News Arts Extreme sports, dance fuel STREB performances
| Extreme sports, dance fuel STREB performances |
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| Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | |
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“Exploding with suspense and ingenuity, STREB’s virtuosic, daredevil performers combine extreme sports with dance and are renowned for their fearlessness, unyielding precision and aggressive physicality.” That’s what it says on the Web site of Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which will present STREB in Memorial Hall at 8 p.m. Feb. 19 and Feb. 20. Tickets for the performance, aptly titled “Brave,” are available by visiting or calling the Memorial Hall Box Office (919-843-3333), open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, or online at www.carolinaperformingarts.org. Tickets are $10 for UNC students and $20 to $40 for others. “A company like STREB is one that constantly redefines modern dance and really challenges your perceptions of what the human body can do,” said Emil Kang, executive director for the arts at UNC. “Not only do they dodge cinder blocks and run into Plexiglass, but they test their bodies as if they are challenging their own limits of motion.” The performances are part of Carolina Performing Arts’ dance series and of the CHAT Festival – Collaborations: Humanities, Arts & Technology – taking place at UNC Feb. 16-20. The festival will feature interactive projects and exhibits by faculty and technologists from area universities and Research Triangle Park companies, as well as performances, lectures and discussions. For more information and to register for the festival, visit http://www.chatfestival2010.com/. CHAT registration is not needed to buy tickets for STREB; those registered for CHAT will need to buy tickets to see STREB. On Feb. 19 at 11 a.m., STREB will perform a matinee for K-12 students from the Wake and Alamance county and Chapel Hill-Carrboro public school districts. The event is a Carolina Performing Arts School Matinee, intended to connect students in surrounding school districts with the performing arts. For more information, visit http://eda.unc.edu/engagement/programs/k-12. “The arts engage creativity and imagination, which are an important part of students’ education,” said Reed Colver, director of campus and community engagement for Carolina Performing Arts. “Having a company like STREB, one that is so committed to community and education, as the performers for the school matinee is a perfect fit.” Experimental technologies – from “smart” prostheses and personal robots to a human-sized yo-yo called the Whizzing Gizmo – will come into play in the performance through STREB’s use of robotics, which it developed in a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. STREB, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Streb, its artistic director. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, Streb holds a master’s degree in humanities and social thought from New York University and a bachelor’s in modern dance from the State University of New York-Brockport. Her company has been chosen to perform at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., coming up Feb. 12-28. A New York Times reviewer wrote of STREB: “If dancers are the athletes of God, Streb’s members are the gladiators. Flipping, tumbling, leaping marvels, they perform one arduous feat after another, putting their brawny bodies through punishing routines that leave their audiences grimacing and shielding their eyes.” STREB has been seen on the David Letterman Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN Showbiz Today, NBC’s Weekend Today, MTV, ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings and Larry King Live. The company has performed in New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in New York, in the Anchorage under the Brooklyn Bridge, the mall outside the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the State of Illinois Center in Chicago and during a Minneapolis Twins and New York Yankees game at the Minnesota Metrodome. Video: http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org/resources/streb Photos: http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org/media STREB Web site: http://www.streb.org/index.html Carolina Performing Arts contact: Reed Colver, (919) 843-1833,
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