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Karen A Gahagan
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The Salem Dance Ensemble presents its end of semester concert on Saturday, May 4 at 2 and 7:30 pm in the Sophia Gordon Center, 356 Lafayette Street. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10 to support the Dance Honor Society.
The concert will feature work by students and faculty and a performance by Salem State’s Community Hip Hop Ensemble. Also on the program is a new work by guest artist in residence Matthew Cumbie titled “a volume of pages.” Cumbie’s work grows out of research around the relationship between writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The title of the work is inspired by text from Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales” published in 1851.
Cumbie is a collaborative dancemaker, writer, and artist educator. His artistic research cultivates processes and experiences that are participatory and intergenerational, moving through known and unknown, and bring a poetic lens to a specifically queer experience.
The concert will also feature several student capstone projects. Sarah Soares’ capstone project is an ensemble work titled “rock, paper, RESIST; THE GAME?” utilizes the familiar game of "rock-paper-scissors" as a choreographic structure. In the work, these elements further serve as symbols for systems of power and choice-making.
Arian Cavallaro has been researching the link between music, dance, and memory. Her capstone piece, a choreographic work titled "A Look Back," reflects her own observations while working in a senior living home.
Kaija Schram has been diving deep into a process of inquiry regarding the lack of tap dance in collegiate dance programs, and how this issue both stems from and further perpetuates eurocentrism and systemic racism in dance, academia, and beyond. From her frustrations, she has crafted a solo that reveals the depth of complexity in tap dance: a form prized for its commercial entertainment value, but often underestimated for its importance as an African Diasporic innovation.
Admission to this concert is free, with a suggested donation of $10 to support the Dance Honor Society.