Spring Migration Dance Concert spotlights cutting-edge choreographers

Contemporary ballet and tap, modern and urban dance styles, and Mexican folkloric dance will be featured at this year's annual Spring Migration Dance Concert, running Feb. 28 through March 2 at 8 p.m. the Roble Studio Theater, 375 Santa Teresa Street.

The program will include the world premiere of Vamos a Bailar, a dance and live music collaboration by Bay Area choreographer and Stanford senior lecturer Susan Cashion and Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeño Band. The work will feature 14 performers of Mexican dance selected from three decades of Stanford alumni dancers.

The program showcases commissioned works by the following people:

Susan Cashion, artistic director of the Grupo Folklórico Los Lupeños de San José, has received two Fulbright grants, one to Mexico and one to Chile. She is on the board of directors of the Congress on Research in Dance. "There is a Latino spirit of joy—alegría—optimism and humor that I am constantly struggling to harness in my choreographic works on Mexican dance," said Cashion, who teaches dance anthropology, modern dance, Mexican dance and Latin American dance forms at Stanford. "These dances represent Mexican dance tradition as well as Chicano and border life."

Diane Frank, a Stanford lecturer who trained with Merce Cunningham in New York City, taught technique at the Cunningham Studio for eight years and was selected by Cunningham to teach repertory and technique for the Atelier Cunningham at the American Center in Paris. In New York City, she danced with Douglas Dunn and Dancers, and assisted Dunn in many creations and reconstructions of his works, notably for the Paris Opera Ballet, where she was a frequent guest teacher for the Groupe de Recherche. Her own work includes 11 years of choreography projects with Deborah Riley, which were commissioned and produced at Dance Theater Workshop in New York, Dance Place in Washington, D.C., Riverside Theater in London and the American Center in Paris. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer and the Arts Council of Silicon Valley.

Amy Seiwert, named one of "25 to Watch" by Dance Magazine in 2005, was awarded the Gerbode Emerging Choreographers Grant in 2006. She was recently invited to participate in the New York Choreography Institute by Peter Martins. She also directs im'ij-re, a contemporary ballet company that collaborates with artists of other disciplines. In 1999, she won the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur Choreography Competition in Quebec. A former principal dancer with the Sacramento Ballet, she currently performs and choreographs for Smuin Ballet. Her work is also in the repertory of the Sacramento, Carolina and American Repertory Ballets as well as Robert Moses' Kin Dance Company.

Charlotte Williams' dance background is rooted in Las Vegas, where she studied under the Tony Award-winning choreographer Henry LeTang (his protégés included the late Gregory Hines). Williams has lectured on the history of tap dance for both the Stanford Dance Division and the Stanford Continuing Studies Program. "At the heart of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, two disparate philosophies vied to define tap," she said. One produced Fred Astaire, the other Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Honi Coles, Eddie Brown, Henry LeTang and others. "They were both in New York City but worlds apart in culture and vision." Her Spring Migration piece revisits New York City in the 1920s.

Student works also will be featured in the dance concert.

All seating is general admission; tickets are available at the door, and in advance online at http://dance.stanford.edu or http://drama.stanford.edu. Ticket prices are $15 general admission, $10 Stanford faculty and staff, $10 senior citizens and $5 students with ID. For additional questions or to request a wheelchair seat, e-mail dramatickets@stanford.edu or call (650) 725-5838.

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