MTSU dancers share stories via movement, music at Fall Dance Concert

Student members of the MTSU Dance Theatre leap and land on the Tucker Theatre stage in these file photos from a previous Fall Dance Concert with text superimposed over the images that reads “MTSU Dance Theatre, Fall Dance Concert, Nov. 18-20, 2021.” (file photos by Martin O’Connor)

Students and faculty of the MTSU Dance Theatre will use movement and music to share stories of social justice, spirituality, survival and the significance of the pandemic at the Fall Dance Concert, set Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 18-20.

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Performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Nov. 18-20 in Tucker Theatre, located inside the Boutwell Dramatic Arts Building at 615 Champion Way. A campus map is available at http://bit.ly/MTSUParking.

Tickets for the 2021 Fall Dance Concert are $10 for adults and $5 for K-12 students and seniors and are available at https://mtsu.edu/theatreanddance. MTSU students will be admitted free at the box office with a current ID.

The theatre is fully accessible for people with disabilities, including those with hearing, vision and mobility impairments.

The evenings’ performances by MTSU’s pre-professional company include faculty and student choreography plus a new collaboration with North Carolina-based guest choreographer Joy Davis.

MTSU Dance Theatre members worked with Davis this semester with help from the university’s Distinguished Lecture Fund.

Their goal was to create a new work focusing on the possibility of an unseen force pulling people together through circumstance, said professor and MTSU Dance Program director Meg Brooker.

Meg Brooker

“This force can be perceived differently among people,” said Brooker, who also is the Murfreesboro Cultural Arts Laureate Program’s 2021-22 dance laureate.

“For some it may be considered a higher power, or supernatural; for others it is simply chance.”

Joy Davis

Davis, a master teacher of the Countertechnique movement system that helps dancers think about their bodies, is an associate professor of dance at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She founded “joyproject” in 2006, where she creates collaborative dance theater to evoke humor, contemplation and elegant design.

The 2021 Fall Dance Concert also will showcase assistant professor Jade Treadwell’s “Visceral Undercurrent,” an independent project she choreographed this summer for Nashville’s Frist Art Museum.

The work, inspired by the Frist’s exhibit “Kara Walker: Cut to the Quick,” incorporates both rhythmic tap and contemporary modern dance to reflect Walker’s images of the legacies of slavery, sexism, violence, imperialism and other power structures.

MTSU dance alumna Jordyn Hill, center, and professor Jade Treadwell, left, concentrate on their performance Saturday, July 24, in the auditorium at Nashville's Frist Art Museum while their fellow MTSU dancers strike poses behind them. The five-member troupe presented "Visceral Undercurrent," a dance routine Treadwell choreographed that was inspired by "Cut to the Quick," a new exhibition at the Frist of artist Kara Walker's works of social and personal commentary. (photo courtesy of the Frist Art Museum)

MTSU dance alumna Jordyn Hill, center, and professor Jade Treadwell, left, concentrate on their performance in the auditorium at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum while their fellow MTSU dancers strike poses behind them in this July file photo. The five-member troupe presented “Visceral Undercurrent,” a dance routine Treadwell choreographed that was inspired by “Cut to the Quick,” an exhibition at the Frist of artist Kara Walker’s works of social and personal commentary. The MTSU Dance Theatre will include “Visceral Undercurrent” in the 2021 Fall Dance Concert in MTSU’s Tucker Theatre Nov. 18-20. (file photo courtesy of the Frist Art Museum)

First performed in July with the help of four MTSU dance students, the work “explored the various layers of turbulence … in Walker’s etching, ‘An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters: no world,’” Treadwell said.

Her choreography also used “the visual landscape” of Nashville poet Ciona Rouse’s “The Slave Ship Gets Nowhere without The Sea to Carry It,” inspired by Walker’s exhibit notes.

Jade Treadwell

Two casts of MTSU Dance Theatre ensembles will perform “Visceral Undercurrent” at the Fall Dance Concert. Rouse is scheduled to join the MTSU performance on Friday, Nov. 19.

Additional performances in this fall’s event, which is part of the 10th season of the College of Liberal Arts’ “MTSU Arts” brand for the university’s fine arts programs, include:

• Brooker’s “(Dis)Location, (Dis)Ruption, (Dis)Placement,” a structured improvisational score in response to the pandemic, the environmental crisis and fight for social justice.

• MTSU alumnus and dance lecturer Aaron Allen’s “Flee,” which investigates pain, resilience and fear by juxtaposing African Diasporic forms and contemporary movement.

• Student choreographer Avery Biddle’s “Bridged Chasm,” which illustrates the journey of her testimony and its ongoing development.

Student members of the MTSU Dance Theatre perform on the Tucker Theatre stage in this file photo from a previous Fall Dance Concert. MTSU Dance Theatre will present its 2021 Fall Dance Concert Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 18-20, at 7:30 each night in Tucker Theatre on campus, and tickets are available at https://mtsu.edu/theatreanddance. (file photo by Martin O’Connor)

MTSU offers the only full Bachelor of Science degree in dance at any public university in Tennessee, guiding students in dance technique, history and theory alongside kinesiology, anatomy and healthy training for the body.

One course of dance study focuses on performance and choreography, while the other track concentrates on teaching and practice.

For more information about MTSU’s dance program or the MTSU Dance Theatre, which are part of the Department of Theatre and Dance in the university’s College of Liberal Arts, call 615-904-8051, email dance@mtsu.edu, or visit www.mtsu.edu/dance.

For details on MTSU Arts events and supporting its student arts programs in the Patrons Society, visit www.mtsu.edu/mtsuarts.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)

A student member of the MTSU Dance Theatre leaps on the Tucker Theatre stage in this file photo from a previous Fall Dance Concert. MTSU Dance will present its 2021 Fall Dance Concert Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 18-20, at 7:30 each night in Tucker Theatre on campus, and tickets are available at https://mtsu.edu/theatreanddance. (file photo by Martin O’Connor)

A student member of the MTSU Dance Theatre balances on one knee on the Tucker Theatre stage in this file photo from a previous Fall Dance Concert. MTSU Dance will present its 2021 Fall Dance Concert Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 18-20, at 7:30 each night in Tucker Theatre on campus, and tickets are available at https://mtsu.edu/theatreanddance. (file photo by Martin O’Connor)

A student member of the MTSU Dance Theatre does a handstand on the Tucker Theatre stage in this file photo from a previous Fall Dance Concert. MTSU Dance will present its 2021 Fall Dance Concert Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 18-20, at 7:30 each night in Tucker Theatre on campus, and tickets are available at https://mtsu.edu/theatreanddance. (file photo by Martin O’Connor)