The students of the York Dance Ensemble (YDE) have a spring in their step as they perform their year-end concert, Tangled Dances, in the Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre.
The lively young repertory company of the Department of Dance is presenting an engaging collection of contemporary choreography by established and rising dance artists. The show, which opened Thursday, runs Friday, March 23, and Saturday, March 24, at 7:30pm.
Dancers, Anastasia Feigin and Nikolaos Markakis in ‘Tangled Rags’. Photograph by David Hou
“I feel the members of the York Dance Ensemble are among the hardest-working people at this University,” said YDE’s artistic and managing director, Professor Holly Small. “With occasional blood, plenty of sweat and not a few tears, the ensemble has achieved a level of excellence of which York can rightly be proud.”
The program opens with Suddenly Everyone…, a piece that ranges from highly structured to completely free improvisation. It was created collaboratively, with the YDE providing the movement and music, and Small contributing structure and direction.
Set to a mix of music from the films Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins, York dance Professor Darcey Callison’s Down The Road takes inspiration and physicality from the rabbit holes and yellow brick roads encountered in life.
Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a surprising, demanding trio choreographed and performed by YDE members Yvon Allard, Miles Gosse and Nikolaos Markakis.
Undergraduate student Anne Goad’s It’s Just What You Do is a duet about true love, inspired by the choreographer’s grandparents and their 69 years of marriage.
Shae Zukiwsky, a PhD candidate in dance, joins the YDE in the performance of his new piece for large ensemble, Resistance. Through the work, he explores the concept of being an outsider and how he could move from within that – seeing as he can’t seem to move from it.
York dance student Tracy Day in Small’s ‘Tangled Dances’
The program culminates with Small’s Tangled Rags, a suite of three tender, soulful dances that the choreographer has dedicated to her father. The work is set to Three Rags, a composition by the late Canadian composer James Tenney, who taught in York’s music department, in a recording by pianist and York music professor Casey Sokol.
Tickets for the YDE show are $20 each, or $10 for students and seniors. Tickets are available by calling 416-736-5888, visiting the Fine Arts Box Office, or at the door.