Dancing Around COVID-19: Talk and Reunion with Susan Marshall, Silas Riener ’06, and David Roussève ’81
Event Overview
Dates
May 21, 2021
Hours
4:45 - 6:30 PM (EDT)
Location
Admission
For Princeton students/alumni only.
Join Director and Professor of Dance Susan Marshall, in conversation with alumni and professional choreographers/dancers Silas Riener ’06 and David Roussève ’81. Riener and Roussève will address the ways in which Princeton did and didn’t prepare them for their lives in dance, and the personal challenges of being artists and educators in the current climate. Professor Marshall will also reflect upon the extraordinary achievements of Lewis Center for the Arts dance students during this academic year, who, like artists worldwide, adapted their art-making in response to COVID-19 limitations, raising wider conversations about the meaning and future of live performance.
Breakout rooms organized by graduation years will be provided after the conversation for arts alumni to virtually reunite with their former classmates.
Viewers in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at least 2 weeks in advance at LewisCenter@princeton.edu.
ABOUT THE GUEST ARTISTS
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor
Choreographer Susan Marshall has been a professor and Director of the Program in Dance at Princeton since 2009. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim, and three “Bessie” Awards, her work has entered the repertory of major dance companies including Nederlands Dans Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Marshall’s signature works Arms and Kiss are still performed by companies internationally, nearly thirty years after their creation. Her ongoing impact on the field of dance is recognized in the dance history tomes No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century, and 50 Contemporary Choreographers.
Her dance group Susan Marshall & Company has performed extensively in theaters throughout the United States, Europe and Japan with recent performances in NYC at Brooklyn Academy of Music, and nationally at venues such as the Kennedy Center, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and Peak Performances at Montclair State University. Rhythm Bath, her current collaborative project grounded in conversations with members of the neurodiverse community, is a performance-installation that explores rhythmic entrainment, interpersonal synchrony, and the potential effect on the nervous system of observing other’s rhythmic movement.
Photo courtesy Silas Riener
Silas Riener graduated from Princeton University in 2006. As a dancer he has worked with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, Rebecca Lazier, Kota Yamazaki, Tere O’Connor, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey. He was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) from November 2007 until its closure at the end of 2011, and he received a 2012 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for his solo performance in Cunningham’s Split Sides. While performing with MCDC, Silas completed his MFA in Dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (2008). Since 2010 he has collaborated with Rashaun Mitchell. In 2013 along with Rashaun Mitchell he was named one of Dance Magazine‘s “25 to Watch.” He is a licensed stager for the Merce Cunningham Trust.
Photo courtesy David Roussève
Choreographer/writer/director/performer David Roussève is a magna cum laude grad of Princeton, Class of 1981, and a Guggenheim Fellow. His dance/theater company REALITY has performed throughout the UK, Europe, S. America, and the U.S including three commissions for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Next Wave Festival.” Commissions include Houston Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, Cleo Parker Robinson, Dancing Wheels, Atlanta Ballet, and Ilkhom Theater Co. of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 2017 David choreographed Kurt Weil’s “Lost in the Stars” for director Anne Bogart, SITI company, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. His evening-length REALITY work “Halfway to Dawn: The Billy Strayhorn Project” premiered in 2018 at REDCAT in Los Angeles and is currently touring internationally. David has created three short films, the most recent screening at festivals in 11 countries and receiving 10 awards including four for Best Film. Other awards include a “Bessie” Award, Creative Capital Fellowship, three Horton Awards, CalArts/Alpert Award in Dance, and seven consecutive NEA fellowships. David was published in collections by Bantam Press and Rutledge Press, was twice a Fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter Lab, and just completed “Twit,” a feature screenplay based on his 2014 dance/theater work “Stardust.” At UCLA Roussève is Professor of Choreography in the department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. For the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture David has served as Associate Dean (2014-15), Acting Dean (2015), and Interim Dean (2015-17).
