Dance, dance, dance, dance and dance at Bates

DanceNow, Dorrance Dance,
Doug Varone and Dancers,
and Kate Weare Company
among performances slated
for 2016 Bates Dance Festival

LEWISTON — The Bates Dance Festival announces its 2016 season of public events, taking place July 9 through Aug. 6 on the Bates College campus.

The renowned contemporary artists who will present stunning work, much of it new, at the festival are Dorrance Dance, Doug Varone and Dancers, and Kate Weare Company, as well as prominent faculty and visiting artists.

In its 34th year as a leading American dance center, the Bates Dance Festival is a laboratory for artists making important contributions to contemporary dance. Spanning six summer weeks altogether, the festival propels a cycle of creative development and innovation as it trains new dancers and dance makers, introduces emerging artists and presents returning performers who have experienced significant artistic growth through the festival.

Most performances cost $25 for the general public, $18 for seniors and $12 for students. Additional information about tickets and performances will appear by April 1, on the festival website: batesdancefestival.org

Opening the 2016 performance season is DanceNOW, a showcase of dynamic new works by BDF faculty and emerging voices, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 9, at Bates College’s air-conditioned Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St.

A stylistic cornucopia, DanceNOW comprises works by the rapidly rising New York company Dante Brown | Warehouse Dance; Hope Stone Dance from Houston featuring jazz and Broadway dance dynamo Courtney D. Jones; postmodernist Heidi Henderson | elephant JANE dance; New England’s Ali Kenner Brodsky & Co.; and hip hop sensation Shakia Johnson.

Tap innovator Michelle Dorrance, lauded by The New Yorker magazine “as one of the most imaginative tap choreographers working today,” brings Dorrance Dance to Bates at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, July 14 and 16, at Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St.

Dorrance, who received a MacArthur “genius” award in 2015, presents excerpts from three award-winning works at Bates: “The Blues Project,” featuring original roots music by Toshi Reagan; “SOUNDspace,” an acoustically cogent and rhythmically explosive exploration of footwork; and “ETM: The Initial Approach,” which pioneers technology to sample the dancers’ taps as part of the sound score.

This sampling of Dorrance’s work, hailed as a groundbreaking contribution to the evolution of tap, pays homage to tradition while adding a contemporary edge.

Marking their 29th season as one of America’s leading contemporary companies, Doug Varone and Dancers return to Bates with kinetically thrilling new and reprised works at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 22 and 23, at Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St.

Rarely do audiences have the opportunity to watch an artist develop over the long term, but Varone’s frequent BDF residencies have provided just such a perspective. For its ninth residency since 1992, the company will perform three pieces.

Two are Maine premieres: “ReComposed” is inspired by American abstract artist Joan Mitchell’s pastel drawings and is set to Michael Gordon’s explosive score, “Dystopia.” In “The Fabulist,” Varone returns to the stage with a moving portrait set to “Death Speaks,” a score by composer David Lang.

Finally, in “Possession,” set to music by Philip Glass and co-commissioned by the Bates Dance Festival in 1994, Varone’s superb dancers apply their all-in artistry to a riveting tale.

An award-winning choreographer and director, Varone creates works — for dance, theatre, opera, film and fashion — recognized for their emotional range and kinetic breadth. “It’s the humanity of his work that I find so moving, and so rare in today’s world,” a New York Observer writer noted.

Known for their startling combination of formal choreographic values and visceral, emotional interpretation, Kate Weare Company performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 29 and 30, at Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St.

Weare’s dances explore intimacy, both tender and stark, by drawing on the basic urges to move and to decode movement. Weare returns to Bates with two new works: “Dark Lark” honors the erotic imagination as a metaphor for creativity and features a brilliant score by electro-acoustic cello virtuoso Chris Lancaster; and the trio “Marksman” explores primitive nascence and formation through the magnetic energy between dancers.