EUGENE–"Baguettes, Sackbutts and Mazurkas," a concert of music and dance featuring faculty, alumni, musicians and composers in the University of Oregon School of Music and Department of Dance, will be presented at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 17—18, at the Dougherty Dance Theatre in Rooms 353-354 of Gerlinger Annex, 1484 University St.

General admission is $10 and $5 for students and senior citizens. Tickets will be available at the door starting 7:30 p.m. on performance evenings. The third-floor theater is accessible by elevator.

Presented as its culminating project by the dance department’s fall term production class, this year’s program is one-of-a-kind, according to Jenifer Craig, associate professor and department chair.

"The concert’s producer, David Burrow, has been a pioneer in the melding of dance and music at the university since their unification was brought about by the budget cuts of the early ‘90s," she says. "Burrow majored in music, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and his senior project was a program of compositions for dance, performed live by an ensemble that he brought together."

In his role this year as musical director for dance, Craig says Burrow not only has been the creative force behind the Nov. 17—18 concerts but also will perform as percussionist/composer on marimba, timpani and drumset as well.

Burrow has assembled composers, players, choreographers and dancers to showcase their talents and voices as interdisciplinary artists. The musicians include dance accompanists who have played for the department’s modern, ballet and African classes over the past few years.

The first half of the program will feature four musical solos, two of which have been choreographed.

Opening the Nov. 17 concert will be pianist SiQin Taoli, a graduate fellow in dance accompaniment, playing Scarlatti’s "Sonata in D minor (K. 141)." For the Nov. 18 concert, she will perform Schumann’s "Romance, Op. 28, No. 2."

Associate Professor Sherrie Barr has choreographed "Blue Man Sings," based on the experiences she and her husband, Phil Lewin, had while visiting Morocco during her recent sabbatical leave to Portugal. The sensations of a vast landscape spiraling out from its bright sands into the blue sky inspired Lewin to poetry and Barr to choreography, resonating the contrast of vivid sky with the subdued, darkly shrouded Moroccan women.

Poetry and image resulted in the quartet Barr has choreographed for UO alumnae Mary Seereiter, head of Lane Community College’s dance program; Paige McKinney, who teaches dance in a number of Eugene venues; Allison Rickenbaugh, longtime performer in the Van Ummersen Dance Company as well as a popular singer/musician in Eugene; and Barr herself.

Burrow will play J.S. Bach’s "Fugue" from "Sonata in A Minor for Marimba Alone" as the musical setting.

Elizabeth Mead, a music graduate student, recently composed "Mares/Ocean" for tenor trombone, computer generated tape and video. She sees this composition as an exploration of a gesture (sound and image), its transformation and reverberation in space.

"From an initial call and response phrase, the sounds begin to move literally through the performance space as in a dance, right to left, forward and backwards, continually changing shape and timbre," she explains. "The imagination of the audience is invited to visualize the musical choreography as the live trombone, from its fixed place, searches to find its resonance within the universe of sound."

Mead wrote "Ocean" for Glen Bonney, a graduate of the School of Music and a musician in the dance department, who will perform on trombone, accompanied by tape and video.

Saul Goodman wrote his "Ballad for the Dance" to be performed by a solo dancer, accompanied by solo percussionist on four timpani and cymbal. Burrow will bring the dramatic percussion score to life while McKinney, as performer and choreographer, explores embracing and pushing away movements and expresses other aspects of Goodman’s score.

Opening the second half of the program will be Adjunct Instructor Kimberly Christensen’s duet with Megan Orion, danced to a Burrow composition played by Bonney and Burrow, with Olem Alves on guitar and Brenda Lauffenberger on marimba. Burrow describes the quartet as "quirky," influenced by Robert Fripp and East European music.

Working with her first original score, Christensen hears Burrow’s music as "sketching us, as layers that don’t quite coalesce." Her concept for the dance parallels that notion of layering, in which the dancers’ relationships also don’t quite join up.

Immediately following, Christensen and Orion will perform an unnamed, unaccompanied duet on video, produced by Amy Impellizzeri, an adjunct instructor and technical assistant in dance.

"Napoléon’s Bake Sale" will be a brief surprise from Burrow, featuring dancer Rickenbaugh, now on harmonica.

Closing the concert will be "Blessed Relief." Choreographed by McKinney and Rickenbaugh, it will examine composer Frank Zappa’s idiosyncratic conducting gestures in a contemporary style. The choreographers’ duet is juxtaposed to pedestrian group formations. The movement is partially improvisational and relies on the relationship between the jazz soloist and the two dancers.

Musicians for the piece will be the Olem Alves Quartet, with Alves on guitar, Bonney on trombone, Burrow on drumset and Dan Stotz on double bass.

For information about the Nov. 17—18 concerts, call the UO Department of Dance,
(541) 346-3386.

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