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Washington and Lee’s Department of Theatre, Dance and Film Studies will present the W&L Repertory Dance Company and the Rockbridge Symphony together in concert at the Lenfest Center for the Arts this week.
Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30. Tickets can be purchased by calling (540) 458-8000 or going online to the Lenfest website.
The department, said a spokeswoman, is committed to including, supporting, and uplifting the voices of students of color and other underrepresented minority groups on the campus, and therefore dedicates at least one performance each year that is written by a BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color) playwright, and one for which the primary artistic visionary is BIPOC.
The guest artistic visionary for this concert is Justice Miles. She is a choreographer, dancer, and scholar who investigates the connections between contemporary dance, flamenco, and Blackness.
Miles was integral in hosting three internationally acclaimed African American dance artists this semester at Washington and Lee. Students worked intensively with Lauren Putty White, a former dancer with internationally renowned Philadanco; Rujeko Dumbutshena, who performed in the Bill T Jones Broadway production of “FELA!;” and Edgar Page, who trained at the Ailey School and toured with Cleo Parker Robinson Ensemble.
Miles exposed the dancers to new movement forms, giving them the opportunity to expand their horizons experientially and participate in embodied learning, said the spokeswoman.
Additionally, this concert marks the first collaboration between W&L Dance and the Rockbridge Symphony, who have come together on this program with a shared desire to celebrate African American artists. The orchestra, under the baton of music director Yi-Ping Chen, will accompany nine dances set to three pioneering works by Black composers.
“Dances in the Canebrakes” is a groundbreaking 1930s composition by Florence Price. The first movement of the work is a syncopated ragtime, the second is reflective of “slow drag,” and the final movement reflects the escapism of fancydress balls that likely originated on antebellum plantations as a Black satire of white society.
“Five Movements in Color, II Soul of Remembrance,” by contemporary composer and jazz pianist Mary Watkins, was created as a statement about the African American experience. Musicologist William Runyan noted, “Its lush string textures, funereal tempo, and expressive melodic lines are an eloquent paean to lingering memories of the tragedy of the African Diaspora and its aftermath.”
Finally, “The River,” by jazz’s legendary arranger and composer, Duke Ellington, rounds out the show. Ellington’s work is a ballet suite originally composed on commission in 1970 by the American Ballet Theater for choreographer Alvin Ailey. Ellington described it as “a metaphor in which the progress of a river parallels human life; from its source in a spring, growing from a rivulet to a mighty river flowing into the sea.” The respective movements illustrate the journey.
“Collaborating with the Rockbridge Symphony is a goal we’ve been working toward for many years,” said Jenefer Davies, artistic director of the W&L Repertory Dance Company. “Combining live music with dance produces powerful embodied pedagogical outcomes. Dancing to live music creates a special synergy between musician and dancer and is a rare treat at the collegiate level. We’re so pleased to share the bounty of this collaboration with local and student audiences.”
