All the Right Moves UA dancers tiptoe toward a new home in a week abounding with dance performances. By Margaret Regan Right now the most visible sign of the University of Arizona's dance program is the construction site at the east end of campus, along Campbell Avenue. By next school year, though, the steel girders and piles of dirt will have metamorphosed into a powerhouse center for dance in Tucson. A new 300-seat dance theater will host concerts, while upstairs a state-of-the-art dance studio with glass walls will give the university--and the community--a window onto the program. "It will be a dance gift to the university," says jazz dance professor Michael Williams. The UA Dance Division's students, who enter the competitive program by audition (Williams says there's a 10-percent acceptance rate), will rehearse in the windowed studio in full view of onlookers on the Mall. And local dance fans, instead of sitting on bleachers in the uncomfortable Ina Gittings studio, or craning their necks against the poor sight lines in Crowder Hall, will sit in splendor when the students perform in the new theater, "designed to be a specifically dance space," Williams says. The $9 million cost of the complex has already been raised, with $3 million in seed money kicked in by a single donor, Williams says, $3 million coming from the university, and $3 million from additional fundraising. While the budget prohibited the larger theater that the dance folks wanted, the 30,000-square-foot building will also house scene and costume shops, dressing rooms, a movement therapy room and the open-to-view studio. The intimate performing space, which will be shared with UA Opera Theater, will be the only full-fly theater on campus besides Centennial Hall. Ed Flores "Cycles," choreographed by Sam Watson. "We'll be able to put on all types of performance productions," Williams enthuses. Meantime, the October 10 Jazz in Az concert kicks off the dance division's final season as dance refugees without a performance home of their own. (It also opens a weekend chockablock with dance; see below for additional concerts.) This show, at Crowder Hall, is the only public component of a weekend-long jazz dance festival and student workshop. The concert program offers up a visiting dance troupe from Switzerland, several premieres and a lineup of other jazz and ballet pieces performed by the UA Dance Ensemble. Richard Havey of the Zurich Dance Theater School leads a team of a half-dozen Swiss dancers in the world premiere of his jazz piece "Rock the Mike," set to music by the European band Bran Van 3000. (Havey will also teach in the closed weekend jazz workshops, which will be attended by some 300 young dancers from around the country and abroad.) The Swiss choreographer will also present his re-staging of Jacqueline Beck's "LUV, Light Ultra Violet." The UA's Susan Quinn deploys 12 UA dancers in her "Texas Canyon," inspired by the strange boulder piles east of Tucson. A "cross between modern and jazz," according to Williams, the prizewinning piece "uses the rock formations and how they majestically balance." With music by Tucsonan Chuck Koesters, composer for Orts Theatre of Dance, and Richard Southern, the 1997 work won a best choreography award at the first U.S. Regional Ballet Association Festival. Two dancers will also perform Quinn's duet "Commitment," to the music of Caroline Lavelle. Ed Flores "The Dreaming," choreographed by Michael Williams. While the UA Dance Division has a tripartite mission of ballet, modern and jazz, Williams helped shore up its jazz strand when he arrived on campus in 1992. His work "The Dreaming" is the longest piece of the evening, he says. Its cast of six women and three men includes "two female leads, one dancing the dreamer, one the guide. It's a contemporary meld of modern, jazz and ballet." Ballet gets a full-bore outing in "Nine Lives," by UA ballet prof Melissa Lowe. The "lighthearted piece about cats has a set with four stairs, and nine dancers," Williams says. The evening's finale is by the always entertaining UA dance prof Sam Watson. Updating his jazzy "Badum Boom," Watson expanded a smaller version into a work for 10 dancers for this concert. The comical work, with Watson's trademark "unusual costuming," gyrates to a lightning-quick drum score by Richard Campbell and Harry Coon. Curtain for the Jazz in Az concert rises at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 10 at Crowder Hall in the UA's arts complex near Park and Speedway. Tickets cost $10 to $14 at the box office. For information call 621-1162. Elsewhere on campus, Bill T. Jones goes solo in his multimedia performance The Breathing Show. One of the leading lights of modern dance, the internationally known Jones, now age 50, performs his critically acclaimed autobiographical work at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 10 at Centennial Hall. Tickets cost $16 to $38, with discounts for students. At 8 p.m. Saturday, October 12 at Centennial Hall, the entire Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company collaborates with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, featuring the Orion String Quartet, in an evening of live classical music and dance. Chamber music pieces include Beethoven's String Quartet in F major, Opus 35; Shostakovich's Prelude and Scherzo for String Octet, Opus 11; and a contemporary work by European composer György Kurtág. Tickets cost $16 to $44, with discounts for students. Call the box office at 621-3341 for info on both Jones shows. See "Breathing Space," October 3, for a full story. Finally, Tucson's own up-and-coming ballet troupe, the appropriately named Ballet Tucson, stages Dance & Art, its inaugural concert of the season. Dancers include professionals and advanced students at the Ballet Arts school. Local artists have contributed visual art pieces that will be displayed on stage and be available for purchase. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 12 at the Temple of Music and Art and will repeat at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 13. All seats cost $20. For information and tickets call 903-1445. RECENTLY: Ramblin' Man - Listen to Matt Mitchell, and hear the world. - Gene Armstrong (October 3, 2002) Road Show - A Warren Anderson retrospective finds art along the American highway. - Margaret Regan (October 3, 2002) Breathing Space - Bill T. Jones to perform solo and in company at Centennial Hall. - Margaret Regan (October 3, 2002) more...