World Premiere dance performance The Waiting Game explores women’s issues through contemporary dance

“The Waiting Game,” an exploration of women’s issues through contemporary dance, will be performed in its world premiere, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 in Bethlehem, PA. Choreographers Sarah Carlson and Alyce Finwall have created all-female dance works sharing a common source of inspiration: Faith Wilding’s iconic feminist poem “Waiting.”

“Wilding’s poetry underscores an existential angst that we all share,” Carlson says. “Even while we are engaged in active living, we are always waiting, hoping, dreaming about what will come next.”

“The Waiting Game” is produced by DanceLink and the Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange, two Lehigh Valley-based dance organizations whose shared mission is to promote dance and dance opportunities in the Lehigh Valley community. Both performances will take place at 8 p.m. in The Ice House performance space, on Sand Island, Bethlehem. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for students. Ticket information at www.sarahcarlson-dancelink.org.

Finwall’s piece, “Enter Demeter” features an original composition by Jason Hoopes for strings, voice and breast pump, and explores the struggle between life and death through the movement of nine women in and through a restricted arena. The Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange commissioned her in January to restage the work on a select group of Lehigh Valley dancers.

“The entirety of the stage becomes an anointed ground in which these women are enclosed, and in which they struggle for autonomy, civility and significance,” Finwall says. “Their struggle takes place in an often fragile and volatile environment, where nothing is to be taken for granted.

The piece showcases the beauty, clarity, value and strength of women through the interrogation of all human values.”

Carlson, an Allentown-based choreographer, first experienced both Finwall’s choreography and the poem on which it was based during a showing of “Enter Demeter” this past March, at Cedar Crest College. She was inspired to create her own dance work in response to Wilding’s poem, but with an approach and a sensibility very different from Finwall’s.

“I believe the contrast of artistic interpretation will enrich the overall experience of the evening,” Carlson says. Her piece, “Whispers of Light,” engages a multi-generational cast of seven women, who depict a fullness of experience through many stages of life.

“Simple oppositions such as ‘gentle vs. strong’ or ‘defiant vs. submissive’ have profound gender connotations that beg examination,” she says. “By embracing the complexity of the modern female mindset, ‘Whispers of Light’ becomes an embodied exploration of entrenched stereotypes placed upon women that continue to resonate in the 21st century.”

“The Waiting Game” has received support from the dance programs at Cedar Crest College & Muhlenberg College.

Sarah Carlson is a choreographer, teacher, dancer and a passionate advocate of the movement arts. Currently on faculty at Muhlenberg College and DeSales University, Carlson danced professionally for 10 years in New York City with numerous companies, including Alexandra Beller/Dances, Brian Brooks Moving Company, Clare Byrne Dance, Paul Mosley Dance and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Her own work has been presented throughout the United States and in Benin, Africa.

In 2007, Carlson completed a Fulbright Grant studying Vodou ritual dance in Benin, Africa, furthering an on-going inquiry into sacred dance forms. She is a certified Interplay leader and a practicing massage therapist.

Alyce Finwall started Alyce Finwall Dance Theater in 1999, developing a uniquely creative and theatrical style, noted for its “sexiness and intelligence” by the New York Times, and for having a “fierce fluidity in performance and a brooding surrealism in the choreography” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She has produced more than 30 original works in the company’s 10-year history.

Finwall’s wide-ranging dance career began with the Minneapolis-based avant garde company Ballet of the Dolls, where she performed in more than 20 original ballets in her six years with the company. She has also worked extensively in film, music videos and fashion, and was a co-founder of the very popular burlesque group “Les Femmes Cabaret.” After six years in New York City, where the company performed at such venues as P.S. 122, Dance Theater Workshop and the 92nd Street Y on 42nd Street, Alyce Finwall Dance Theater is now located in San Francisco, where she lives with her partner and two children, and where she recently completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in dance at Mills College.

Founded in 2008 by Sarah Carlson, DanceLink explores modes of moving through life’s complex network of interconnection and continuum with purpose. DanceLink’s work seeks to bridge people, ideas, and expression through embodied dialogue. A blend of movement, stillness, stories, and play, DanceLink projects can take a variety of forms including community-based workshops, master classes, or proscenium and site-specific performance. DanceLink exists to promote community and communicate profoundly through the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional instrument of the body.

Founded in 2009 by Kathleen Nasti and Alexandra Reekie, the Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange seeks to create professional level dance opportunities for advanced/professional dance artists of the Lehigh Valley.

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