MIRO DANCE THEATRE presents Self-Portrait
a solo dance work celebrating the life and art of Frida Kahlo
Feb. 13 @ Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series in a program with BalletX
Miro Dance Theatre will present Self-Portrait at the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series, in a shared program with BalletX. The unique program reunites the two contemporary Philadelphia dance companies, who spent five years together as Phrenic New Ballet. Choreographer Amanda Miller and videographer Tobin Rothlein now lead Miro Dance Theater, while fellow choreographers Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox formed BalletX. Held on Friday, February 13 at 7:30pm, Self-Portrait will be staged in Bryn Mawr’s Erdman Hall, a modernist landmark by renowned architect Louis Kahn. BalletX will present their respective performance simultaneously in Thomas Great Hall; at intermission, audiences will switch venues.
Tickets to the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series are $18 for the general public, $15 for senior citizens, free for Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore students, faculty and staff, $10 for students of other schools, and $5 for children 12 and under. For tickets, call the Office for the Arts at (610) 526-5210.
A solo work combining dance, live animation, elaborate set design, and video, Self-Portrait is deeply inspired by Frida Kahlo’s paintings and diaries, reflecting on both the artist’s struggles with illness and her penchant for self-expression. A constant theme in the work of Kahlo, the idea of self-portraiture (or “the self-portrait”) is timeless and universal. The notion of constantly looking at oneself and continuously exploring ones identity, and the ways in which we reinvent and integrate our experiences has become of great interest to Miro Dance Theatre as a company.
Self-Portrait was originally commissioned by Art After 5 in conjunction with the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Frida Kahlo retrospective – the World Premiere performance was held at the Museum of Art in May 2008. In November 2008, Miro traveled to Poland to present the European Premiere of Self-Portrait at the Lublin Dance Theatre Festival to a sold-out, standing room only crowd.
“We are finding that Self-Portrait really resonates with people, both here in Philadelphia and in Eastern Europe where we recently performed it,” says Amanda Miller. “The idea of self, and also the importance of Frida as an artist to a generation young and old makes this piece very special and each time we perform it, the production grows richer and more developed.”
As part of the Performing Arts Series, BalletX will showcase works by Adam Hougland and Matthew Neenan. For additional information about the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series, visit
http://www.brynmawr.edu/calendar/performing_arts.shtml.
About Miro Dance Theatre
Miro Dance Theatre (“Miro”) creates and performs original work that explores the collaborative intersections of dance, video, and visual art. Miro uses classical technique as a departure point from which to explore new and challenging dance vocabularies, ideologies, performance disciplines, and the way media co-exist within the performance space. The company was founded in 2004 by dancer and choreographer Amanda Miller and video and visual artist Tobin Rothlein, following five years as Co- Artistic directors of Phrenic New Ballet. Miller, with ten years experience as a dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet and choreographic studies in Europe under Siobhan Davies, is at the helm of Miro’s choreographic exploration. Rothlein, whose work as video artist and visual designer for Rennie Harris Puremovement and others has garnered national and international accolades, oversees the company’s work in combining dance, multi-media and visual arts.
For more information, visit www.mirodancetheatre.org or call
(215) 962-4773.
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