UW's production of "Continuous Momentum: The Works of Bill T. Jones" hits the road

From the University of Wyoming:

The residency of the University of Wyoming's 2011-2012 Eminent Artists-in-Residence, the celebrated Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, culminates with an evening-length dance concert, "Continuous Momentum: The Works of Bill T. Jones" Dec. 10-13 in Riverton, Gillette, Torrington and Lusk.

Performances all begin at 7 p.m. and are free and open to the public. The schedule:

Riverton -- Saturday, Dec. 10, Central Wyoming College, Robert A Peck Arts Center Stage;

Gillette -- Sunday, Dec. 11, Campbell County High School Auditorium;

Torrington -- Monday, Dec. 12, Eastern Wyoming College;

Lusk -- Tuesday, Dec. 13, Niobrara County High School Auditorium.

Performed by UW students, the concert features four pieces from the BTJ/AZ repertory, including "D-man in the Waters," "Continuous Replay," "Duet," and "Power/Full."

"The student performance of Jones' choreography is the highlight of the semester-long project with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company Eminent Artist-in-Residence project," says Margaret Wilson, UW dance faculty member who has facilitated the residency. "For the students to have the opportunity to learn about the choreography and perform it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they will never forget."

The pieces, which were reconstructed this fall at UW by BTJ/AZ teaching artists Catherine Cabeen and Nicole Smith, represent several different phases of the company's work.

"The dancers become a part of living history -- recreating works that were set in the 1970s to early 1990s," Wilson says. "The dance world now is a different place than it was at that time, but the dancers validate those works, and the reasons why they were created, by performing them for 2011 audiences."

The concert opens with "Power/Full" (1995/revised 2002), a piece originally devised as a rigorous formal movement study created by Jones in 1995. The score is in two contrasting parts composed by Canadians John Oswald and Laurel MacDonald.

Following is "Continuous Replay," (1977/revised 1991) a piece originally choreographed by Zane as the solo "Hand Dance" and as a duet by Zane and Jones, and later restaged by Jones as an ensemble work.

"Duet," (1995/revised 2002) explores the ideas of pure movement and abstraction. This unusually stark work takes Jones' most sophisticated movement to task and draws on the tension between, and the elegance inherit in, two people moving together in perfect unison.

The concert closes with one of the company's signature pieces, "D-Man in the Waters" (1989), an exhaustive pursuit of water as a metaphor, choreographed to the first movement of Felix Mendelssohn's spirited "Octet in E-flat Major." It is described as "an uplifting and accessible celebration of the resiliency of the human spirit."

"Watching the dancers learn, rehearse and prepare these works for performance has been very satisfying for the UW dance faculty," Wilson says. "Our students are well prepared to do this work with the training that they receive here, and the opportunity to perform the work of a master choreographer like Jones is a validation of all our efforts."

Photo: University of Wyoming dancers will perform "Continuous Momentum: The Works of Bill T. Jones."

Wyoming Arts Council town meeting tonight at Natrona County Public Library in Casper

Upcoming Wyoming Arts Council "Arts in Economy, Education and Everyday Life" town meetings:

Converse, Natrona & Niobrara counties town meeting will be held on Wednesday (today), June 2, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Natrona County Public Library, Crawford Room, 307 E. 2nd St., Casper.

Free and open to the public.

Share your thoughts about the future of the arts in Wyoming.

FMI: 307-777-7742

Marcia Hensley on the road to promote her book about women homesteaders

Nancy Curtis of High Plains Press in Glendo sends this announcement about one of her authors:

Marcia Hensley, author of STAKING HER CLAIM: WOMEN HOMESTEADING THE WEST, will be giving presentations and signing books at the Torrington Library on Monday, March 29 at 7 p.m.; at the Lusk Library Brown Bag Lunch on Tuesday, March 30, at noon; and at the Platte County Historical Society meeting at the Wheatland Library on Wednesday March 31, at 7 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.

She has a good PowerPoint presentation and her talks always draw lots of input from the audience. Those women homesteaders were something!

On the road in WYO with Denver slam poets

From a press release from the Wyoming Humanities Council:

Ken Arkind and Panama Soweto, members of the 2006 Denver team that won the National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas, will perform in Casper, Cheyenne and Lusk as part of the Wyoming Humanities Council’s summer program paying tribute to the beatniks.

Joining them are Craig Arnold, a poetry professor at the University of Wyoming and winner of the Rome PrizeFellowship in literature, and Luke Stricker, a recent graduate of the University of Wyoming MFA program and organizer of poetry slams in Laramie.

Slams take place at the Metro in Casper on June 13 at 7 p.m., at the Niobrara County Library in Lusk on June 14 at 1 p.m., and at the Laramie County Library in Cheyenne at 7 p.m. on June 14. All programs are free and open to the public and are sponsored by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

FMI: Jenn Koiter at (307) 721-9243 or jkoiter@uwyo.edu

Beats "On the Road" in Wyo. this summer

From a press release from the Wyoming Humanities Council:

This summer, the Wyoming Humanities Council presents "On the Road: 50 Years of the Beatniks," a summer program about American counterculture in the 1950s and early 1960s. The program includes a book discussion series focusing on Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs; a poetry slam tour of Casper, Cheyenne and Lusk hosted by UW poet and professor Craig Arnold; and a bus trip on June 22 to visit beat locales in Denver. Host sites will also screen B movies from the era.

"The beatniks belong to the history of our region," said humanities council staff member Jenny Ingram. "Thirty pages into ‘On the Road,’ Jack Kerouac visits Cheyenne Frontier Days."

In Laramie, book discussion meetings will take place at the office of the Wyoming Humanities Council. In Casper, Cheyenne and Lusk, they will take place at public libraries.

All programs are free and open to the public. This program is sponsored by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

FMI: Jenny Ingram at (307) 721-9247 or jingram@uwyo.edu, or visit www.uwyo.edu/humanities.