NSU’s Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences’ Division of Performing and Visual Arts will kick off their fifth annual Performance Stories with Dance Works Nov. 8 and 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Performance Theatre of the Don Taft University Center.
Faculty and students, including members of the NSU Dance Ensemble, will perform a variety of dance styles, from Afro-fusion to modern.
The show will feature pieces choreographed by Elana Lanczi, associate professor in the Division of Performing and Visual Arts; Chetachi Egwu, assistant professor in the Division of Humanities; and Augusto Soledade, associate professor in the Division of Performing and Visual Arts.
Soledade will also perform in the show with dancers from Brazz Dance Theatre in Miami, where he is the founding artistic director and resident choreographer.
Lanczi said Dance Works represents some of the diversity and artistic excellence that’s happening around NSU and in the local community.
Dance major and winner of last year’s Black Box Award for Best Student Choreography — an award granted to students nominated by PVA faculty — Camille Arroyo, will present a new quartet. The show will also feature a contemporary work, Inspektor, by Pioneer Winter, a guest choreographer from Miami.
Lanczi, who has worked with Dance Works since its first year, choreographed two pieces for this production. She will debut her choreographed solo that she has been working on for several years, as well as have her students perform, Storyteller, which seeks to tell the personal stories of seven different dancers through movement.
Lanczi said, “I wanted to have the dancers tell their own stories rather than having something put on them. For them to be able to say, ‘This is what I want to say and this is how I want to say it.’”
Egwu, who takes master dance classes at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a dance company in New York, will perform two new works. Her first work will be in honor of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality. Her second piece, featuring five people, is a lighthearted piece about love and friendship.
Egwu said her work was inspired by the music of American jazz singer, Gregory Porter. She seeks to use her art form as an extension of the ongoing conversation of race and class.
“The country has come so far in terms of civil rights, yet ,there are still stories like that of Trayvon Martin in the news today, and we cannot forget to keep the issue of civil rights at the forefront of our minds,” she said.
She said that she wants the audience to leave the auditorium knowing that the arts are just as important as any other major at NSU.
“They’re where we get the ability to think cognitively and solve everyday problems,” said Egwu.
Egwu choreographed most of the pieces for NSU’s first dance show, Groove, before there was a dance major. Now, she contributes a new piece to Dance Works every year and looks forward to performing.
Lanczi said, “I hope that audience members will be inspired, that it will stir their imagination, and that they will find a new appreciation for dance as well as to see all the great work that the dancers at NSU are doing.”
The event is free for all NSU students, faculty and staff. For more information call the box office at 954-262-8179.
