The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Dance at Princeton University presents Reverence, a senior dance thesis collaborative concert premiering new and adapted works. The concert will include a group piece by New York City-based choreographer and past Princeton Arts Fellow Netta Yerushalmy; a solo work by “Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch” choreographer and member of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham Keerati Jinakunwiphat, performed by senior Margaret King; an adapted duet by former BalletX dancer/choreographer Caili Quan, performed by seniors Abby de Riel and Tori Edington; a solo work by Philadelphia based-choreographer Lily Kind, performed by senior Ally Wonski; a solo work by American Ballet Theatre soloist Zhong-Jing Fang, performed by senior Angie Sheehan; and a new group piece by senior Molly Gibbons.
Performances will take place on Friday, March 18, at 8:00 p.m. and on Saturday, March 19, at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. in the Hearst Dance Theater at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus. This event is free and open to the public; however, advance tickets are required through University Ticketing. Tickets are available to the public starting March 9. Additionally, all guests must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to the maximum extent, which now includes a COVID booster shot for all those eligible to receive it, and all guests must wear a mask when indoors. Please note that dancers will be unmasked while performing on stage.
Seniors in the Program in Dance are pursuing certificates in dance in addition to their major areas of study. Their work in Reverence represents their senior thesis work in dance either in the areas of performance or choreography. Additional seniors are choreographing evening length works or completing scholarly research in dance.
Keerati Jinakunwiphat’s new solo piece, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” initially references the relationships that flow through our lives in a nostalgic frame, but the dancer comes to realize she is also seeing and looking back on different, past versions of herself. The piece will be performed by senior Margaret King, who is majoring in English. Jinakunwiphat is a Thai American artist, freelance choreographer, and dancer with A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham. Dance Magazine named her one of its “25 to Watch.” Jinakunwiphat received her B.F.A. from the Conservatory of Dance at the State University of New York, Purchase, and studied dance at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Springboard Danse Montreal. She has worked with artists such as Nicole von Arx, Trisha Brown, Jasmine Ellis, Shannon Gillen, Andrea Miller, Kevin Wynn, and Doug Varone. Jinakunwiphat has presented original choreography at the American Dance Guild Festival, Triskellion Arts, Dixon Place, Dance Gallery Festival, Battery Dance Festival, and the Joyce Theater.
Caili Quan’s adapted duet, “Tonché,” is set to “Jamaica Farewell” by Harry Belafonte and is inspired by family. The piece is set in a timeless place where we can be with the ones we love who are no longer with us. The dancers in the piece are Abby de Riel, an English major, and Tori Edington, a physics major. A performer and choreographer based in New York, Quan has choreographed for BalletX, Nashville Ballet, Own/Cox Dance Group, and is a Creative Associate at The Julliard School. She served as an Artistic Partnership Initiative Fellow and a Toulmin Creator at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. When she was a dancer with BalletX, Quan performed new works by Matthew Neenan, Nicolo Fonte, Gabrielle Lamb, Penny Saunders, Trey McIntyre, and danced at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Vail Dance Festival, Belgrade Dance Festival, and DEMO by Damian Woetzel at the Kennedy Center. Additionally, her short documentary film, Mahålang, that wove familial conversations of her Chamorro Filipino upbringing on Guam with scenes from BalletX’s “Love Letter,” was accepted into the Asian American International Film Festival and Center for Asian American Media Festival.
Lily Kind’s new solo piece, “Pretty Ugly Starburst Girls,” is a diptych of new work made for and in collaboration with senior Ally Wonski, who is a music major and pursuing certificates in theater, music theater and vocal performance in addition to dance. Kind is a dancer, choreographer, producer, historian, and clown who lives and works in Philadelphia. Her work has been presented by Table Gallery in Chicago, Miami Lights Projects, the Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company, the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, and The Baltimore Museum of Art. Kind has been an artist-in-residence at SoundSpace Performing Arts in Philadelphia and a dance writer-in-residence at Dance Italia, based in both Italy and New York City. She has provided movement direction for Play Co, New York City; The Baltimore Rock Opera; Annex Theater; and Single Carrot Theater. She currently teaches at Ragtag Empire and Urban Movement Arts, where she serves as all around co-captain of adult programming.
Zhong-Jing Fang’s solo piece “Along the Way” is a dance about one’s journey of discovering the depth of her passion, noting that passion can transcend and transform, but never leaves us, only growing deeper as our life unfolds. The piece will be performed by Angie Sheehan, a senior in the school of Public and International Affairs. Fang is a soloist with the American Ballet Theater. She joined ABT in 2002 after training at the Shanghai Ballet School and graduating from the Performing Arts College of Shanghai Drama University with a major in ballet. In 2000, Fang won both the Prix de Lausanne international ballet competition and the Rudolph Nureyev Foundation Prize at the Ninth International Ballet Competition of Paris. In 2001, she won first prize in the junior division of the Helsinki International Ballet Competition and first place in the junior division of the Shanghai International Ballet Competition.
Students in rehearsal for a new work by Princeton senior Molly Gibbons, “Mind Furniture,” that reckons with the orthodoxies, thoughts, choices, and meanings that constitute the inner life and experiencing the drama of the soul, part of the senior dance concert, Reverence, on March 18 & 19. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Molly Gibbon’s new group piece, “Mind Furniture,” was inspired by St. Augustine’s Confessions. In them, St. Augustine pleads with God, saying, “Have pity on me and heal me, for you see that I have become a problem to myself, and this is the ailment from which I suffer.” “Mind Furniture” explores becoming a “problem to oneself,” reckoning with the orthodoxies, thoughts, choices, and meanings that constitute the inner life and experiencing drama of the soul. Set to original music composed by Vince di Mura, the Lewis Center’s resident composer, the piece is a depiction of the inner world, especially as experienced during a challenging time. Gibbons, who is also performing in the piece, is a senior studying law and legal systems in the School of Public and International Affairs. The three other Princeton dancers in the piece are Yukiko Chevray, Natalia Lalin, and Elena Remez.
Netta Yerushalmy’s new work, “an ode to these dancers,” synthesizes disparate movement sequences into a new patchwork of bodily instincts and idioms. With an original score by Ryan Wolfe, this piece focuses on celebrating movement in its “multi-form-ness” and turns attention to the student performers in their last undergraduate term at Princeton. The piece also excavates the particular dancing journeys of the five dancers and utilizes movement culled from their embodied histories. In addition to Edington, Sheehan and Wonski, the cast includes senior Sarah Witzman, a mechanical and aerospace engineering major studying robotics and intelligent systems, and chemical and biological engineering graduate student Jane Brown, who is also a past dance certificate student. Yerushalmy is a New York-based choreographer and performer and a 2019-2021 Princeton Arts Fellow. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jerome Robbins Bogliasco Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, commissions from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life program, a Six Points Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Yerushalmy’s newest major work, “MOVEMENT,” will premiere March 11-17 at PEAK Performances in Montclair, New Jersey.
The performance venue is wheelchair accessible and the March 19 performance at 2:00 p.m. will be open captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are asked to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
