BRATTLEBORO — The Southern Vermont Dance Festival (SVDF) returns for its fourth season with an exciting round of classes, performances, community events, and more, according to a news release.
The festival will run July 14-17 with dance classes, lectures, and performances in Brattleboro. Like last year, festival attendees will be invited to attend dance performances each evening as well as a choice of classes each day. There will be many opportunities for the professional dancer, dance student, and dance enthusiast to learn from faculty and choreographers at the top of their fields.
For the fourth year in a row, the festival will host some major players in the dance world, including Adrienne Hawkins, who is renowned for her jazz choreography and teaching; Billbob Brown, formerly the director of dance at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and chair of the Hong Kong Performing Arts Academy; and Nicole Bugge of Bugge Ballet, who is also marketing director for Dance Magazine.
In addition, this year's festival will feature Mucuy Bolles, a former dancer with Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and current owner of Three Stones Restaurant in Brattleboro.
This year the festival will once again host Dances By Isadora, a Boston-based company that specializes in Isadora Duncan Technique. There will be an Isadora Duncan master class and a performance of choreography by Duncan in the Friday gala concert.
Born in 1877, Isadora Duncan was a pioneer of modern dance. She liberated dance from the confines of ballet, shedding ballet slippers and corsets for simple and natural movement. No films or documentations of her dances were made until long after her death in 1927, and thus her choreography and technique were preserved only by being passed from one generation to the next.
It is a unique, beautiful style, and a special opportunity for SVDF to present it at this year's festival, according to the news release.
New to this year's festival is a Black Tie BBQ at Rudyard Kipling's House at Naulakha in Dummerston. Only 75 tickets will be sold to this event.
Performances this year will take place at the Latchis Theater, the newly renovated Stone Church, Naulakha, and in and around the community. Those interested in attending the festival can enjoy the free community events, gala performances, informal performances, or receptions and dinners. Classes this year include ballet, modern, jazz, hip hop, Loft technique, tap, West African dance, belly dance, yoga, acro-yoga, Bollywood, and more.
The festival will be accessible to anyone interested in participating in a weekend of dance and movement, with a strong focus on promoting dance educators and choreographers from Vermont, New England, and New York, many other regions of the U.S., and as far away as Singapore, and will incorporate some of the top masters of this art.
College students and dance professionals have the opportunity each year to submit work to be considered for one of the festival's formal, informal, and site specific concerts, and over 35 choreographers' works are shown.