January 14, 2005

Technology and Arts Performance merge

Concert hosted by Wayne State's Maggie Allesee Department of Dance features works from WSU's departments of Music, Communication and Art and Art HistoryDETROIT (Jan. 10, 2005) - The Wayne State University Maggie Allesee Department of Dance continues its

DETROIT (Jan. 10, 2005) – The Wayne State University Maggie Allesee Department of Dance continues its inaugural season of the Maggie Allesee Studio Series, a five concert series of outstanding dance performances through April 2005, with its Telematics Dance Concert , January 22 and 23 (Saturday, Sunday) featuring new works and performances by faculty, students and alumni from across WSU's College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts as well as visiting artists. A video stream of the performances will be available at www.dance.wayne.edu/DanceTechnology.html as the concerts happen live. And a short concert preview will take place at 2PM in the atrium of Wayne State's David Adamany Undergraduate Library as part of the university's series In Circulation: The Arts and Communication, www.cfpca.wayne.edu/InCirculation.html.

Concert premieres include Self Talking by Kelly Gottesman, lecturer, Maggie Allesee Department of Dance, which delves into questions posed at various crossroads in life: Who am I? Where am I going? And how am I going to get there? Via a live broadcast from the United Kingdom, collaborator Johannes Birringer of Nottingham Trent University and Gottesman create a tug-o-war with past, current and future selves within this triptych.

Robert Martin, interdisciplanary electronic arts faculty, Department of Art and Art History presents Voudou: An Interactive Opera. Martin notes, "My art is inspired by Haitian, Brazilian, Cuban, Trinidad and other cultures that conduct voudou ceremonies, and the performances of Bauhaus choreographer Oskar Schlemmer's work. This performance introduces its audience to a culture that always has displayed a natural interactive mixture of art and life."

AdaPT, an interdisciplinary association of artists, technologists and scholars from educational institutions dedicated to research and critical dialogue on performance and media in telematic space (the use of Internet in performance), presents a live structured improvisation by AdaPT members from Wayne State University, directed by Kelly Gottesman, Arizona State University, directed by John Mitchell and with guest performers Barbara Sellinger (Detroit Dance Collective artistic director), Megan Brunke (WSU alum/independent artist) and Linda Lehovec (associate professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Through the use of the internet, ASU mixes dancers performing at ASU with dancers peforming at WSU in real-time across time zones for the live audience in the Maggie Allesee Studio Theatre.

Thomas Court, co-director of music technology in the WSU Department of Music, presents Vapor-Electronic Symphony, immersing the audience in a saturated sound environment accompanied by kinetic animation that Court refers to as the "electronic lava lamp."

Court, Gottesman and Martin collaborate their unique talents with Wavemaker, integrating dance, video and electronic music, featuring performances by WSU dance students Meghan Conway and Della Hamby.

A new work by Ezra Graziano, WSU music student and Megan Brunke, along with a special guest performance by Linda Lehovec, will be premiered. Lehovec's work is inspired by her recent trip to Korea.

Also on the program is a collaborative work entitled Arts of Forgetting, a six-minute music video by Carol Vernallis for experimental improviser Mary Oliver. The video aims at subtle connections between music and image; one goal is to bring new improvised music to a wider audience. The soundtrack features Oliver's violin and voice interacting with real-time digital sampling. Vernallis is an associate professor of media arts and studies in the WSU Department of Communication.

The Maggie Allesee Department of Dance is one of 63 exemplary dance institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance and is a vital division of Wayne State University's College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts. Wayne State University, located in the heart of Detroit's cultural center, is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students.