A performance series plus a three-week intensive for serious dancers and choreographers is returning to the dance new facility at Concord Academy for the month of July. All performances are open to the public. With only 100 seats, this is an opportunity for an unusually intimate look at these dancers and their work.

Amy Spencer and Richard Colton, choreographers and Artistic Directors of Summer Stages Dance, will be offering a "Meet-the-Artist Performance Series," including Sally Silvers & Dancers on Thursday, July 11; David Parker & The Bang Group on Thursday, July 18; and Heidi Latsky, Mark Haim & Edisa Weeks on Thursday, July 25. This series, named one of the top ten dance events by The Boston Globe for two years in a row, features Summer Stages Dance faculty performing their work and participating in informal conversations with the audience. The Choreographer's Project will present a showcase of work by promising new choreographers on Saturday, July 27.

Sally Silvers (photo top right) has been performing and choreographing for Sally Silvers & Dancers since 1980, creating more than 60 works for the Company. Her work has been commissioned by the American Dance Festival, Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, and Sundance Theater Festival. Her theoretical writing and scores have appeared in several journals and in an anthology of writings by women published by Illinois University Press. Drawing her own movement vocabulary from sources ranging from martial arts to instruction books for ballroom dancing, Silvers creates work that has been described in The New York Times as being "full of inspired physical non sequiturs and enjoyable nutty allusions."

David Parker & The Bang Group (photo of David Parker dancer Jeffrey Kazin below left) performs regularly in New York and have been presented by Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dance Now, Joyce Soho, and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. The company has toured nationally and internationally, appearing at The American Dance Festival, the Harvard Summer Dance Center, Jacob's Pillow's Inside/Out Series, Tangente in Montreal, DanceWeek Festival Zagreb, Konfrontace Festival Prague, and The Holland Dance Festival, among many others. In 1999, Parker choreographed Dylan Dog, a new dance/opera based on an Italian comic book hero, for the Arena di Verona Opera Company in Italy. Bound Edition, his latest work, premiered in New York in December 2001 and featured a collaboration between The Bang Group and the Dutch avant-garde fashion design team Melanie Rozema and Jeroen Teunissen, and will be performed at Summer Stages Dance.

Mark Haim has been described by the The New York Times as "...a choreographer to watch in the future." A graduate of the Juilliard School, he was Artistic Director of Mark Haim & Dancers from 1984-1987 and the Companhia de Danca de Lisboa from 1987-1990. Mark has created new works for many dance companies in US, Europe and Asia, among them Nederlands Dans Theater. Ballet Frankfurt, The JosČ Limon Dance Company, the Joffrey II Dancers, CoDanceCo, and Ballet Pacifica. The News & Observer described his work as "often brilliant, always compelling, and infinitely imaginative."

Heidi Latsky was a principal dancer and teacher with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from 1987-1993. Her choreography has been seen at major downtown New York venues, plus the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Toronto's Danceworks, Montreal's Espace Tangente, and the Cannes International Festival de Danse. Dance Insider has called "Latsky a force of nature. This woman can slice and balance, slash and burn her way through movement like nobody's business."

Edisa Weeks grew up in Uganda, Papua New Guinea, and Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from Brown University and received her first formal dance training at the Alvin Ailey School. She is Co-Artistic Director of Avila/Weeks Dance and has also performed with Jane Comfort, Dance Brazil, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Annie-B Parsons Big Dance Theatre, and Reggie Wilson's First & Heel Performance Group. Her work has been performed in a variety of venues including Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, The National Black Arts Festival, as well as internationally in Guam, Spain, England, and Japan.

The Summer Stages Dance program is an intensive three-week dance and choreography workshop that offers the committed dancer a unique opportunity to become part of a remarkable community that includes some of the most daring artists in the dance world today. It brings cutting-edge contemporary choreographers from the top companies in the US to work with a select group of serious dance and choreography students. The program takes place in a 2,500 square foot state-of-the-art dance studio and performance space designed by award-winning architect Graham Gund and opened in 1999 on the campus of Concord Academy, an independent secondary school where the performing and visual arts are a central part of the curriculum.

The faculty have been selected to provide a range of experiences and dance techniques, and include veterans of such top companies as Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, White Oak Dance Project, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Twyla Tharp Dance, and others. The curriculum includes ballet and modern technique, performance skills, and Choreographers' Project Fellowship program.

Note: Call (978) 402-2339 to reserve tickets. For more information, visit their Website at summerstagesdance.org.

Photos from Top: Sally Silvers; photo by Lois Greenfield. Jeffrey Kazin with David Parker & the Bang Group, photo by Nicholas Burnham. Both courtesy of Summer Stages Dance.

     

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