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Come support the choreography, company and a possible trip to the OLYMPICS in Bejing China
REBECCA RICE DANCE SOIREE
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 24, 2008
ZERO ARROW THEATER, 2 ARROW STREET , CAMBRIDGE , MA
4:00 PM
TICKETS : $35.00 General; $20.00 Boston Dance Alliance/Students.
$100 Patrons. Wine and Champagne Reception with “RAZMATAZ” pianist ROBERT KELLY
Reservations and information: 978-852-3863 or rrdance@earthlink.net
Tickets online through PAYPAL
Patron $100
General Admission $35
Student $20
CONTACT: Janet Howes or Rebecca Rice
TEL: 978-852-3863
rrdance@earthlink.net
A combination of classical discipline and contemporary energy is the unique hallmark of Rebecca Rice Dance. Last season this company of vital young dancers brought its director’s vision to life in acclaimed performances in Boston ’s Jordan Hall and New York ’s Merce Cunningham Studio Theater.
Choreographer Rebecca Rice brings her eclectic dance company to Zero Arrow Theater in Harvard Square for a Soiree performance on Sunday February 24, 2008 at 4 PM . A wine and champagne reception will follow.
A special premiere will include a new work to her uncle, Earle Brown’s “NEW PIECE” (1971). This dance, performed by Lindsay Ridgeway, was created this past summer while Ms. Rice was an artist-in-residence at Green Street Studios in Cambridge , MA . The work shows contrasting elements to Mr. Brown’s moving rich and mysterious work. The subtle rhythmic interactions between the music and the dynamics of the dance are what Ms. Rice was trying to convey. In contrast, BUSY BLUES (2007) is a 15 minute work initially inspired by the spirited and innovative 1950's blues music of Jonah Jones. The work is fun, playful and humorous as the dancers maneuver their way creatively throughout the stage wearing trench coats, suit coats and black briefs. The costumes and movements compliment the moods and tensions the dancers feel in their business-like fashion as they strive to break free and be just plain groovy. The first two movements were initially created in 2004 for a debut at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and the following two longer works, created to the music of Italian swoozer Paolo Conte, debuted in New York City February 2007. The complete piece debuted in Boston May 2007. Richard Dyer "Boston Globe" : "... the exceptional moments were so enjoyable: (including) the looser ''Busy Blues," to jazz by the Jonah Jones Quartet, with Jillian St. Germain wearing a tux top but no trousers to show off spectacular Cyd Charisse extensions of her legs."
Other works performed will be PARADIGM (2000) , an unapologetic music visualization uniting modern dance with the classical music of JS. Bach’s “Piano Concerto in C Major” and selected excerpts of BACH DANCES (2004 ) who the Boston Herald described as "pieces of sweeping grandeur." The work, created to seven of JS Bach luscious "Cello Suites" was commissioned by Carolyn Newberger and the members of the St. Botolph's Club in Boston in 2005. The work began as collaboration with cellist Emmanuel Feldman, and focused on a pure representation of the rhapsodic, articulate and soulful expression of Bach's monumental work. The dancers, beautifully attired in long burgundy slit dresses as well as short bike shorts portray the moods of Bach's expressive qualities, from their linear, staccato moves of the flighty "Gigue" to the rounded, all-embracing "Sarabande".
REBECCA RICE, choreographer
With a solid base in classical ballet and experience in many modern styles, Rebecca Rice 's choreography contributes a unique blend of modernism and musicality. From the beginnings of her professional career when she co-founded and performed in Pittsburgh's Dance Alloy company, through her work with Bill Evans, Jose Limon, the Laban method, ballet and more, Rebecca Rice has been a prolific dance choreographer, teacher and performer. She created numerous works on Boston Ballet II, her company, Rebecca Rice Dance, and organized Boston Ballet Company's first choreography workshops and performances, as well as created original choreography on the professional-track students at the Boston Ballet School and Summer Dance Programs for ten years. She performed her own dance work in France and throughout the United States , receiving many awards and grants including a recent grant in 2007 from the MIT Office of the Arts. In August 2004, Rebecca's group was invited to perform at the Inside Out Series of the internationally re-owned Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and in May 2006 her group premiered in the “Bank of America Celebrity Series” a new work composed by John Harbison especially for Rebecca Rice Dance. She has also collaborated with other major artists as Martin Cooper, Vice-President Burberry's NYC and London (Altis Ballet), Grayson Hugh (Crosscurrents), Emmanuel Feldman (Terra Mystique), Elena Ruehr (Echoes), Andrew List (En Closures) and John Harbison (Stratas, Shortstories). Rebecca Rice Dance debuted in NYC in 2006 being the “editor’s picks” in both the Village Voice and the New York Times. Rebecca Rice presently teaches at the Winsor School and MIT. She was the Artist-in-Residence this summer at Green Street Studios in Cambridge .
Earle Brown was a major force in contemporary music and a leading composer of the American avant-garde since the 1950s. His work was associated with the experimental composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff who, with Brown came to be known as the New York School . Earle Brown was born in 1926 in Lunenburg , Massachusetts and, in spirit, remained a New Englander throughout his life. Like other artists from that region – Ives, Ruggles, Dickinson – he spoke with his own voice and found his own path. To America , these artists were iconoclasts, but to Europe they embodied America – and Brown was no exception: his music has been most frequently performed, studied, lauded, and revered by Europeans. Brown’s interest in a broad range of aesthetic expressions, ranging from the writings of James Joyce and the poetry of Gertrude Stein, Kenneth Patchen, and others to the work of the Abstract Expressionist painters – and particularly Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder – informed his own work. He said, as recently as in 2000, that “the earliest and still predominant influences on my conceptual attitude toward art were the works of Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock...the integral but unpredictable ‘floating’ variations of a mobile, and the contextual ‘rightness’ of the results of Pollock’s directness and spontaneity in relation to the materials and his particular image of the work…as a total space (of time).” an innovative experimental composer who allowed performers considerable interpretive freedom, and whose vision of sound as an almost concrete object is often expressed in a form of graphic notation that conveys the importance of time and space in his music. On November 20, 2002 , The Museum of Modern Art hosted homage to one of the great American composers of the twentieth century: In Memoriam: A Concert of Selected Works by Earle Brown. The program included works, selected by Brown in a conversation with his wife Susan shortly before his death, that span his career: Music for Violin, Cello and Piano (1952); Corroboree (1964); New Piece (1971) Centering (1973); Tracking Pierrot (1992); and Special Events (1998).