Written on the Body in Alabama

A belated alert from Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama: the Dance COLective's Brontë-inspired piece Written on the Body has been performed yesterday, March 29, and will be performed again today March 30:

The Dance COLEctive presents Written on the Body
Selected Works by Southern Danceworks
March 29-30, 2008
Harrison Theatre, Samford University Campus
*Download the Full Press Release HERE*

Chicago-based The Dance COLEctive (TDC), under the artistic direction of Alabama School of Fine Arts graduate Margi Cole, joins forces with Southern Danceworks (SDW) in a collaborative concert on March 29-30 at Samford University’s Harrison Theatre. The performance features Cole’s seminal work Written on the Body, two other TDC pieces, and selected repertory by Southern Danceworks at Samford University’s Harrison Theatre on Saturday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 30 at 2:30 p.m.

The Dance COLEctive will focus activities on Written on the Body, a work that uses the lives of the Brontë sisters as a point of departure in its exploration of gender roles and stereotypes. The hidden identities of authors Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, as well as the hardships they endured throughout their lives in Victorian England, provide the framework. Cole interprets the Brontës’ masculine and feminine personas, using images of power, strength, vulnerability, and intimacy, exploring how each attribute can be related through movement.

From the press release:

“A pseudonym represents a way of disguising one’s identity to remain invisible,” Cole explains. “It is also a way to represent yourself as something other than what you are in order to be accepted. During the 19th century, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë’s pseudonyms—Ellis, Currer, and Acton Bell—allowed the three sisters to conceal their identities under masculine persona. The work is titled Written on the Body because our bodies are where our truest histories are written.”

EDIT
A brief review can be read in The Birmingham News:

With "Written on the Body," Cole examined the role of identity in Victorian times through projected imagery of the three Bronte sisters, who used male pseudonyms to skirt prejudice against female authors.Three of the six female dancers were clad in Victorian dresses, the others in suits. Undercurrents of nostalgia, morbidity and 19th century religious values were reflected in chilling video images of cemeteries, churches and headstones. Bodies lined up in rows, and shadows of dancers projected on the screen further added to the work's ghostly feel, as did the minimalist score by Kevin O'Donnell. (Michael Huebner)

Categories: Dance