Sweet Briar dancers Mallory Duff ’10 (from left), Sara Buttine ’11, Tiffany Miller ’11 and Aili McGill ’10 perform in Sweet Briar’s Fall 2007 Dance Concert. Photo by Andrew Wilds (http://www.andrewwildsphotography.com).

Sweet Briar’s Spring Dance Concert Puts Accent on Music

JENNIFER McMANAMAY
College relations staff writer

Clay Taliaferro

Sweet Briar College will present its Spring Dance Concert at 8 p.m. Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5 in Murchison Lane Auditorium. Admission is free and the public is welcome.

The show will feature choreography and direction by Lynchburg native and retired Duke University professor Clay Taliaferro. He is teaching at Sweet Briar during spring semester while professors Mark and Ella Magruder are on sabbatical.

In addition to performances and choreography by SBC dance students, Taliaferro has invited Kristen Foote as a guest artist. Foote is a member of the New York-based José Limón Dance Co., where Taliaferro spent 10 years as an artistic director and principal dancer.

Taliaferro chose four pieces encompassing his own choreography and others to fit his theme, “Dancing Inside the Music.” The diverse compositions will take the audience from the “spirited strains” of traditional black gospel to the “sublime song of Franz Schubert,” he said.

“On My Way” is a dance based on a Negro spiritual originally choreographed for a trio by Donald McKayle, whose company Taliaferro also danced with for several years. He adapted the piece for more than 15 dancers, which gives a “density” to the message of marching to freedom that “does my heart good when I watch [it],” he said.

“Etude” is a tribute to Limón that was choreographed to Schubert’s music by the Limón company’s artistic director Carla Maxwell. Foote will perform the piece with Sweet Briar students.

The unifying theme was inspired by Taliaferro’s desire to make both performers and audience acutely aware of the music, but also in part by his students. “I want to expand their ideas of the music they choose to which to dance,” he said.

Having Foote perform also is for the benefit of his students, several of whom will be presenting their own choreographed works. “It’s incredibly important that they feel a thread from where they are today to the possibility that they can be a professional dancer,” he said, noting that “dance ‘slash’ the arts” often are not seen as “major undertakings.”

About 10 student pieces will be performed. Although they choose their own music, he will try to guide them in how best to use it. Audiences should be able to recognize that the music is integral to the dance, not arbitrary, he said.

“That’s why I use the word choice, because [students] need to know that they have a lot more choices than they realize.”

For more information, contact Taliaferro at ctaliaferro@sbc.edu or call Ext. 6150.