The University of Oklahoma School of Dance’s resident modern company, Contemporary Dance Oklahoma (CDO), will perform in the annual spring concert on March 5-8 at 8 p.m. and March 8 and 9 at 3 p.m. in the Rupel J. Jones Theatre. There will also be a series of pre-performance talks given by School of Dance lecturer, Cynthia Perry, on Friday, March 7 at 7 p.m. and on Sunday, March 9 at 2 p.m. in Rupel Jones Fine Arts Center room 110. In the talks, Perry will discuss Jean Erdman's 1945 modern dance trio Daughters of the Lonesome Isle within the context of Erdman's artistic career.

In the performance there will be a wide variety of repertoire consisting of a range of works from different styles. Contemporary Dance Oklahoma has brought in two guest artists, Mark Dendy and Nancy Allison, who have each set a piece on the company. Both dances will be included in the performance, along with works by Artistic Director of CDO and assistant modern dance professor, Austin Hartel, and modern dance lecturer, Derrick Minter.

Dendy came in September of 2007 and set “Ritual” on members of CDO.

However, this is not the first time Dendy’s choreography has been presented on the Rupel Jones stage. Last year’s Contemporary Dance Oklahoma spring performance also contained the Dendy piece Beat.

Mark Dendy was the artistic director of Mark Dendy Dance and Theater from 1983 to 2000, touring the world and performing in New York City at the Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center, Dance Theater Workshop and Performance Space 122 to considerable acclaim. He is the recipient of many awards and grants including the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts. In 1997, he won a New York Dance and Performance Award, “The Bessie,” for sustained achievement with his troupe. Since 2000, he has been focusing on a career in musical theater. In that year he won an OBIE, The Joseph Calloway Award, and a Drama Desk Nomination for his choreography for Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party and went on to choreograph for the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes under the direction of Graciela Danielle. Dendy choreographed the Broadway musical Taboo. In 2004 he choreographed Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, under the direction of Julie Taymor, and created “Ritual” for The Washington Ballet. Current projects include Boublil and Shonberg's The Pirate Queen, due on Broadway next season and Kirsten Childs's new musical The Miracle Brothers, at the Vineyard Theatre.

Nancy Allison visited the University of Oklahoma from January 27 to February 10 to set Jean Erdman’s famous work Daughters of the Lonesome Isle on members of CDO. “Originally created in 1945, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle offers students a living experience of dance history,” Allison commented. "Having the opportunity to perform a classic American modern dance is as important to dancers as the opportunity to perform Shakespeare is for actors or the opportunity to see a Picasso painting first hand is for visual artists,” she explained. "And it's great for the audience to have the opportunity to see these works performed live, too." she added. In addition to Erdman's distinctive movement vocabulary based on her blending of Hawaiian hula and Martha Graham technique the dance has a rhythmic complexity derived from the unusually melodic, commissioned score by John Cage on prepared piano.

Nancy Allison is a New York-based dancer, choreographer and dance educator. From 1976-985 she toured nationally and internationally as a member of Jean Erdman’s Theater of The Open Eye where she danced a principle role in Op Odyssey, a multi-media piece awarded the prize for Best Company at the 13th International Festival d’Automne in Paris. At The Open Eye she also distinguished herself as a leading interpreter of Erdman’s solo dance repertory of the 1940s and 1950s. She is the executive producer and featured dancer of the three-volume video archive Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman. Since 1986 she has performed Erdman’s solo dance repertory throughout the US and abroad and presented Erdman’s work at national conferences including the Congress on Research in Dance, the National Dance Education Association and the American Dance Legacy Institute. Her own choreography has been presented in New York City, Athens, Moscow, and Rio de Janeiro, among other locales. She has taught as a faculty member at New York University, SUNY Purchase, Laban-Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS), from which she received a CMA, Lincoln Center Institute and as a regular guest teacher in Italy for Danza Venezia. She is the editor of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Body-Mind Disciplines (Rosen Publishing) ,which was selected as one of 1999s Best Books on Alternative Health by Body & Soul magazine. She is currently editorial director of Dance & Movement Press.

The University of Oklahoma’s program in dance was founded in 1963 by Yvonne Choteau and Miguel Terekhov, former principal dancers with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. What had been a department became the School of Dance in 1998, with Mary Margaret Holt as Director. Undergraduate and graduate dance majors, along with general education students, total approximately 1000 enrollees in dance classes per semester. The School of Dance's state-of-the-art facility in the Donald W. Reynolds Performing Arts Center was completed in 2005. Jennifer Berry, Miss America 2006 and the first classical ballet dancer to hold that title, was trained at the OU School of Dance.

For more information regarding upcoming performances or guest artists in the School of Dance, please contact Olivia Martin at 325-8099 or oliviamartin@ou.edu.