Cleveland State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance, a Resident Company of Playhouse Square, will present its annual Spring Dance Concert on Friday, March 25 and Saturday, March 26 at 7:30pm at the Allen Theatre, Playhouse Square, 1407 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.

This repertory concert consists of both newly created and restaged works that represent varied artistic styles which have influenced concert dance as it has transitioned from the traditional to the contemporary. The performance will feature the CSU Dance Company, alumni, faculty and guests with choreography by Amy Miller, Teena Custer, Tammy Metz Starr and CSU dance faculty Lynn Deering, Lisa DeCato and Chris DiCello.

All tickets are $5.00 and may be purchased by phone at 216.241.6000, online at playhousesquare.org or in person ahead of time at the State Theatre Ticket Office, located at 1519 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Tickets are also available at the Allen Theatre on the nights of the performances.

About the Concert:

Amy Miller, a founding member of CSU’s in-residence professional dance company, GroundWorks DanceTheater and now Associate Artistic Director of Gibney Dance, NY, choreographed the physically charged quartet “Surrounding”. Created during the CSU Summer Dance Workshop in collaboration with the performers, the work takes four women on a movement journey that explores space, relationship, and contrasting dynamics.

Teena Marie Custer, a street dance artist and practitioner based in Pittsburgh, PA, will perform an excerpt from her evening length multi-media dance theater work “My Good Side.” It utilizes the street dance styles of breaking, waacking, house, locking, and hip hop social dance to question our relationship to vanity on social media.

Freelance choreographer Tammy Metz Starr has revised "Every Blade of Grass," originally conceived in 1999 as a solo, and then reinterpreted as a group work in 2001. The piece features modern dance in counterpoint to a Butoh aesthetic for a colorful contemplation of what is seen and unseen as one is urged to "grow, grow." 

CSU dance faculty Lisa DeCato and Chris DiCello have reimagined their witty, multilayered dance/theater work “DreamSpeak” for the CSU Dance Company and members of DAME, CSU’s Dramatic Arts Movement Ensemble. DreamSpeak uses movement, music and language to interpret the chaotic, occasionally terrifying and often transformative messages that our dreams reveal.

CSU Dance Company will also perform “Antibodies”, a new work by department chair Lynn Deering in which the push and pull of the tango form serves as a metaphor for an examination of interactions and undercurrents so present in the lead-in to this election year. The work is performed to music by Amy Denio, Tin Hat Trio and Electro Dub Tango.

For more information please contact Lynn Deering at l.deering@csuohio.edu or 216-687-4883.