerts are student-choreographed, student-performed, and student-run.
The program for each of the concert venues will be different, with the pieces matched to the setting that best suits them. Works selected for the Dow “white box” space will have the benefit of a more open, intimate and personal environment with a white floor and backdrop, while the pieces for the Knickerbocker will have the benefit of a traditional “black box” theater with additional technical capacities.
Every year student choreographers who contribute works participate in a mentoring and adjudication process. Faculty co-producers Steven Iannacone and Matthew Farmer meet with each student choreographer several times to give feedback through the student’s creative process. The final aspect of the presenting process consists of the Department of Dance inviting a professional choreographer to Hope’s campus to adjudicate the students’ works, teach several master classes, as well as hold auditions for his/her dance company.
This year’s guest adjudicator is Claire Porter. Porter has performed “PORTABLES” around the country and in Germany, Holland, England, Latvia and Korea. She has received several National Endowment for the Arts and New Jersey State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellowships, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Awards and commissions from DTW’s First Light Project, The 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance festival, Domino’s Pizza Company and University Dance Companies. Porter set a solo on the Kansas City Ballet, performed in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s GALA 09, and is currently performing “Namely, Muscles” in festivals, conferences, medical schools and universities.
She has taught Laban Movement Analysis and/or choreography for NYU Dance Ed., Columbia Teachers College, Connecticut College, Manhattanville College and Hope. She teaches “Claire’s Workout” in New Jersey and serves on the Board of Dance in New Jersey.
Porter has a Master of Arts degree in dance from Ohio State and a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics; is a Laban Movement Analyst; and is represented by PENTACLE/Dance Works/NYC.
The Dow Center dance studio is on the second floor of the Dow Center, located at 168 E. 13th St., on the corner of 13th Street and Columbia Avenue. The Knickerbocker Theater is located at 86 E. Eighth St.