FARMINGTON — World-renowned dancer and mime artist Karen Montanaro will bring her one-woman show, “Tanzspiel,” to the University of Maine at Farmington campus on Saturday, Oct. 13.

“Tanzspiel” celebrates the expressive potential of the human body, blending the arts of mime and dance to create theater with physical and emotional power. Featured are mime-dances from Montanaro’s original and varied repertoire. The show is suitable for young and old.

For more than a decade, Montanaro toured and taught internationally with her husband and teacher, mime master Tony Montanaro, who founded the Celebration Barn Theater in South Paris.

She studied ballet at the Cantarella School of Dance, the Ram Island Dance Center and on scholarship with the Joffrey Ballet School. She has danced professionally with the Ohio Ballet and the Darmstadt Opera Ballet in Germany and was principal ballerina for the Portland Ballet.

As a teaching artist, she offers residencies in movement, mime and dance in public and private schools throughout the United States.

In 2008, Montanaro was awarded the Individual Artist Fellowship grant from the Maine Arts Commission. Donna McNeil, then MAC’s assistant director, said the panel of judges was impressed with “Karen’s phenomenal technique and control but most importantly they recognized that Karen has fused her prodigious skill in both mime and dance into a new art form, using the body as a descriptive tool — painterly, narrative and lyrical.”

Montanaro calls this “mimedance.” For a glimpse, go to www.mimetheater.com.

The concert, presented by the Arts Institute of Western Maine, will begin at 7:30 p.m.at Nordica Auditorium. Tickets are $12 for adults at the door/free for students of high-school age. For more information, call 778-4699 or 684-2108. 

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