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Oct. 10, 2013 – The annual fall residency at Allegheny College by Antaeus Dance, a professional modern dance company based in Cleveland, will feature a master class and “AudioKinetic,” a performance of premiere danceworks set to avant-garde music. Both the master class and the performance are free and open to the public.

The performance, at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26 in the college’s Montgomery Performance Space, combines dance premieres with rarely heard music masterpieces, plus additional pieces of repertory.

Joan Meggitt, a 1992 graduate of Allegheny College, is the company’s founder and director.

The performance will include three premiere dances that match the driving tempos and challenging rhythms of works by Javier Alvarez, John Cage and John Luther Adams. Meggitt, Heather Koniz, Shannon Sefcik and Rhian Virostko will dance to Alvarez’s “Temazcal,” which features an electroacoustic score paired with maracas.

Meggitt matches John Cage’s complex “Second Construction” with the elegant duet “when light feet power the moment,” which features Koniz and Virostko in a nonstop celebration of rhythm and form.

The feverishly intense music of Adams’ “Drums of Winter,” from his “Earth and the Great Weather,” will be met by dancers Desmond Davis, Koniz, Sefcik and Virostko.

Two solos complement the group works. “Idiorrhythmic,” performed by Meggitt to music by Stuart Saunders Smith, evokes a contemplative state, while Koniz’s “Within” uses a bench and chair to facilitate the dancer’s quick and sometimes anxious movements. Allegheny College students will be featured in a dance that Koniz choreographed during the Allegheny Summer Dance Intensive in August.

The Antaeus Dance fall residency is made possible through the support of the William Beazell Fund at Allegheny College. Danceworks in “AudioKinetic” were made possible in part by the Launch artist residency program at PlayhouseSquare in Cleveland.

For more information or to reserve a space, contact the Allegheny College Dance and Movement Studies Program at 814-332-2813. More information about Antaeus Dance can be found at www.AntaeusDance.com.

Photo by Frank Prpic