After months of rehearsals, preparations and shows on the road, the University of Oregon Repertory Dance Company is coming home to Eugene for two performances on April 29 and 30.
The eight dancers who make up the company this year have been working hard to prepare for the experience of taking their performances on tour to different cities across Oregon. But the UORDC doesn’t just perform to showcase its talents.
“It’s developed to give the students a chance to feel what it’s like to be in a touring professional company,” said Jenifer Craig, Dance Department Chair and co-director for the tour. “Also, we can take the dance world to some of the communities in Oregon that don’t have that experience on a regular basis.”
This year, the company has already been on a six-day tour to the coast and performed in Newport, Cannon Beach and Astoria. The dancers also got the chance to teach dance to more than 200 middle school students, high school students and adults.
“Our goal is to go out into communities and teach dance as well as perform,” co-Director Rita Honka said. “We use our performance as not only art, but education.”
This year is the seventh season the dance company has been touring and teaching. Every year the format of the performances change. This year, the UORDC has worked with Barry McNabb, a veteran Broadway dancer and choreographer, who also happens to be a University Dance Department alumnus.
“Barry traveled from New York to our campus in January to choreograph ‘For Jamie,’ a challenging, exciting and very Fosse-esque number performed to classic standards sung by Nat King Cole,” said Walter Kennedy, a co-director for the tour, in a press release.
There were five choreographers for the six dance performances that make up this year’s recital. The dance styles range from jazz to modern to ballet, which keeps the dancers on their toes.
Seven women and one man make up this year’s dance company; five are undergraduates, and three are graduate students. They auditioned early in the year and were chosen based on scholastic and dance
abilities.
“Our dancers are always in preparation. They have dance classes all day long to keep their instrument — their body — in tip-top shape,” Honka said.
The Friday and Saturday
performances will be held in the Dougherty Dance Theater on the third floor of Gerlinger Annex. Tickets go on sale at 7 p.m. in the lobby
of the Gerlinger Annex. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the show begins at
8 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students
and seniors and $10 for the
general public.
“It’s a wonderful group of people this year. They have prepared themselves on the road, literally, in very different performance settings and now they get to come home and share this with their fellow students and other people in the community,” Craig said. “They’re really ready for it. And we don’t disappoint.”
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On their toes
Daily Emerald
April 27, 2005
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