News and Events
Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance will perform a selection of new work on September 5, 2009.
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY – “Jody Sperling has fun with dance history, in part because she takes it seriously,” wrote Jack Anderson in New York Theatre Wire (May 14, 2007).
Jody Sperling and her New York City-based Time Lapse Dance company will present Summer Harvest, an evening of work, some of which that was developed during the summer 2009 residency at Vassar, on Saturday, September 5. The program will feature Sperling’s new work Forms of Dilemma, set to Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, with lighting by David Ferri. Click here to view a video preview of Forms of Dilemma.
The event will begin at 8:00pm at The Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater in Kenyon Hall and is free and open to the public. No reservations are required, seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. For additional information, call the Department of Dance at (845) 437-7470.
Visual delight and kinetic spectacle are key elements of the Time Lapse Dance aesthetic, as seen during their previous performance at Vassar last November. The company’s work features contemporary interpretations of modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller, with hypnotic fabric-and-light displays. Other works in their repertoire draw on imagery culled from circus and music hall entertainment, including hula-hooping, stilt-walking, partner acrobatics, aerial dance, contortion acts, burlesque, magic-lantern shows, and more.
Deborah Jowitt noted in the Village Voice that: “Sperling has mastered Fuller’s art of manipulating fabric . . . it’s wonderful to see her create swirling, evolving forms that might have been captured by a time-lapse camera.”
Time Lapse Dance Artistic Director Sperling, who has gained an international reputation as a post-modern interpreter of Fuller’s style of dancing, is a dancer, choreographer, and dance scholar based in New York City. She has lectured and/or performed at colleges, universities, festivals, and conferences in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. Her interest in Fuller began in 1997 with The Butterfly Dance, a collaboration with film choreographer and dance historian Elizabeth Aldrich commissioned by the Library of Congress. Since then, Sperling has created five Fuller-inspired solos.
This performance is sponsored by The Department of Dance and The Jeanne Periolat Czula Fund, made possible by Jeffrey Paley and Valerie Ritter Paley ’83 and The Jeanne Periolat Czula Endowment, established by an anonymous alum.
This fall The Department of Dance will offer several other public events at The Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater in Kenyon Hall including the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre’s (VRDT) performance First Showings (10/9, 8pm); a lecture by Balanchine ballerina, Merrill Ashley (10/13); a performance by the Dance Theater of Harlem Ensemble (11/8); and the VRDT performance Final Showings ’09–’10 (11/19-21, 8pm). Additional details will be announced. For advance reservations for the VRDT performances, please email VRDTtickets@vassar.edu.
ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF DANCE
The Department of Dance offers a non-major, elective course of study at Vassar. The faculty consists of three full-time (Jeanne Periolat Czula, John Meehan, Stephen Rooks) and two part-time teachers (Abby Saxon, Katherine Wildberger). Dance’s Resident Lighting Designer, David Ferri, lights all dance department productions. There are three Adjunct Artists who serve as accompanists and who compose, direct, and sometimes perform with the student company, the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre, which is directed by John Meehan (http://dance.vassar.edu/).
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
Posted by College Relations Tuesday, August 25, 2009
About the Arts
Powerhouse Theater
The Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College. It is dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. During an intense eight-week summer residency on the Vassar campus, up to twenty different projects are publicly presented, typically engaging more than 200 professional artists and theater students. Plays, musicals, and screenplays are presented in a variety of forms: readings, workshops, and fully staged productions. Since the first Powerhouse Theater season in 1985, New York Stage and Film and Vassar have served more than 2,000 artists and over 175,000 audience members through the development and production of artistically exceptional and affordably priced performances.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Located just inside Vassar's Main Gate, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center houses the college's permanent collection, over 18,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and glass and ceramic wares, charting the history of art from antiquity to the present. The Permanent Collection Galleries feature 350 works, ranging from the sculpted Head of Viceroy Merymose from His Outer Sarcophagus (Egyptian, c 1375 BCE) in the Antiquities Gallery to Marsden Hartley's oil on canvas Indian Composition (1914-15) in the Twentieth Century Gallery. For information on current and upcoming special exhibitions, self-guided and curriculum-based tours, and group visits, please visit the website. The art center is open to the public, and admission is free.
James W. Palmer Gallery
Located in the College Center in Main Building, the James W. Palmer III '90 Gallery presents eight shows annually, including exhibitions by renowned artists and photographers, studio art faculty and students, and local arts organizations. Recent highlights included Andrea Baldeck’s black-and-white photo exhibit, Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn, organized by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Vassar Haiti Project’s annual exhibition and auction of imported arts and handcrafts; and Design Inside, showcasing the work of Vassar’s College Relations design team. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. For information on upcoming exhibitions, visit the website or call (845) 437-5370.
Music Department
Located in the Belle Skinner Hall of Music, the Martel Recital Hall is wonderfully suited, both acoustically and aesthetically, to music performance. With seating for 500, the Martel is home to the Vassar College Orchestra, Choir, Women's Chorus, Madrigal Singers, and numerous chamber groups and ensembles. The Martel concert schedule routinely includes distinguished guest artists, faculty recitals, senior recitals, and special musical events, such as last year's series of organ recitals celebrating the installation and dedication of the college's superb pipe organ, designed by masterbuilder Paul Fritts. For information on upcoming concerts and events (which are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted), please visit the website.
Dance Department
The Department of Dance sponsors several public performances each year. Among those, the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre (VRDT) has a series of Works in Progress showings in the fall, a winter Modfest performance in conjunction with the The Department of Music, winter galas at the 1869 Bardavon Opera House, and two All Parents Weekend performances in the spring. The department's Master Class program annually invites at least one ballet and one modern expert to campus in addition to two people in other areas of dance. Public performances and lectures are often associated with these renowned visitors. Guest artists in the past have included: Irina Kolpokova, Arthur Mitchell, Helene Alexopoulos, Gregory Hines, Anna Kisselgoff, Donald Byrd, Edward Villella, Ronald K. Brown, Irene Dowd, Allegra Kent, Gelsey Kirkland, Pilobolus w/Adam Battlestein, Suzanne Farrell, Mummenschantz, Eldar Aliev, Deborah Jowitt, Bill T. Jones, Pascal Rioult, Clinton Luckett of ABT, Bill Irwin, and Donald McKayle. Many of the department's dance performances are in the Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, located in Kenyon Hall.
Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
"Forms of Dilemma"
Choreography: Jody Sperling
Dancer/s: Joori Jung, Emily Lutin, Jody Sperling & Krissy Tate
August 9, 2009
Photo by Vanessa Cheung
Press Contact
Emily Darrow
Media Relations Associate
(845) 437-7690
emdarrow@vassar.edu