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Student Kami Hornak’s feet shuffled on stage Wednesday night in Rodey Theatre as she lunged her head forward and back. Hornak shared the stage with two others, including a muscular, bearded Peter Bennett, a second-year MFA student draped in a small dress.
They were rehearsing for ArtFacts, the UNM Theatre & Dance Department faculty’s dance showcase. The show features the debut of dances choreographed primarily by faculty members in the department, including an original piece by Australian choreographer Zoë Knights. Knights was a guest professor at UNM last fall and is working with other dance companies in Berlin.
Graduate student Lisa Nevada is the rehearsal director for Knights’ piece, “Court Dance.” The choreography of the 40-minute piece is based on the movements of NBA basketball players in 2011 NBA Finals.
Nevada said her experience as a performer has helped her work as a rehearsal director.
“I’m not going to ask them to do something that I know would be almost impossible or inorganic to them,” Nevada said. “It goes beyond making steps up and doing them in unison, or doing them in certain sequences. Finding that real-life connection, it’s not just arbitrary movement — you have to connect to it somehow.”
Nevada will also be dancing during the show, performing as one of the rotating cast members in “Battleworks Etude,” a soloist in “NLN” and a soloist improvising in “Frost.” “Battleworks Etude” is a study piece of New York-based choreographer Robert Battle’s work. Last year, Nevada, Bennett and two other UNM students flew to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to learn the choreography with the guidance of Battle.
Hornak performs with Bennett in “Battleworks Etude” and in the closing piece “NLN.” Hornak learned the piece from the students who when to New York after they returned. Hornak is part of one of three trios performing the piece; each trio performs a different night.
“Battleworks Etude” is a sharp piece, clocking in under four minutes with a display of spasmodic arm flails and head bobs.
“I want people to be scared after they watch ‘Battleworks.’ They should be intimidated and a little bit freaked out,” Hornak said.
UNM dance professor Vladimir Conde Reche choreographed two pieces for the show: the contemporary ballet duet “Farewell at Dawn” and the 12-minute closer “NLN.”
In “NLN,” performers dance in shadows and behind screens, often mimicking the movement of one another. Near the end of Nevada’s solo, four screens are positioned behind the performer and a short film of the cast dancing is projected across the screens and Nevada’s body. Reche said “NLN,” which stands for “nothing like now,” is his attempt to push his dancers to examine every moment of their own movement.
“How can you make that fresh every day, how can you use your body to discover the infinite possibilities in movement and how does that influence you and the people that’s next to you, evolving to a point where that connects to the audience as well?” Reche said.
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Reche traveled to Israel in 2011 to study the work of choreographer Ohad Naharin and his new dance technique, “gaga.”
Reche said he has incorporated what he learned from Naharin into his closing piece.
“I’ve borrowed the dancers’ bodies in order to create ‘NLN,’ and then I gave it back to them so they can make it happen,” Reche said.
ArtFacts
dance faculty concert
Rodey Theatre
Feb. 22, 23, March 1, 2
at 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 24 and March 3 at 2 p.m.
$15 general, $12 seniors and UNM faculty, $10 students and UNM staff
Tickets sold at UNM ticket offices
