The University News

Issue date: 4/21/08 Section: Culture

Media Credit: Nicole English

On April 18 and 19, the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance presented a variety of original and classical works in its annual Spring Dance Concert to an appreciative audience. The annual Spring Dance Concert functions as a capstone performance for students, allowing them to showcase the skills they have honed over the entire academic year.

This year's Spring Dance Concert included an American classic, "Our Town," based on the play by Thornton Wilder, with music by Aaron Copland, and choreographed by the late Philip Jerry, a popular dancer and choreographer, who is perhaps best known for his work with the Joffrey Ballet. This contemporary ballet resurrects dance as a narrative story-telling art form, using home-spun, everyday, commonly-shared themes for its storyline: family, school-life, first job, first love, marriage, birth and death.

Following the play faithfully, Jerry's choreography portrays the lives of common folk in a generic small town in middle America. Central to the various subplots is the romance of Emily Webb and George Gibbs (alternately played by Mary Marshall/Benjamin Biswell and Maureen Duke/Matthew Carney on subsequent nights), budding under the watchful eyes of the townsfolk, including Mrs. Soames and Simon Stimson (alternately played by Kaely Tieri/Vance Baldwin and Amanda McMaster/Christopher Page on subsequent nights).

The ballet does a remarkable job of translating the story from a play to dance, and reminds us that art and dance were usually used to communicate ideas, feelings and stories that we could all share. Portraying life was a central and universal theme. While this is a contemporary dance piece, in a time when it is perhaps unfashionable to tell a story in dance, this piece reminds of those basic universal truths we all tend to share.

In the words of Thornton Wilder's Mrs. Soames character, "My, wasn't life awful - and wonderful."

nenglish@unews.com

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