APPLETON, WIS. — Love and courtship is a tangled, exhilarating mess as Lawrence University’s dance company in residence, Wild Space Dance Company of Milwaukee, presents Various States of Undress at 8:00 p.m. January 19 in Stansbury Theatre. Tickets for this production are $10 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and students. Tickets are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, located in the Music-Drama Center, or by phone at 920-832-6749. If available, tickets will also be sold at the box office beginning one hour before the performance.
From uncertainty to intimacy and back again, Wild Space reveals these states through full-bodied dance, inventive choreography, and clever wordplay. In the title piece, “Various States of Undress,” fictional characters John and Mary are in love; or at least that is what the writer thinks as he creates them in his imagination. But the course of true love does not run smooth in this text and dance work inspired by Diane Schoemperlen’s “How to Write a Serious Novel About Love.” There are infidelities and insecurities as John, Mary, and their creator wryly navigate the risks and rewards of love, romance, and the interior monologue. Played by Wild Space Dance Company members, Randy Talley and Laura Murphy, John and Mary take direction–and sometimes give it–to guest performer Scott Howland as the writer.
The performance also features “One Time at Lunch” by Artistic Director Debra Loewen, a light-hearted quartet set to the offbeat country songs of Terry Allen, and works by company members, Monica Rodero, Dan Schuchart, and Katie Sopoci. Guest artist, Sofi Askenazi, performs in Sopoci’s choreographed, “The Existential Crisis of the American Youth” (or “I wish I was a cat”).
Wild Space Dance Company has intrigued audiences for 20 years as one of Wisconsin’s most dynamic and creative performing companies.
