Thursday, April 10, 2014
Written by: Kristan Hellige

The University of Iowa Department of Dance will present Wild Ones, a Dance MFA thesis concert featuring the work of Marie Brown, Jingqiu Guan, Marie Mortensen, and Dana Powers-Klooster at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, April 17-19, in Space Place Theatre, 101 North Hall.

The full performance will include:

  • Being in Motion (choreography improvised by Marie Spaabaek Mortensen; Marie Spaabaek Mortensen, dancer)
  • A new piece choreographed by Jennifer Kayle (dancers: Jingqiu Guan with Alex Bush, Raechel Hofsteadter, Anna Krupp, Lizz Mello, and Courtney Paulsen)
  • The Line of Surface and Sky (Dana Powers-Klooster and Jessica Anthony, choreography; Dana Powers-Klooster, dancer)
  • The Pathology of Love, (choreography by Charlotte Adams in creative collaboration with Tony Orrico and Nicole Wong; Marie Brown and Dakota Gonzalez, dancers)
  • unseen space (choreography by Duane Cyrus with assistance from Jingqiu Guan, who will also serve as dancer)
  • Wild Once (choreography by Shi Pratt; Marie Brown, JGuan, Marie Spaabaek Mortensen, and Dana Powers-Klooster, dancers)

Tickets are $12 ($6 for seniors, college students, and youth (17 and younger); free for UI students with valid ID) and are available through the Hancher Box Office at 319-335-1160 or 800-426-2437 or online at the Hancher website.

Brown moved to Philadelphia from Jacksonville, Fla., in 2005. While in Jacksonville, she trained at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and The Florida Ballet. In 2004, she graduated from Radford University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance. During that time, she received dance scholarships to attend Bates Dance Festival and the American Dance Festival, where she was honored to work with Gerri Houlihan and Tatiana Bagnova. While in Philadelphia, she has worked with several companies such as Group Motion Dance Company, MacArthur Dance Project, Scrap Performance Group, StoneDepotDance Lab, OlivePrince Dance, and Merge Dance.

Guan grew up in Chengdu, China, where her love for dance was first ignited through the study of Chinese folk and classical dance. However, it was the exposure to modern dance after she came to the United States and to ballet when she was studying abroad in France that allowed her to discover that dancing had become her way of life. A recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship,Guanhas deepened her understanding of dance in the MFA program in dance performance at the UI. She performed with Dancers in Company in the 2012-13 season. She recently attended the American Dance Festival and had the great fortune to perform the lead female role in Martha Graham’s choreography Helios in Acts of Light, reconstructed by Duane Cyrus.

Spaabaek Mortensen was born in Denmark, where she started taking dance classes as a child. Deciding to pursue a career in dance, she completed the dance program at Heleneholm’s High School in Malmö, Sweden. While in high school, she attended summer intensives at the Ballet Academy in Stockholm and The Martha Graham School in New York City. Directly following high school, she continued her training at Danceworks Berlin in Germany. She moved to Iowa City in 2012, earning a Master of Fine Arts with emphasis on dance performance at the UI. In the Department of Dance, she has had the pleasure of teaching yoga, improvisation, and varying levels of modern dance, as well as serving as a teaching assistant in dance kinesiology.

Powers-Klooster is from Glen Cove, N.Y. She graduated cum laude from Kenyon College in 2006, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in dance and Spanish area studies. Following some post-graduation travel adventures, Dana moved to New York City where she lived for four years and performed works by Stephanie Liapis, Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Oliver Steele, Jennifer Kain, Elizabeth Wilkinson, and Deb Silver. She moved to Iowa City in August 2011 to begin her graduate studies at the University of Iowa as an MFA candidate in dance with an emphasis in performance, where she was honored to be a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship. As a teaching fellow at the University of Iowa, Dana has taught ballet and modern dance technique classes.

The Department of Dance is a part of the Division of Performing Arts in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, contact Hancher Accessibility Services in advance at 319-335-1158.