To get ready for Sweet Briar College’s Spring Dance Concert on April 21 and 22, dance program director Mark Magruder embarked on a coast-to-coast collaboration.

At SBC, Magruder choreographed movements to music that composer Eric Chappelle wrote from his West Coast home. The two communicated by phone. But the finished dance – one of several on the concert program – brings both artists to the same stage, with Chappelle performing his own music for the piece.

“Having a composer actually playing live is pretty damn cool,” Magruder said.

Chappelle is the music director of the Creative Dance Center in Seattle and its well-known children’s performing company, Kaleidoscope Dance Co. The center was founded in 1981 by Sweet Briar alumna Anne Green Gilbert.

Chappelle also is one of this year’s fellows at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He arrived at the VCCA campus near Sweet Briar in plenty of time to polish the performance with Magruder and eight student dancers who’ll join him on stage.

The piece, which Magruder calls “Phoenix,” involves lots of color projected onto lots of fabric. “Instead of concentrating only on the dancers, it’ll concentrate on the shapes the dancers make with the fabric,” Magruder said.

The title reflects the bird imagery that Magruder creates with 10-foot fabric wings to open the performance. By the end, dancers join to form a bird figure with wings stretching more than 30 feet.

The program also features choreography by dance professor Ella Magruder, senior Tacy Bolton, junior Betty Skeen, sophomore Heather Coley and first-year student Nicole Pham, as well a dance video by Skeen. The video combines elements of dance, music, film techniques and theater.

The Spring Dance Concert will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22 in the Babcock Fine Arts Center, Murchison Lane Auditorium. Admission is free and the public is welcome.

For more information, e-mail mmagruder@sbc.edu or call (434) 381-6150.