Dance students have contact with working professionals both on and off campus. The department regularly engages guest artists to work with students to create pieces, conduct workshops and produce performances.

Guest Artists for 2010-11

Natya Dance Theatre
In residence September 29-30, 2010
Workshops on September 29-30, 2010
Performance September 30, 2010 at the Hendricks Center for the Arts

Natya Dance Theatre (NDT), under the artistic leadership of a Hema Rajagopalan, is amongst the most critically acclaimed and culturally treasured Indian dance companies in the United States. Founded in 1975 and based in Chicago, IL, the highly innovative work of NDT offers profound and subtle expressions of humanity’s deepest questions and values in the context of our present-day lives. Rooted in Bharata Natyam, one of the great classical dance forms of India, NDT preserves and perpetuates Bharata Natyam in all its classical rigor, and moves the art form in innovative directions to foster cultural exchange through dance. NDT’s contemporary interpretations incorporate dynamic body movement, rhythmic footwork, hand gestures and facial expressions to convey meaning and emotion that create rasa, the aesthetic experience that transforms the audience.

At the core of its mission, NDT believes that dance is a powerful means of cultural exchange. This is accomplished by multi-faceted programming, including a professional touring company that performs throughout the country and internationally, a 32-year-old dance school, an outreach program, and a series of presentations featuring the finest Indian performing artists of various genres.

Hailed by The New York Times as, “Admirably precise… animated… sensual… exceptional… triumphant… daring,” audiences and critics worldwide have recognized the artistic excellence of the NDT Company. Recent celebrated performance highlights include: in 2008, the Company performed with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble before an audience of 13,000 in Chicago’s Millennium Park; in 2005, NDT was the first US company ever to appear at the prestigious World Music Institute in New York City; and In 2002, NDT was the only dance company selected to create an original work for performance at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. NDT is a six-time recipient of the Chicago Reader “Critic’s Choice.” In 2003, NDT was the first Indian dance company to receive the prestigious Chicago Dance Award, and is a 2004 recipient of the Paul Berger Arts Entrepreneurship Award from Columbia College Chicago. NDT was featured in 2005 in The Chicago Dance Project, a 13-part series produced by PBS, and in 2006 in Arts Across Illinois CenterStage on WTTW Channel 11.

NDT has been presented at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage and nationally and internationally at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Ravinia Festival, the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the Avignon Festival in France, and the Music and Dance Festival in Madras, India, among other major venues.

Collaborations have included works with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lookingglass Theater, and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Like You Mean It 
Workshops in Improvisational Performance
October 7, 2010

Like You Mean It 
is
Noelle Chun
Adriana Durant
Annie Kloppenberg

The Columbus, OH-based improvisational trio of dance artists performs and teaches workshops nationally. Audiences have heralded Like You Mean It’s simultaneous wit, humanity, oddity, and physical virtuosity.  The dancers first began working together regularly as graduate students at The Ohio State University and found their individual and collective ideas about improvisational performances yielded a dynamic, distinctive approach to group improvisational performance and teaching. 

Past & upcoming performances and teaching engagements include The Ohio State University, CM2, Agora Arts Festival, Sneak Reviews at Cleveland Public Theater Parish Hall, Ohio University, University of Akron, Oberlin College: (OH); Green Street Studios (MA), University of Wisconsin; Zenon Company Studios (MN), Southern Theater for Minnesota Fringe Festival, Epiphany Dance Experiment (Chicago), University of Michigan, Michigan Dance Project (MI), Triskelion Arts (NYC), Taffety Punk Theater (Washington DC).  Visitwww.lymitrio.com for more info.

Arturo German Hernandez de la Mesa
Residency in Capoeira, Salsa, African and more!
Oct. 24-Nov. 6, 2010

Margi Cole and The Dance COLEctive
February 21-26, 2011

 The Dance COLEctive (TDC) is a modern dance company that aspires to challenge assumptions about how dance is presented, through the use of cutting-edge choreography, innovative collaborations, and inspired creative site-specific-works. Now in its 15th year, TDC conducts an annual season which includes residencies with universities, high schools and other dance organizations in two geographic regions of the USA; multiple master classes, workshops and lecture demonstrations in the greater Chicago area; an annual week-long summer intensive of classes; an annual concert and residency in Chicago proper; performances in traditional venues and site-specific choreography.  Artistic Director Margi Cole has been recognized with many choreographic awards.  TDC uses modern dance as a vehicle to introduce, challenge and engage its audience in a number of topics.  Through carefully designed residency activities the viewer has gained the knowledge and the desire to interpret our work in a meaningful way.

While at Beloit TDC will conduct a series of residency activities both at the college and in the community.  Many of those activities will be geared around the companies work Written on the Body.  A work for six dancers which uses the lives of the
Brontë sisters as a point of departure in its exploration of gender roles and stereotypes.  The hidden identities of authors, as well as the hardships they endured throughout their lives in Victorian England, provide the framework.  Cole interprets the Brontës' masculine and feminine personae, using movement images of power, strength, vulnerability and intimacy.  Music for the piece is by Kevin O'Donnell, costumes are by Atalee Judy and videoscape is by Michael Cole.

The Space/Movement Project
Residency and Workshop
April 7, 2011

About the Company
The Space/Movement Project is a Chicago-based modern dance collective. The group operates without a single artistic leader but several members sharing creative responsibilities and resources. Committed to artistic partnership, the group continuously explores ways to further their collaborative process. Since 2005, TS/MP has produced concerts at such notable Chicago venues as Links Hall, the Prop Thtr, Hamlin Fieldhouse, The Galaxie, and Roosevelt University's Ganz Hall and performed regionally in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. Visit TS/MP at thespacemovementproject.org.

About the Workshop
This group composition workshop will introduce students to the unique methodology TS/MP has developed in their own collaborative practice. Company members will introduce participants to the various tools for developing new work as a group using existing material and original work. Following the workshop, the company will present a short performance of company work.

PAST GUEST ARTISTS
Some of our past guests include: Heidi Latsky, Gabriel Masson, Joel Hall, Kirby Reed, Natasha Shirokova of Moscow's Modern Dance Theater, B. J. Sullivan, Linda Lehovec, Erica Wilson-Perkins, BlackEarth Collaborative Arts, Jin Wen Yu, Paula Frasz, Catherine Cabeen of Bill T. Jones Dance Company, Aiko Kinoshita, director of Seattle's AcornDance, Chris Walker, Bellydancers Seana Dishun and Christina King, and Margi Cole, Artistic Director and founder of The Dance COLEctive.