Pearson/Widrig Casts Local Dancers to Perform
KEENE, N.H., 2/11/02 - The internationally renowned Sarah Pearson/Patrik Widrig dancers will return to Keene on Friday, Feb. 22, to perform the dance/theater piece HereAfter. The 8 p.m. production will mark the third year that Pearson/Widrig have been in residence at Keene State Colleges Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. HereAfter has been performed in New York City at the prestigious Joyce Theaters Altogether Different Festival as well as on tour throughout the U.S. and in Switzerland and India.
Tickets are available through the Arts Center box office, 603-358-2168, or its website, www.keene.edu/racbp/. Tickets are $21 and $18 for the general public, $19 and $16 for seniors and KSC faculty and staff, $11.50 and $10 for youth 17 and younger, and $5 for KSC students with ID.
Sara Pearson / Patrik Widrig and Company is a New York-based dance/theater company, which specializes in works that explore how pivotal moments in peoples lives can inform art. With particular relevance after the events of September 11, HereAfter is a multi-disciplinary community-based work, which asks people about their ideas, fears, and dreams associated with death, and how these experiences have changed their lives. Through the narration of stories voiced by members of the community, HereAfter expresses in dance, text, and video the universal themes of death and loss through different modes of artistic expression.
As in the two previous Pearson/Widrig residencies, the company held open auditions for local dancers to perform with them. Under the direction of Pearson and Widrig the 13 participants selected in a February 10 audition/workshop will develop their own material (written, spoken, and danced) and learne pre-existing dances for the performance.
Local dancers selected to perform in HereAfter are Paula Aarons, Stacey Brossia, Yoshio T. Chandler, Lisa Gamerl, Lisa Hultgren, Lindsey Ide, Chris Joy, Danielle R. Leeber, Tara Lucchetti, Jill OBrien, Alison Rosenthal, Jamie Wenger, and Ryan Williams.
The Pearson/Widrig residency, rehearsals, and performance are supported by a National College Choreography Initiative that was made possible through the generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Target Foundations. The Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond received the only grant of this kind awarded in New Hampshire. Additional support came from the New England Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the six state arts agencies of New England. The residency was also supported by a special project grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.
