The annual Main Stage Dance/Theatre Festival returns with seven diverse new choreographies by graduate and undergraduate students at UC Davis. They include MFA candidate piece Who Are You? by Karl Frost. Six are by undergraduate students: Karen Angel’s La Muerte Azul, Tasha Cooke’s They Lie But Cannot Stand Up, Kristi Kilpatrick’s Salt, Kelly LeVasseur’s Child’s Play, Devin Collin’s Frustration, and Christina Noble’s Reflux.Main Stage Dance/Theatre Festival plays April 9 – 10 and April 16 – 18 with special matinees on Picnic Day, April 17. The back-to-back performances are presented by the Department of Theatre & Dance at Main Theatre, Wright Hall.

MFA candidate Karl Frost describes his choreography, Who Are You?, as “a dinner party without words.”  Who Are You? is inspired by the possibility for a developed physical conversation and dialogue beyond the verbal. It is not a composed work trying to tell the audience something. Rather, it is part of an ongoing investigation, the results of which the performers illustrate. The cast is composed of both UC Davis students and community members.

In La Muerte Azul fourth-year undergraduate Karen Angel describes one of many variables that contributed to the civil war in El Salvador where she was born. The piece focuses on land distribution before the war when peasants and rural workers were forced off their land which was given to the select wealthy few. Each of five dancers in turn portrays the elite landowner while the remaining four move in contrast as rural workers. Themes are the politics of power, a unified system (that separates), hierarchy and suffering.

Senior Tasha Cooke was inspired to choreographThey Lie But Cannot Stand Up, by thrillers and other suspenseful movies — specifically by the bathroom scenes in these genres. “Bathroom scenes are my favorite. Think about proper society type Marion Crane in Hitchcock’s Psycho. The moment she steps into that bathroom she is a completely different person no longer obliging social norms. In film after film individuality and vulnerability are displayed in the bathroom.”

They Lie But Cannot Stand Up explores this world of longing to connect within the social order and fluid distinctiveness trying to shine through it. The title is a play upon words from a Velvet Underground song, Pale Blue Eyes. 

Salt by Exercise Biology major/Dramatic Art minor Kristi Kilpatrick presents a unique perspective in its abstract view of the life of a cell. It highlights the interactions of molecules and cellular machinery, and emphasizes the day to day maintenance of a cell.

Kilpatrick explains, “Salt was born out of a lower division biology class. While studying how action potentials travel down nerve cell axons, I was inspired to create a movement work.”

Child’s Play by recent UC Davis graduate, Kelly LeVasseur, explores movement via play of childhood games and development of characters based on individuals’ roles in, and reactions to, various aspects of these games. The dance does not paint childhood games as purely innocent, but investigates the semi-sinister nature of children as they establish their identity within the playground hierarchy.

In Frustration, fourth-year choreographer Devin Collins grapples with various manifestations of the title.  The piece examines human struggles to strive for the best and how humans attack one another.

Collins explains, “The inspiration for my piece was the struggles and hardships that had followed me through the entire choreographic process. It was at first just frustration towards myself. Then as the piece progressed, it flowed into an overall concept of frustration that happens to people on a daily basis from fighting with yourself to fighting with others.”

Christina Noble’s distinctive Reflux is an exploration of façade, deception, and control as framed by Project MKULTRA, a covert CIA mind-control effort that began in the early 1950s. The program’s violent experiments during an age of supposed peace and rebirth are purported to have included electroconvulsive therapy, hypnosis, and the administration of LSD and paralytic drugs to unknowing citizens.  Many claim that these experiments have continued into the 21^st century erasing memories and crafting new personalities and perspectives, the eerie results manifesting themselves in the wars we fight, the leaders we elect, and today’s pop culture.

In Reflux, Christina, a fourth-year Design and Dramatic Art/Dance double-major, asks: “What dark truths linger behind the songs stuck in our heads? What are we perpetuating when we dress and act like our favorite stars? How do elements of power and privilege play into what we see, hear, and believe every day? How does façade shape our interactions with each other? What’s your script?”

Stage Manager Evelyn DeFelice was surprised at Christina’s subject matter. “Chrissy Noble is a very sweet, happy person.  I never expected her to focus on paranoia!  Nor did I expect the melancholic Kelly LeVassuer to create such a fun, joyous piece of work. The eight choreographers, with their own personalities and quirks, have made life interesting.”

Evelyn, a third-year Dramatic Art major, was challenged by the stage managing process, “Coordinating eight separate pieces with an all student cast, crew and designers has been hectic. I’ve learned just how key communication is.”

“I’ve been impressed with the talents of designers and crew. Each choreography lives in its own unique world. The transitions from one piece to the next are often shocking. The audience is certain to be surprised and entertained.”

Choreographer Biographies

Karen Angel (La Muerte Azul) is a fourth-year double majoring in Studio Art and Dramatic Art/Dance. This is her first performance with UC Davis Department of Theatre & Dance. She has danced in many other shows including Raices de Mi Tierra two years in a row for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

Tasha Cooke (They Lie But Cannot Stand Up) is a fourth-year Dramatic Art and Films Studies double-major with a minor in Art Studio. This is her first choreography project, and she has enjoyed the process of getting to use everything she has learned over the past four years – whether through failure or new pathways of excitement. Her past UC Davis Theatre & Dance credits include THIRDeYE Theatre Festival: Empty All The Boxes (director); Private Eyes (assistant stage manager), Mainstage Dance Theatre Festival: Computer Games (dancer); Measure for Measure (assistant stage manager). 

Karl Frost (Who Are You?) is pursuing graduate studies at UC Davis in Choreography and Human Ecology and is the director of Body Research Physical Theater.  His work varies between the purely kinesthetic and the psychological, between works for the stage and interactive performance works inviting audience members into greater degrees of agency in performance and life. Karl has been pursuing interdisciplinary performance work since the late 1980s and is recognized internationally as a leading teacher and innovator in the world of contact improvisation. Since 1997, Karl has also directed the Dancing Wilderness Project, an ongoing laboratory into the interrelationships among wilderness experience, body-based creative process, and how we choose to live our lives.

Kristi Kilpatrick (Salt) is a fourth-year Exercise Biology major/ Dramatic Art minor. She plans to pursue medicine as a career and has enjoyed being able to be part of the Department of Theatre & Dance at UC Davis. She had the privilege of performing in last year’s Main Stage Dance Theatre Festival and is very excited to be returning this year as a choreographer. She is inspired by the motions of molecules and living things, so there is no dichotomy between science and art. They are both beautiful parts of her life and she feels blessed to have such rich sources to draw from. She hopes to continue choreographing and dancing in the future.

Kelly Levasseur (Child’s Play) has been dancing for almost 20 years with training in jazz, tap, ballet, lyrical, hip hop, and modern. She graduated from UC Davis in December 2009 with a BS in Evolutionary Anthropology. Following this project she will be applying for fall 2011 entrance into law school.

Devin Collins (Frustration) is a graduating Dramatic Art/Dance major and Religious Studies minor. Through her years at UC Davis she has worked as stage manager fortribes: the unified field, as assistant stage manager for Main Stage Dance/Theatre Festival as well as Shadowlight, and has crewed numerous productions. Last year she was a dancer in John Jasperse’s Beyond Belief.  This is her first choreography to be performed on stage.

Christina Noble (Reflux) is a fourth-year undergraduate double-majoring in Dramatic Art/Dance and Design (Visual Communications). Her experience includes over eighteen years of technical training in many forms of dance as well as a background in choreography and teaching. She has performed with the UC Davis hip hop crew, Mobility, in Tyler Eash’s I, Saint John, The Speaker, and in Marija Krtolica’s 2008 project, Mostly in Blue.

What: Main Stage Dance/Theatre Festival - Seven new choreographies by undergraduate and graduate students

Where: Main Theatre, Wright Hall, UC Davis

When: Fri 4/9 ~ Sat 4/10, 8pm

Fri 4/16, 8pm

Sun 4/17, Special Picnic Day Matinees 1pm & 3pm

Sun, 4/18, 2pm

Tickets: $14/16 General; $10/12 Student & Child; Picnic Day Special All tickets $5

Special Group Tickets:

School and youth groups of ten or more receive a special rate of $5 per ticket at the teacher or group leader’s request. Call the UC Davis Department of Theatre & Dance at (530) 752 -5863 to make arrangements for this discount.