The first-year MFA graduate student cohort from the Department of Dance at University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance invite the community to experience a provocative and celebratory site-specific dance performance in Ann Arbor’s historic Kerrytown neighborhood. The free, unticketed event is on Saturday, April 13th at 11:00AM. MULTIVERSE/FOOTNOTES/KERRYTOWN begins outside at 303 Detroit Street, then strolls along North 4th Avenue, culminating at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market with a hip hop dance in honor of the market’s centennial anniversary.
From left to right: Alexandria Davis, Jen Peters, Sherry Lin & Mario Vircha at Monahan’s Seafood Market in Kerrytown. Photographer: Jessica Fogel
Choreographers and U-M MFA candidates Alexandria Davis, Sherry Lin, Jen Peters and Mario Vircha transform unexpected sites through diverse movement styles ranging from contemporary dance, Black American and African Diasporic dance traditions, and hip hop/street dance. The non-traditional performance features dancers from both U-M Department of Dance stellar undergraduate program, as well as performers from the larger U-M student body.
The performance grows out of a U-M course, “Site Dance: Mapping Movement and Place” taught by Professor Jessica Fogel. The four MFA dancer/choreographers in the course are each creating a section within the collaborative, hour-long dance performance event, as detailed below.
Davis, Peters, Lin & Vircha in historic Kerrytown, Photographer: Jessica Fogel
Alexandria Davis investigates histories of the African American community within Ann Arbor. Davis is a dance artist, dance teacher, and social justice activist from Gainesville, Florida. She examines impacts of boundaries and displacement pre/post gentrification of a once all black neighborhood post World War II. Using a fusion of movement, voice and social interaction Davis’s work reimagines and reinserts African American presence, life and activity in the streets and parks of Kerrytown’s North 4th Avenue.
Hailing from Chicago, Sherry Lin is a hip hop dancer and teacher. She performed for several years with the Hip Hop ConnXion Dance Company and earned a degree in nutrition from University of Illinois at Chicago. Lin presents a dance within the bustling spaces of the Ann Arbor Farmers Market to mark its 100-year anniversary. She is researching the ways food rituals and dance practices bring communities together, and as a choreographer enjoys blurring the boundaries between audience and performer.
U-M Department of Dance graduate students at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. Photographer: Jessica Fogel
A former Michigan resident, Jen Peters lived in NYC for 16 years while dancing professionally with Jennifer Muller/The Works. She earned a BFA in Dance from The Ailey School/Fordham University and is a dance writer for Dance Magazine. Peters’s choreographic collaboration with U-M undergraduate dancers at 303 Detroit Street is inspired by research connecting architecture and dance. Peters employs humor and contemporary dance to question ways women are viewed and feminine aesthetics. This performance segment is made possible by generous donations of office space from Saganworks and Multiverse Investments.
Mario Vircha is a Costa Rican native and was a member of the National Dance Company of Costa Rica, with whom he toured worldwide for eight years. He holds an MA in Dance from the National University of Costa Rica. Vircha’s choreography presents an exploration of movement inspired by work spaces within the Saganworks and Multiverse Investments modern offices. Performers from varied artistic genres will use these enclosed spaces to create intriguing movement scores.