The annual Mini Locally Grown Dance (MLGD), featuring performances by students and faculty from the Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA), will premiere virtually, Dec. 3-5 at 7:30 p.m.
MLGD features two faculty group works, each consisting of nine student solos choreographed in collaboration between faculty and performers. There also will be an individual video work by Ph.D. student Mariaenrica Giannuzzi, which was choreographed by Giannuzzi in Ithaca and friend Dorian Chavez in Brussels during quarantine in spring 2020.
Providing commentary on the current political and social climates, the works also reflect the specificity of teaching and studying dance online.
The events are free and open to the public. Tickets may be reserved at ; a link to the performance will be emailed to ticketholders prior to showtime, and the performances will be available to view after the premiere weekend.
Working within such a highly collaborative and physical art form, PMA faculty Jumay Chu and Byron Suber and their performers have had to develop unique ways of bridging, as Chu puts it, “the wild chasms of distance” across cyberspace.
“Usually when we work with students, we can go around them, observe them from many different perspectives,” Chu said. “Now, forced to work through Zoom, we can see them from one aspect only. This three-dimensional process has now become problematically two-dimensional for us.”
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– Sara Pistono
