This past September, as part of the Lydia Hao Emerging Artists Series, LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts and LMU Dance hosted the Bessie-nominated dance performance light and desire, choreographed by Colleen Thomas and featuring an internationally-renowned cast of female-identifying dancers. The program was a 55-minute multi-media performance that used movement, text, theatrical masks, and film to tell and uplift the narratives of women who have resisted oppression.
The cast included performer-filmmaker, Carla Forte (Venezuela); dancer-choreographer Ildiko Toth (Hungary / Germany); dance curator, critic, and choreographer Joanna Lesnierowska (Poland); filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer Ermira Goro (Albania/ Greece); and choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker (and LMU professor and chair of dance) Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo (USA), as well as a chorus comprised of LMU student dancers. A Q&A and reception with the dancers followed the opening night performance.
light and desire was created and directed by Colleen Thomas, a Barnard Columbia professor with a performing arts background as a seasoned choreographer and dancer. Her work has been presented both in the U.S. and abroad, including Europe, Asia, and South America. The show was developed with the purpose of showing “how women artists cope under oppressive power structures” while also taking “a personal and universal look at women artists and asking how women hold, embody, and express power by creating their own form of radical expression during fascist times.”
The performance at LMU was both an interdisciplinary and professionalizing experience for the LMU students who were able to be a part of the project by performing alongside several seasoned dance veterans. According to LeBlanc Loo, bringing light and desire to LMU was designed so the students could have an opportunity “to activate socially and culturally relevant themes around women’s rights and in our current socio-political time by engaging performatively and conceptually with the production for a deeply embodied and interdisciplinary pedagogical experience.”
LMU Chorus Dancers: Gabriella Alleyne, Rory Dawson, Milan Fillipi, Aviana Goodman-Fish, Yinny Lam, Piper Leistiko, Than Povi Martinez, Celia McNulty, Sophia Pizzuti, and Makena Robison
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