SMU Meadows Dance Ensemble Presents 2015 Spring Dance Concert, March 25 - 29

Tickets and Times Spring Dance Concert performance times are 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.  Tickets are $13 for adults, $10 for seniors and $7 for students, SMU faculty and staff. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 214-768-2787 or visit here. Behind the Scenes From Art&Seek It’s that time of the year when colleges are staging their end of semester dance concerts, and Southern Methodist University is no exception. Yet, their concerts follow a different structure than other institutions.  While other colleges in North Texas highlight a mixture of faculty and student works in either their fall or spring dance programs, SMU’s features three faculty/guest artists and either premieres or restagings of established and popular works. It’s an educational and enriching experience for the students involved, and exposes a segment of contemporary dance history to audience members. For this spring’s production, the concert includes the premiere of two new works, one from alumnus Joshua Peugh, the founder and artistic director of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance; and the other from visiting Artist-in-Residence John Selya. Faculty member Danny Buraczeski is restaging his acclaimed 1999 piece Ezekiel’s Wheel, inspired by the life and work of author and civil rights activist James Baldwin. Read the interviews by guest blogger Danielle Georgiou of choreographers Joshua Peugh, John Selya, and Danny Buraczeski about what they're bringing to the end-of-semester dance concerts.

Two world premieres by noted guest choreographers and the revival of an acclaimed work by jazz dance artist and faculty member Danny Buraczeski will be the featured works of the Spring Dance Concert presented by SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, March 25-29 in the Bob Hope Theatre of the Owen Arts Center, 6101 Bishop Blvd. on the SMU campus.

Opening the program is the premiere of Darkside by Visiting Artist-in-Residence John Selya, based on the Tom Stoppard radio play of the same name. Darkside incorporates music from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album and brings a visual element to a solely auditory work. The piece centers on a character named Emily, an inquisitive philosophy student who sets out on a journey to decipher the teachings of her professor and fulfill her destiny. Classically trained in ballet, Selya has danced numerous principal roles with American Ballet Theatre and Twyla Tharp Dance and is a veteran of several Broadway productions, including Tharp’s Movin’ Out, for which he received a Tony nomination. He also has taught and choreographed at universities and dance companies across the country.

The program continues with faculty member Danny Buraczeski’s acclaimed 1999 piece Ezekiel’s Wheel, inspired by the life and work of author and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin. The piece is set to a percussive musical score interspersed with passages of Baldwin’s writings. Buraczeski, a nationally known jazz dance artist and consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts, choreographed the work for his former company Jazzdance. Following its premiere at New York’s Joyce Theater, The New York Times called it “balm for the soul in troubled times.”

The program concludes with the premiere of The Hi Betty Cha-Cha by alumnus Joshua Peugh (’06), founder and director of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance. The work has five contrasting sections set to music that includes two Dean Martin songs, Senza Fine and I Wish You Love; Quartetto Cetra’s 1945 hit Crapa Pelada; Ryuichi Sakamoto’s A Flower Is not a Flower; and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s lively version of Zorba the Greek. Dark Circles Contemporary Dance has produced award-winning works in five countries, and Peugh was named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2015.