Theater and Dance

SONATAS, INTERLUDES AND ACCUMULATIONS
a collaboration in music and dance
September 26-27

Poster for Sonatas, Interludes, and Accumulations

A collaborative performance of live music and dance featuring John Cage’s composition, “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano.” Professional and student dancers join choreographer Becky Heist and pianist Mark Mazullo in this distinctive concert.

This workshop introduces participants to the basic elements of neutral mask and expressive mask techniques, combined with ENSEMBLE creation elements inspired by the general guidelines of the Viewpoints technique. A condensed reinterpretation of these techniques suggest a rich set of skills for the performer’s training process. The goal of combining these different techniques is to create a common vocabulary that will serve as a framework that will allow performers to research and test the limits of their artistic expression.

The classic story set in Paris in 1668 where a con man, Tartuffe, has convinced the master of the house that he will save their souls by guiding them to lives of austerity and prosperity. However, all the family sees through this man except the head of the house, Orgon, who goes so far as to promise his daughter to see him in marriage as well as deeding the property away to him. It takes the willingness of the family to trick Tartuffe into revealing his true nature for Orgon to witness. Follow the comic twist, turns, and machinations that occur in this wonderful presentation that was once banned in France because of its willingness to address hypocrisy.

Behind the Scenes at Tartuffe

FALL DANCE CONCERT
December 11-13

The Macalester Dance ENSEMBLE presents their annual Fall Dance Concert with choreography by Dance Program Faculty, select students, and guest artist Stuart Pimsler. Madness and genius serve as inspiration for choreographic explorations.

SPRING 2010 PRODUCTIONS

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE
by PETER WEISS
directed by Rachel Perlmeter
February 26-28 and March 4-6

What are the limits of art? Asking powerful questions about rhetoric, revolution, and the roles of the writer in society, MARAT/SADE ignited the world theatre with its inventive structure and assault on the sense. Framed as a play within a play, Weiss’ text grapples with the ethics and poetics of the French Revolution as seen through the gaze of two of the era’s most notorious provocateurs and a cast of prisoners. Relentless, witty, and as potent today as when it premiered in West Berlin in 1964, it’s a pageant and a spectacle “designed to crack the spectator on the jaw.” Or so said Peter Brook, one of its most notorious interpreters. In this production, guest artist Rachel Perlmeter spins it forward into the future, ramping the time-bending up a notch. Are you engagé?

ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST
by DARIO FO
directed by Beth Cleary
April 9-11 and 15-17

Dario Fo’s pointed, zany 1970s political farce was his response to an actual Italian police frame-up of anarcho-syndicalists. The play is still performed regularly throughout the world to expose police-state tactics masquerading as “counter-terrorism...”

SPRING DANCE CONCERT
April 30, May 1-2

A mélange of student choreography bursts onto the stage for these three performances that are produced, choreographed, and performed under faculty guidance, by the students.