TORONTO, March 6, 1998 -- York University's annual week-long Festival of New Choreography, featuring more than two dozen original works by students, faculty and visiting artists, opens Monday, March 16.

The Festival's artistic director, choreographer and dance professor Holly Small, has programmed an exciting array of solo and ensemble pieces spanning many different dance styles and showcasing the Dance Department's outstanding young performers.

A rich spectrum of works, many featuring original scores by York music students, spotlights the creativity of the department's gifted up-and-coming choreographers. Aimee Dawn Robinson's mysterious dance ritual Revenante is performed to a haunting composition by Nicholas Williams using steel drums and a scrap metal sound sculpture. In One Man Band, choreographer and composer Monica Dottor presents a quintet of dancers wheeling and careening through a series of risky formations to the sound of multiple percussion instruments, tuba and accordion.

Romina Barbieri's Psycho Barbie, an offbeat solo about a Barbie doll who's tired of having her arms twisted off, is set to a score composed by Justin Hiscox and performed by an ensemble of music students. Laughing Water, a meditative work for five women and an assortment of water buckets choreographed by Amy Wood, features an original sound score by Joel Silver.

Other student pieces include Tara Lee's Falling Further than Alice, a clever trio for two dancers and a mischievous beam of light; Peter Scott's romantic pas de deux Indigo Moon; and streets in-audible cities, a contemporary tap dance created by Ana Francisca de la Mora Campos and Beth McGuire, performed against an arresting background of hard-edged slide projections.

Faculty contributions include a lyrical trio from With the Moon Falling from Your Eyes by Darcey Callison, and Donna Krasnow's staging of excerpts of American dance pioneer Jose Limon's monumental work A Choreographic Offering, set to the music of J.S. Bach.

Other program highlights are new works by two noted Quebecois choreographers: guest professor Luc Tremblay, formerly artistic director of Danse Partout, and visiting artist Harold Rheaume, winner of the 1997 Canada Council Jacqueline Lemieux Prize. Both Tremblay's powerful Kabbale and Rheaume's sensual Fresk were created especially for the York Dance Ensemble, the Dance Department's repertory touring company, which premiered the pieces earlier this season.

The Festival of New Choreography runs in a five-part series from March 16 to 21. Showtimes are 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Mon. through Fri. On Sat. Mar. 21 the entire program runs from noon to 8:30 p.m. Performances take place in the Joseph G. Green Studio Theatre in the Centre for Film and Theatre at York University, 4700 Keele St. Admission is $5 per show. For more information, call 650-8030.

For more information, please contact:

Brigitte Kleer
Manager, Public Relations
Faculty of Fine Arts
(416) 736-2100, ext. 77143
email: bkleer@yorku.ca