Middle Tennessee State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance will again showcase the power of expressive movement during its upcoming annual Spring Dance Concert.
This year’s performances will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday–Saturday, April 24-26, at Tucker Theatre inside the Boutwell Dramatic Arts Building at 615 Champion Way. A searchable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.
General admission tickets are $10, $7 for senior citizens and $5 for K-12 students. They are available at mtsu.edu/theatreanddance. MTSU students, faculty and staff with a current university ID can attend for free.
This year’s Spring Dance Concert will be performed by the pre-professional company MTSU Dance Theatre and showcase faculty and guest choreography that explores a variety of themes, from finding community through personal struggles to exploring opposing forces to figuring out and embracing one’s life journey to human energy and emotions.
With the generous support of the MTSU Distinguished Lecture Fund, members of MTSU Dance Theatre engaged in creating “once, again” with Florida-based guest artist Emily Cargill.
Director and assistant professor Jade Treadwell co-choreographed “Acceleration,” which highlights the spirit of community, with instructor and dance coordinator Kim Holt in collaboration with sound engineer Kevin O’Donnell, who created an original sound composition.
Additional faculty work featured in the Spring Dance Concert includes assistant professor Jee Ahn’s “Neti (Held in Balance).” Ahn said the new piece is a “physical dialogue between opposing forces such as yielding and resisting, weight and suspension, presence and absence, and light and shadow.”
“Inspired by traditions that seek harmony through contrast and the letting go of form, the piece views balance not as a fixed state but as a process of becoming,” Ahn said.
Lecturer Alexandra Winer’s contemporary jazz dance “Jueves” will also be featured. Winer said the piece is “about the beat that carries us through various energies we live — exhaustion, awake, slap happiness and more.
“It was a very silly rehearsal process, and I think it shows in the dancers throughout the piece,” Winer said.
Holt’s contemporary dance, “Behind Closed Doors,” which has hints of ballet, will also be featured.
“This piece reminds us that we never know what someone else may be going through and how one may struggle to find community and connection,” she said.
The Spring Dance Concert will also include “whowhatwhenwherewhy… how?” a restructured work by student choreographer Joy Echols. The piece first premiered at the MTSU 2024 Student Gala and has been revised for the spring concert. Echols describes this piece as “a physical exploration of an internal monologue.”
For more information, contact the MTSU Dance program at 615-904-8051 or https://app.arts-people.com/.
