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For more information, please contact Lex Leifheit at 860-685-2806 or lleifheit@wesleyan.edu.

WELEYAN'S CFA PRESENTS ALONZO KING'S LINES BALLET

IN RARE EAST COAST APPEARANCE, JULY 7 & 8

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SONGS OF BROADWAY, SILENT FILM AND DEBRA WINGER Q & A ALSO OFFERED JULY 7-13 DURING WEEK TWO OF SUMMER AT THE CFA

June 27, 2005, Middletown CT–Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts presents Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet in the CFA Theater, July 7 & 8 at 8pm. Known for their precision, grace and innovative use of texts, LINES will perform their signature dance, Who Dressed You Like a Foreigner?, as well as Before the Blues—King’s new, but already seminal, work—which includes a commissioned score by jazz musician Pharaoh Sanders and also taped narration by actor Danny Glover.

LINES Ballet is presented as part of Days & Nights: Summer at the CFA, a series of arts events at Wesleyan throughout the month of July. Admission to LINES is $19 general, $17 senior citizens and $12 students. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 860-685-3355. More information about the series is available at www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Alonzo King’s musical collage, Before the Blues, tells a story of persecution, perseverance and deliverance through a series of interwoven scenes, 20th-century archival field recordings unearthed from the Library of Congress collections, narrative readings from actor Danny Glover and environmental sounds, as well as additional music from Arcangelo Corelli, Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Bernice Johnson Reagon, and original composition of the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders.

In Who Dressed You Like A Foreigner? (1998), the commissioned score and music by tabla master Zakir Hussain drives the dancers to astounding, athletic heights. The LINES company appears first as only two people on stage, then grows in complexity and vibrancy until a joyful energy seems to burst from the stage, leading dance critic Rita Felciano to comment, “Foreigner had a spectacular asset in Hussain. His sensitivity and musical phrasing provoked nuanced and enthusiastic performances in King’s dancers whose limbs seem to ride the currents, while his Kathak vocalizations coaxed controlled bursts of energy.”

Alonzo King has emerged as one of the pre-eminent dance artists in the U.S., renowned for his unique vision of movement, music and rhythm. He has works in the repertories of companies throughout the world including Joffrey Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Hong Kong Ballet. He has worked extensively in opera, television, and film and has choreographed works for film star Patrick Swayze. In 1982, Mr. King founded Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, which has developed into an international touring company. In 1989, Alonzo King inaugurated the San Francisco Dance Center, which has grown into one of the largest dance facilities on the West Coast. Alonzo King is a recipient of the NEA Choreographer's Fellowship, the Irvine Fellowship in Dance and recently was named a Master of African American Choreography by The Kennedy Center.

Free Events This Week:

CFA Days: On Tuesday, July 12 at 12:10pm, the CFA presents Broadway’s Best, with Frank Mastrone in Crowell Concert Hall. Mastrone will sing some of his favorite showtunes, including highlights from his Broadway performances in Les Misérables and Jekyll & Hyde. Mastrone has also appeared on Broadway in Phantom of the Opera (original cast) and Cats, and in Connecticut at the O’Neill Music Theater Conference and Long Wharf Theatre.

CFA Nights: On Tuesday, July 12 at 8pm, the CFA presents Modern Times: Silent Film with Live Organ Accompaniment in Memorial Chapel. This 1936 film stars Charlie Chaplin’s most beloved persona, The Tramp, and portrays his misadventures with the perils of mass production in a side-splitting cinematic critique of 20th-century life. With his usual charm, Chaplin executes some of his most famous slapstick routines, accompanied by organist Shari Lucas.

CFA Nights: On Wednesday, July 13 at 7pm, film producer and actress Debra Winger (An Officer and a Gentlemen, Terms of Endearment) comes to Wesleyan’s Center for Film Studies Screening Room to host a showing and Q & A for Big Bad Love, the IFC Films release directed by Arliss Howard (Birth, Amistad, Full Metal Jacket), and also starring the two actors. Writer Leon Barlow (Howard) is struggling in life and in his career. His ex-wife (Winger) doesn’t approve of his visits with his two children, and he has problems with alcohol. Yet even when Leon catches up somewhat financially, his life seems to decline further, until a sudden tragedy catches him off guard. Rated R for language, sexuality.

The Center for the Arts (www.wesleyan.edu/cfa) is made up of 11 buildings, which house the departments of art and art history, music, theater and dance, and also film studies events. It serves as a cultural center for the region, the state and New England. The CFA includes the 414-seat Crowell Concert Hall, 400-seat CFA Theater, 260-seat Cinema, the World Music Hall (a non-Western performance space) and the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.  Summer at the CFA is planned in collaboration with the Capitol Regional Education Council’s Center for Creative Youth and Wesleyan's Graduate Liberal Studies Program.