‘Winterdances...Past Moving Forward’
UW-Milwaukee, Mainstage Theater
2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Jan. 23-26
7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday
The 50th Anniversary of the influential UWM Dance Department will be honored with contrasting works choreographed by five of the program’s graduates and current faculty and danced by its students. Artistic Director Christina Briggs Winslow describes a multi-faceted cultural exploration that represents the dancers diversity, from the jazzy comedy of Carrie Lande Homuth’s brothel antics to the serious abstraction of Maria Gillespie’s exploration of leave-taking and the need for “connection, even as we affirm our independence”—from Debra Loewen’s reflection on the amount of time we spend before TV screens to Keely Garfield’s Zen-inspired dance about adjusting to conditions as they present themselves. Briggs Winslow’s dance draws on her young dancers’ lives, she says. “We talk about risk, how to put yourself at the edge without going too far.”