PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Contacts:
April 19, 2005 Deborah Reshotko, Artistic Director

Esther Gross, Program Director
303-722-0902

TWELFTH ANNIVERSARY SEASON DANCE CONCERTS: Denver-based modern dance company presents
"The Puzzle and the Path: New Dances to Live Music "

Denver, Colorado — SPEAKING OF DANCE is pleased to present "The Puzzle and the Path: New Dances to Live Music" on Saturday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, May 15, at 2:30 p.m. SOD is excited to be celebrating our twelfth anniversary season this year with these concerts, held at the Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 South Allison Parkway. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, students and CDA members, and $5 for children under 12. For more information, please call 303-722-0902. For ticket reservations, please call 303-987-7845 or order tickets on-line www.lakewood.org.
The concert begins with two duets danced to the singing of ASTER Women’s Chamber Choir. This marks the second year that SOD has collaborated with this excellent group, headed by Christina Lynn-Craig. SOD will dance “Three Hymns from the Rig Veda” by Gustav Holst, and “Spring Night’s Moon,” a new score by Longmont composer Deborah Schmit-Lobis commissioned by SOD and ASTER jointly. The text for this piece is five poems about the moon by the Japanese Buddhist poet Izumi Shikibu, ca. 974-ca. 1034. Next is the title dance, “The Puzzle and the Path,” a duet for Reshotko and William Starn to a score by Dave Willey of Boulder. This dance explores the puzzle-like nature of life, and how putting together puzzle pieces helps us shift directions as we tread on life’s path.
Rounding out the first half of the show is “Yellow Fruit Improvisation,” an improvisation in dance and music inspired by the tastes of certain fruits (and the dancers’ desires to get more and more of these tastes). This piece will be performed to the musical improvisations of Jesse Manno. Reshotko will also perform her acclaimed dance, “Life of the Phoenix” to Jon Stubbs’ music. This dance tells about the Phoenix from the bird's point of view and uses the story as a metaphor for life, change and growing older. The final dance on the program is a premiere, "The Mysteries of the Music," for six dancers and viola de gamba player Anne Marie Morgan. Morgan will play the music of Bach, Telemann and Marais as the dancers dance a nimble and sometimes whimsical interpretation of this classic Baroque music.
Dancers are Gwylym Cano, Tamara Freund, Lara Hayes-Giles, Melissa Plotnick, Deborah Reshotko, Becky Sievers, William Starn and Jennifer Thompson.
Support for these concerts is provided in part by the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, The Denver Foundation, the Denver Ballet Guild, the Janus Foundation, the Lederer Foundation, and the City and County of Denver.