Duke Dance Program: November Dances
Showcase will honor the great Bill T. Jones
The Duke Dance Program’s November Dances 2016 performance will restage renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones’ iconic work, “Power/Full,” while also showcasing new works by Duke faculty, students and alumni.
November Dances 2016 will be Friday and Saturday, Nov. 18-19, at 7:30 p.m. in Reynolds Industries Theater in the Bryan Center on Duke’s West Campus. Tickets are $17 and $7 for students.
The Dance Program invited former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member Shayla-Vie Jenkins to campus to restage “Power/Full,” said Andrea E. Woods Valdés, associate professor of the practice of dance. Jenkins did so during a campus residency supported by a grant from the Franklin Humanities Institute’s Humanities Futures initiative and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.
“The students are able to learn a piece from a legendary choreographer by someone who is, to me, a legendary dancer,” Woods Valdés said.
November Dances 2016 will also include five original pieces choreographed by Duke faculty, students and an alum. Sarah McCaffery, T’13, minored in dance at Duke and will return to perform a solo piece.
Tyler Walters, associate professor of the practice, has choreographed a contemporary ballet piece, “Two Steps Forward,” an abstract exploration of movement, media and memory. Adjunct instructor Natalie Marrone will restage a duet “Thresh,” created for her dance company, The Dance Cure. The piece is a meditation on wheat, its beauty and its purpose situated in an agrarian period. It evokes images of harvesting wheat by hand in southern Italy during the early 20th century.
Students Haylee Levin, a senior, and Ashlynn Miller, a sophomore, will also lend their own choreographies to the November Dances performance.
A longer interview with Shayla-Vie Jenkins is available here.