A note from the director
I am excited to welcome new and longtime audiences to the recently renovated Athey Center for Performance and Research at Palmer Auditorium. This past spring, we had a soft opening and hosted a few events and performances as we got used to the “new” auditorium. Now we are ready to fully open the doors and welcome the community. As an audience member you will find more comfortable seats with better sightlines, enlarged lobbies, greater accessibility to public areas and a more intimate experience inside the theater.
This year we are celebrating the grand reopening of the Athey Center at Palmer Auditorium with a world-class roster of dance, music and theater artists. As you know, from past seasons, we present performing artists from a wide spectrum of cultural and creative backgrounds and perspectives. Our programming has always been unique and innovative and designed to engage, entertain and inspire. You will not find programming like this anywhere else in the region.
Make sure you sign up to be on our email list to stay up to date on events and performances. We have some additional performances in the works that will be announced at a later date and we don’t want you to miss out.
I look forward to welcoming you to the Athey Center at Palmer Auditorium as we celebrate the revitalized theater and the arts at Connecticut College.
- Robert A. Richter '82, Director of Arts Programming
.jpg)
The Body in Space
a Lecture by Annie-B Parson
Cro's Nest, Crozier-Williams College Center
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 6:00 PM
Before you see Big Dance Theater on Friday, March 31 join us for an evening with the artist!
In this 45-minute lecture, Annie-B Parson dispels the notion that choreography is "steps" and instead defines choreography as simply the body in space. Steps are components of choreography, like words are components of plays. But choreography is an arrangement of compositional and tonal decisions around how the body appears in space over time.
The lecture will include images of Parson's work in theater, dance and rock shows to discuss how we can think about these compositional issues in choreography, and how we can start to develop, personalize and re-imagine these elements to make performative work with bodies in space.
A discussion with the audience follows the lecture.
Free Admission (General Admission)
Big Dance Theater
“The Road Awaits Us” and
“Cage Shuffle: A Duet”
Athey Center, Palmer Auditorium
Friday, March 31, 2023 7:30 PM
“The Road Awaits Us” Conceived and Choreographed by Annie-B Parson, Co-directed by Paul Lazar
"Cage Shuffle: a Duet." Created by Paul Lazar. Performed by Paul Lazar and Bebe Miller
Known for their inspired use of dance, music, text and visual design, Big Dance Theater weaves disparate strands of source material into multi-dimensional performances. A collaboration between renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson and performance artist Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater has been presented around the world and won the first-ever Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2007. Two works will be presented: The first is “The Road Awaits Us,” a dance-theater piece that reimagines the work of playwrights Eugene Ionesco and Anton Chekhov. The other is “Cage Shuffle,” a dance/theater solo that combines a series of spoken one-minute stories by John Cage with complex choreography in a performance that David Byrne described as “beautiful, profound and hilarious
Tickets: $28; Seniors: $25; Students: $14; CC FACULTY / STAFF: $25; CC STUDENTS WITH ID: $7 (General Admission)