World Premiere of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange at Wesleyan
Olivia Drake  |
| Wesleyan has partnered with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange for several fall events. |
| Posted 07/13/05 |
| For the past three years, the Center for the Arts and Wesleyan faculty have partnered with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange to explore the ethical and social repercussions of genetic research.
The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, led by MacArthur Fellow Liz Lerman, has been creating dance works that are metaphorical and powerfully visceral about the issues of the time. The Wesleyan-Dance Exchange partnership has resulted in Wesleyan serving as a lead commissioner of Ferocious Beauty: Genome, which will premiere at the CFA on February 3, 2006, before touring major performing arts centers across the country. The partnership has also resulted in the most comprehensive residency ever undertaken by a dance company at Wesleyan or in Middletown, with Dance Exchange members working throughout the fall semester with both science and dance students as well as community members at the Green Street Arts Center. The following Dance Exchange events are scheduled: Lerman will discuss her use of the dance medium to explore the meaning and potential of new genetic science research. Hudson will provide an update on the public policy issues raised by recent advances. Both women will share their insights into the crossing of boundaries between art and science and their growing understanding of creativity and inquiry in both fields. Silver, author of Challenging Nature: Biotechnology in a Spiritual World published by Ecco Press, will examine Catholic, Protestant, post-Christian and Eastern spirituality’s responses to the advances of biotechnology and predict how these arguments will affect future scientific research. Ossarios talk will explore the ways in which the law and guidelines mandating inclusion have had the effect of re-animating a very simple-minded set of arguments about race and genetics. Ossario is the former director of the Genetics Section at the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association. The event is sponsored by the Ethics in Society Project. Ferocious Beauty: Genome is about how we heal, age, procreate and eat may soon change because of genetic research happening right now. The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange partnered with scientists and bio-ethicists to confront the promise and threat of a new biological age. The show explores this moment of revelation and questioning in an arresting theatrical work which combines movement, music, text and film. The planning committee for this residency includes Professor of Biology and Fisk Professor of Natural Science Laura Grabel, Associate Professor of Philosophy Lori Gruen, Adjunct Professor of Dance Susan Lourie, Green Street Arts Center Director Ricardo Morris, Zilkha Gallery Curator Nina Felshin, CFA Associate Director for Programming and Events Barbara Ally and CFA Director Pamela Tatge. In addition, Lerman has consulted extensively with Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Laurel Appel, Professor of Biology Michael Weir and Professor of Chemistry and University Professor of Sciences and Mathematics David Beveridge, among others, on the development of Genome. Lerman will be making monthly visits to Grabel and Gruen’s Reproduction in the 21st Century course this fall, and is a fall faculty member of the Dance Department, teaching the repertory class. All events have been made possible by grants from Wesleyan University’s Edward W. Snowdon Fund, Hughes Program and the Fund for Innovation. Ferocious Beauty: Genome is funded in part by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, which receives major support from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the state arts agencies of New England and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information or to order tickets, call 860-685-3355, or e-mail boxoffice@wesleyan.edu. |
| By Olivia Drake, The Wesleyan Connection editor |
Mike Mavredakis
Jeff Harder