Yale Dance Theater Pilot Program: Eight Jelly Rolls

Visit the Yale Dance Theater.  Building on the recent development of Yale’s dance studies curriculum and working in coordination with the Yale College Dean’s Office, Theater Studies, and the Alliance for Dance at Yale, we are please to announce the Yale Dance Theater Pilot Program. This faculty-sponsored, extracurricular initiative will enable Yale students to work with professional artists on the reconstruction of existing choreography and/or development of new work. YDT is conceived of as a practice-based research initiative that will allow students to investigate choreographic ideas and their historical context through a rigorous rehearsal process, resulting in a final public showing.YDT’s pilot undertaking for spring 2011 will be the reconstruction of EIGHT JELLY ROLLS, a canonical work in American dance history, choreographed by Twyla Tharp in 1971. Working with two Twyla Tharp rehearsal directors, Jennifer Way and Kate Glasner, both former Tharp dancers, students will aim to master Tharp’s style. Groundbreaking in her democratic synthesis of dance techniques and vocabularies, Twyla Tharp pioneered a crossover style that combines elements from classical ballet, jazz, tap, athletics, hip-hop, and more. With music by Jelly Roll Morton, EIGHT JELLY ROLLS marks a key point in Tharp’s early career, the moment she turned away from postmodern dance aesthetics to explore music, movement invention, and a conscious effort to please the audience.Rehearsals will begin Saturday February 12, and take place on Wednesdays (5:30 - 8:30 pm) and Saturdays (12:30 - 3:30 pm) throughout the semester, through the end of April. All rehearsals will be held in the BRL dance studio, 294 Elm Street.