Masters candidates bring ‘Manyio new dance performances

Friday, May 3,1996

World Arts and Cultures showcase contemporary danceBy Elizabeth
Bull

Daily Bruin Contributor

"’My mother rushed my father to the hospital and when she told
me it frightened me.’"

From this sentence master of arts candidate Julie Carson
developed a dance full of power and emotion.

"In a choreography class we started out with just creating a
sentence, then put movement to the words," she explains. "The
sentence I made up was very close to me ­ my mom had just
called and told me that she rushed my father to the hospital. The
dance is about how frightening it is to realize that your parents
aren’t going to be with you your entire life. It was about the
inevitability of the mortality of your parents, and it just turned
into a serious study on something that happens in life."

Carson, who studies dance education, will perform with other
students who have created equally personal and original pieces in
the M.A. dance concert this weekend.

Each performer and choreographer involved plans to bring a part
of themselves and their background to the concert, a result of the
variety of the World Arts and Cultures department.

"We have this really diverse group of people and all of these
different kinds of dance coming together," Carson says.

"For the concert a teacher in the department will do a Mexican
folklorico piece, a Bharata Natyam dancer has choreographed a duet
that was performed in India last year and a choreographer even
directed a piece she calls a, ‘Brazilian neo-traditional
extravaganza,’" she adds.

Ultimately, the graduate students hope to produce a show that
encompasses the many emotions and world cultures among UCLA
students and the community.

"The concert represents not only the diversity and culture on
campus but the diversity and culture in the city," Carson says.
"It’s a terrific cultural event and hopefully it will open eyes to
what’s going on not only in UCLA’s dance department, but what’s
going on in Los Angeles and the world."

Originally from Singapore, Ching Ching Teo is part of the
department and plans to perform a combination of classical ballet
and modern dance.

"The music is very powerful and moving to me and the dance
follows the structure of the music," she emphasizes. "It’s very
personal and it’s about losing something that I would describe as
an ideal and then the pain of that loss when you try to come to
terms with it. I think that people who come to see it will respond
to it too."

Different from M.F.A. performances, the M.A. concert seeks to
showcase the work and talent of graduate students from departments
and fields other than dance and choreography. And according to Teo,
this makes the concert even more accessible to all students ­
even those without dance experience.

"It’s an opportunity for us to show what we can do on the
dancing side of things ­ not just the academics," Teo says.
"We are all from different parts of the world, and this is a chance
for us to come together and say, ‘Hey, this is what we can
do.’"

DANCE: "With Many Visions," an M.A. Dance Concert this Friday
and Saturday at 8 p.m. in room 200 of the Dance Building. Admission
is free. For more info., call (310) 206-1342.