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KANSAN.COM
ARTS & CULTURE
UDC fall concert to feature a variety of dance styles
ALYSSA HOEDL @AHoedl
The University Dance Company will perform their fall concert in a variety of dance styles including contemporary, flamenco and hip-hop on Nov. 17 and 18 at the Lied Center.
The UDC has been at the University since the early
1900s, when it was solely a student organization. Now the company is a part of the dance department's curriculum.
"The UDC started out as a club and remains as a student organization, but it is also a course for majors," Michelle Heffner Hayes, professor and chair of the
Department of Dance, said. "It is a huge commitment for the students involved and they give up their free time everyday to get to work with choreographers and get the experience of being in a professional dance company."
Every year, the UDC has guest artists come in and choreograph dance numbers
for its fall and spring concerts.
The two guest choreographers for this semester's concert are Jennifer Weber, founder of the Brooklyn-based hip-hop company Decadedancetheatre, and Ellie Goudie-Averill, an alumna and new faculty member.
Weber's piece, "4," is to
The University Dance Company practices for their upcoming fall concert. The concert will take place on Nov. 17 and is hosted by the KU Department of Dance.
a rendition of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." The entire work is a mixture of classical dance and hip-hop.
Kaila Trollope/KANSAN by the KU Department of
Goudie-Averill's piece is a contemporary piece set to live music by the University's percussion ensemble.
"I am always happy when we have a successful alum come back and give back to the company that made them," Hayes said. "Goudie-Averill worked for many years in New York and Philadelphia and she came back to just give back."
I am always happy when we have a successful alum come back and give back to the company that made them."
Michelle Heffner Hayes Chair of the Department of Dance
Ana Glocker, a junior and president of UDC, has been involved with the group since her freshman year and this fall's concert is her fifth.
"The most rewarding part of being in UDC is the relationships you cultivate with the faculty and other dance-
ers," Glocker said. "We truly are like a little family. The care and support that I feel and see everyday, every rehearsal, makes me so proud to be part of this student organization."
Along with the two works previously mentioned, the other works in the concert include "Ballet sans nom" by dance professor Jerel Hilding. "FLIGHT/SAFE HARBOR" by professors Muriel Cohan and Patrick Suzeau. Hayes' new work "Lo que queda/That which remains..." mixes Flamenco and Latin popular dance and dance instructor Willie Lenoir's "It Ain't Angst," which is a jazz-infused, contemporary work.
Hayes said students should attend the concert because of its high-quality dance.
"Students should come and see the fall concert because of the live music and the range from ballet to hiphop to flamenco to contemporary," Hayes said. "It all is just dance that is really beautiful and the concert will be a full evening full of high-level dance."
-Edited by Chandler Boese
Professor's book explores history of Tunisian art
Safia Fahat, a section of ceramic tile in Bir Kassaa.
- COURTNEY BIERMAN
@courtbierman
Contributed Photo
Gerschultz was a graduate student at Emory University when she applied for a grant to study Tunisia's textile history. She spent the summer of 2006 in Tunis, the capital city, doing archival research, meeting with the relatives of prominent artists and documenting various murals, tapestries and other artwork.
Jessica Gerschultz has dedicated her career to a part of art history that is largely overlooked by most of the world. An art historian and assistant professor of African and African-American Studies, Gerschultz studies modern and contemporary art in the Middle East and Northern Africa, focusing on Tunisia. Her book, tentatively titled "Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École," details the struggles of women artists in the Tunisian modern art movement.
Safia Farhat was a Tu-
nisiian artist, intellectual, women's rights activist and the only female member of a group of artists called the École de Tunis. A large component of Gerschultz's research, Farhat is remembered for her contributions to textiles, painting, and other media. Gerschultz said that because she was a Muslim woman who specialized in the decorative arts, her work was often overlooked and her contributions to modern art continue to be undermined or ignored altogether. Her accomplishments were often attributed to her husband's position as a politician.
tieth century to expand the tourism and artisanal industries. Tunisian artists used wool, ceramics, ironwork and other "artisanal materials" and created a sense of artistic community in the country that Gerschultz said hadn't existed previously.
["Tunisian artists] were taught that Tunisians didn't have art history in European art schools," she
said. "There really is a rich history of Tunisian art, of modern art, and those categories really intersect, and that's something that I wanted to recuperate."
"As a woman, she was subjected to this double-marginalization because she was a [Muslim] artist, because her husband was a politician and because she worked with so-called artisanal materials," Gerschultz said.
Gerschultz's colleague Peter Ojiambo is an associate professor of African and African-American Studies. He said Gerschultz has
helped to comprehensively document something on which very little scholarship exists. Although Northern Africa and Islamic culture have longer human histories than the rest of the world, it is common for art history scholarship to focus on European art and other works coming out of the
Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba, mandated the production of many artworks in the mid-twen-
West.
"When you look at Islamic culture, art actually has a long history," Ojiambo said. "The interplay between art and religion is very real. [Gerschultz] brings in that aspect that we rarely see."
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