November 5, 2010/ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Liz Wooley, wooleyl@uncsa.edu/336-734-2924 WORKS BY AWARD-WINNING CHOREOGRAPHER DOUG ELKINS TO HIGHLIGHT FALL DANCE AT UNCSA, NOV. 16–20 Students Will Tour Two Pieces to California in March 2011
WINSTON-SALEM –Internationally renowned choreographer Doug Elkins is restaging excerpts from one of his most acclaimed works, Fräulein Maria, and is recreating two of his “lost” pieces, for this year’s University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) Fall Dance Concert, Nov. 16-20. Performances will be in the Agnes de Mille Theatre on the UNCSA campus at 1533 South Main St., Winston-Salem, at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 16-20 and at 2 p.m. Nov. 20. Call the UNCSA Box Office at 336-721-1945 for reservations, or visit www.uncsa.edu/performances to purchase tickets online. Elkins arrived on campus in October, at the invitation of School of Dance Dean Ethan Stiefel, to restage “The Maria Trio” and “Do Re Mi” from Fräulein Maria, and to recreate the two “lost” pieces, Center My Heart and Narcoleptic Lovers. Accompanying him were his stagers Carolyn Cryer, Lisa Nicks and Fritha Pengelly, all members of Doug Elkins Choreography. Brenda Daniels, assistant dean for contemporary dance in the School of Dance at UNCSA, is assisting.	Center My Heart as danced by members of Doug Elkins' company. Photo by Lois Greenfield.
“I want everyone to know,” Elkins said, “how much all of us appreciate this amazing opportunity to put the repertory back together and on such a great bunch of young dancers.” The whimsical Fräulein Maria is a brilliant and hilarious take on The Sound of Music. Conceived by Elkins, with contributions from co-directors Barbara Karger and Michael Preston, the piece features eight dancers and the beloved music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.  Narcoleptic Lovers is set on five women and five men, and features an eclectic sound score including spoken word by Lenny Bruce; original composition by Mio Morales; and recordings by Urban Species, Mozart and Sinead O’Connor. Center My Heart is danced to the music of the late, great Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This piece features four women and four men. Continuing the School of Dance’s collaboration with Elkins, eight student dancers will tour to Santa Barbara, Calif., to perform March 18-19, 2011, in an evening of Mr. Elkins’ work at the Lobero Theatre. The students will be traveling courtesy of Doug Elkins Choreography. Doug Elkins is a two-time New York Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award-winning choreographer who began his career as a B-Boy, touring the world with break dance groups New York Dance Express and Magnificent Force, among others. In 1988, he founded the Doug Elkins Dance Company with Lisa Nicks and Jane Weiner, which performed nationally and internationally for 15 years before disbanding in 2003.  Elkins is a recipient of significant choreographic commissions and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Performance Network, Jerome Foundation, Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation, Dance Magazine Foundation, Metropolitan Life/American Dance Festival, Hartford Foundation, Arts International, The Greenwall Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, a Brandeis University Creative Arts Medal, and the Martha Hill Award for Career Achievement.  He has taught and choreographed extensively in the United States and Europe and has created original work for Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company, Flying Karamazov Brothers, MaggioDanza, Pennsylvania Ballet, Union Dance and CanDoCo of London, as well as a number of university dance companies and the renowned Mini & Maxi of Holland. Elkins’ theatre work includes collaborations with Joanne Akalaitis and Philip Glass, Robert Woodruff, Pavel Dubrusky, Annie Hamburger, Molly Smith, Craig Lucas, David Henry Hwang, Michael Preston and Barbara Karger, Anne Kaufman, and Arin Arbus.  A graduate of the State University of New York at Purchase, he received his MFA in Dance from Hollins University/American Dance Festival in 2007.  He currently teaches at The Beacon School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where his tenure is the subject of “Where the Dance Is,” a short film by Marta Renzi. For more information go to www.dougelkinschoreography.com. The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from high school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. Internationally renowned conductor John Mauceri has been chancellor of UNCSA since 2006. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St., Winston-Salem. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu. ### This production of Fall Dance is a featured part of Six Days in November, which is supported in part by SunTrust Bank.
Back