The Dance COLEctive: Meet Me There January 28, 2010

As the centerpiece of its 14th season, The Dance COLEctive (TDC), under the direction of award-winning choreographer and teacher Margi Cole, presents “Meet Me There,” a concert program featuring two world premieres by Cole and a returning work by Shirley Mordine.
Cole is collaborating with choreographer Jeff Hancock on a world premiere that explores the “Me/I” generation. Questions of personal boundary and identity as related to electronic connectivity and how it shapes and defines our relationships to each other, ourselves and how present we are in the world are central to the inquiry Cole, Hancock and the full company of dancers are exploring through a range of dynamic vocabulary, text, video and carefully constructed chaotic/improvised environments. Costumes are by Atalee Judy.
Another world premiere by Cole, Taking Hold, is a work for eight dancers informed by collecting. In developing this work, Cole considers such questions as: What do we collect, and why and how do we collect things? What does our collecting mean to ourselves and to others? Is it casual or obsessive?
The program will include a reconstruction of Shirley Mordine’s Three Women (1974), which explores women at different stages of their lives: the young, wild child; the young woman discovering her sexual, sensual self; and the older, mature woman who is much like a character in Carson McCullers’ Ballad of the Sad Café—a blend of female and masculine spirits. It also reaches back to an earlier time when the country was being settled. Thus, it echoes the fundamentalist, religious spirit as well as physical strength and endurance, not to mention humor, necessary to endure a harsh life.

Official Website: http://www.dancecolective.com