ASU's Herberger Mainstage Spring Dance Collection suspends disbelief with airborne dancers and new choreography by faculty and students

TEMPE, Ariz. - ASU Herberger Mainstage Dance presents new dance works inspired by landscapes and choreographed by faculty, students and visiting artist Jo Kreiter for its annual Spring Dance Collection concert in Galvin Playhouse, April 21-24. 

One of the concert's featured works is an apparatus-based high-flying excerpt from Kreiter's "The Grim Arithmetic of Water," a statement about the scarcity of and need for water. Kreiter is the founder and artistic director of Flyaway Productions, a San Francisco-based dance company that has created spinning, flying and suspension dances for fire escapes, merry-go-rounds, rooftops and the last remaining hand-operated crane on San Francisco's waterfront. The San Francisco Chroniclesays Kreiter's work tackles "political issues with stunning visual metaphors."

Department of Dance faculty choreographed three works for Spring Dance Collection:

• Mainstage Dance artistic director Robin Prichard combines elements of her Native American culture with the vocabulary of contemporary concert dance in her piece "when sandstone sings." The piece is an evocation of a landscape: a cyclical image-based narrative evoking the desert southwest. The creation of the work was made possible by the Fulbright Commission and the Australian Federation of University Women.
• Mary Fitzgerald, a two-time winner of distinguished teaching awards from the Herberger College, choreographed "Written on the Body," an exploration of femininity and identity based on the prose of Jeannette Winterson and performed by faculty member Karen Schupp.
• Karen Schupp choreographed "Squaring the Circle," a physical exploration of the "divine proportion" seen in nature, architecture and music. Eight dancers will perform the piece, with music composed by Schupp's partner and fine arts faculty researcher Todd Ingalls.

Department of Dance student Julianna Kenworthy, a native of Haiti, choreographed her solo work "Awaited Arrival," about the experience of arriving in the United States as a child being adopted by her grandparents. The piece includes home movies of her arrival in 1984.

WHEN: April 21, 22, 23 at 7:30 p.m.; April 24 at 2 p.m.

WHERE: Galvin Playhouse, Nelson Fine Arts Center, 51 E. 10th St., on the ASU campus.

TICKETS: $15 adults; $13 seniors, faculty, staff and ASU alumni; $5 students. Buy-one, Get-one free on the first Friday of any Mainstage production.

INFORMATION: 480-965-6447 or http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/tickets

The Department of Dance in the ASU Herberger College of Fine Arts is nationally ranked in the top 10 by Dance Teacher magazine. Its graduate program is ranked fifth and its undergraduate program is ranked ninth. The ARCO Performance Arts College Guide calls the department one of the "most highly recommended programs" in the country. To learn more about the Department of Dance, visithttp://dance.asu.edu.

Media Contact:
Denise Tanguay 
480.965.7144
denise.tanguay@asu.edu