Mat Rudels
Dancers spread across a dark stage, some on the floor, some standing and lifteing arms upward.
Healing through movement: from the dance 'Rapid Spins Follows I Might,' choreographed by guest artist Holly Johnston.
UW-Madison Dance Department’s Faculty Concert 2025 will feature work from Omari Carter, Li Chiao-Ping, Bradford Chin, Kate Corby and Chris Walker, as well as from guest artist Holly Johnston. The works range from films to a dance aiming for greater accessibility. Overall, the program demonstrates the breadth at play in the department.
In the summer of 2024, Omari Carter participated in a Maynard Abercych Afon (deep listening) residency program by the artist-led dance organization Maynard Abercych that brought eleven artists to Abercych, Wales. Abercych is a Welsh village of fewer than one hundred homes.
Carter will present AFON 11/RIVER 11, a multi-screen installation and site-responsive video work he created in collaboration with the Abercych community. Screenings will be before the live program.
Carter tells Isthmus in an email that “the aim was to create works in response to the local river.” Unedited footage was shown to the community on the final day of the residency, “in the hope that they would be able to help me shape what the final edit/film would look like.”
The work consists mainly of a solo performed by second-year dance-degree student Jon Rodd from the London Contemporary Dance School, although “the community members feature at the end of the piece, as a reminder that site-specific work includes the people in the site.” Carter will use two screens to show his process: one screen will show the raw footage presented to the village community and the other will show the edited final film.
In Li Chiao-Ping’s dance, Wabi Sabi, student dancers — two men and six women — acknowledge what is broken and help each other to heal. The dancers bring their private stories to the graceful, at times intricate, movements. The result should be a healing experience. Li Chiao-Ping says that her dance is inspired by the goal of healing a broken world with good deeds, as well as the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi.
New faculty member Bradford Chin, a native of San Francisco, specializes in “disability dance.” Chin has previously worked on filmed dance, accessible to people with hearing and vision disabilities. At the faculty concert, Chin will present a dance called POMPOUS inspired by the pomp of kings and their courts. It’s set to the music of court composer George Frideric Handel and uses surtitles, “in the spirit of opera productions,” he tells Isthmus in an email. The dance experiments with what can be done with surtitles or supertitles “as part of a more accessible artistic experience,” Chin writes.
Kate Corby helped found and is a coordinator of the UW-Madison’s Community Arts Collaboratory which partners with elementary schools and community centers to offer “art-making opportunities for youth to cultivate wellness and advocate for social change,” as it’s described on the program’s website. Some of those experiences may make their way into her dance, which explores aspects of girlhood in the United States.
Chris Walker is founding artistic director of the First Wave program in the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives at UW-Madison. First Wave is a full-tuition, four-year scholarship program that allows students to develop as artists and show their art to communities as a form of service learning. He will present a dance “that reflects on shared growth and explores how we elevate one another,” according to promotional material provided by the dance department.
Guest artist Holly Johnston came to Madison from California for a three-week residency in November. She synthesizes the art of dance with the science of healing social and physical traumas through body movement. During her residency, she created a work with 12 student dancers. This part of the program reflects an overall theme throughout the faculty concert that dance can be a path to healthy living in community, as well as a way to bring people together and heal individuals and groups.
The concerts will take place in Lathrop Hall Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 20-22. Tickets are available here and at the door one hour before the performances. Tickets for a livestream are also available. AFON 11/RIVER 11 will be screened free (no ticket needed) on the first floor of Lathrop Hall, Thursday 6:30 -7:50 p.m., Friday 4-7:50 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m.-2:20 p.m.
