Presented by Forward Motion Dance Company

7:30 pm September 16 and 17, 2016
Thalian Hall Main Stage
310 Chestnut Street, Wilmington, NC 28401

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS!

A collaborative arts event, Forward Motion Dance Company’s annual show will shine with two performances showcasing the talents of Choreographer Tracey Varga.

Highlights of this show are guest performers and musicians performing live with the dancers. In a premiere performance, Soprano Nancy King and violinist Danijela Žeželj-Gualdi, both of UNCW, will perform three songs from “Suite for Voice and Violin” by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). A premiere dance is set to the original composition “The Dance of the Coin” and performed live on piano by Julia Walker Jewell.

New to the show this year is a premiere piece from guest choreographer and former Wilmington resident Harper Piver, with a high energy dance to the music of MuteMath and a theme of grappling to make the right decision when faced with choices that may not be what they seem.

Teen dancers from local studios DREAMS, The Dance Cooperative, The Dance Element and The Wilmington School of Ballet will perform a premiere piece to a remix of music by Nina Simone.

Returning performances from choreographer Tracey Varga include “Surmount” from 2015 with music by Peter Gabriel and featuring a film by visual artist Patrick Ogelvie, a piece from 2015 set to music by Chopin, and a duet performance that premiered in 2012 with Linda Webb and Qaadir Hicks dancing to “Flutes en Vacances” (1926) from composer Jacques Casterede.

Forward Motion Dance Company dancers performing are Ashley Barnes, Nicole Dalier, Kaitlin Davis, Bonnie Dixon, and Becky Spivey, with guest dancers Anna Bettendorf, Qaadir Hicks, Emily Lawler, Linda Webb, Elizabeth White, McCall White, the teen dancers, and students from The Wilmington School of Ballet Modern-Jazz Class.

Expect an inspired and exciting evening of music, film, visual arts, and modern, contemporary and jazz dance from choreographer Tracey Varga and Forward Motion Dance Company.

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Tracey Varga – Choreographer

Tracey Varga discovered dance at the age of five in her first Tap class. Her performance, teaching and choreographic experience includes works in Maryland, Washington, Idaho, Illinois and New York. She founded Forward Motion Dance Company in 2004 and has performed and presented shows at Dance-a-lorus, NC Dance Festival, Wilmington Dance Festival, and Dance Blast/Art Blast, on local stages including Thalian Hall, City Stage, the Community Arts Center and Cameron Art Museum. Tracey teaches Modern/ Jazz at the Wilmington School of Ballet and Tap at The Dance Element and is a licensed Physical Therapist. She serves as program coordinator for the Arts Sensation benefit concert and is honored to be a recent recipient of the 2013 YWCA Women of Achievement Award for the Arts.

Our Guest Artists

Harper Piver – Choreographer

Harper Piver is a dance and multi-media artist who creates things of all sorts: choreography, films, written musings, music, and little balls crafted from empty straw wrappers. Raised as an only child by a band of characters that escaped from an epic Southern novel, Harper discovered that her
imagination was more interesting than yet another game of solitaire.

Harper’s curiosity propels her journey as an artist. In addition to her initial training as a dancer, her work has included significant encounters with music, text, and video. Until 2005, Harper was based in North Carolina, where her choreography was presented in numerous venues including the American Dance Festival’s Acts to Follow Series and on tour with the North Carolina Dance Festival. Her choreography has been commissioned and presented by companies and academic institutions around the US. As an advocate for dance North Carolina, she co-founded The Dance Cooperative in Wilmington and served on the board of the North Carolina Dance Alliance.

As a video artist, her dance for camera work has been presented in numerous dance film festivals both nationally and internationally. She currently teaches studio, composition, and lecture classes in dance and film at Arizona State University and in the Maricopa Community Colleges. She also facilitates explorations in dance, video, and the creative process through residency projects in K-12, higher education, and community settings. Her research on dance, technology, and pedagogy has been published and presented worldwide.

Harper has a BFA in Dance from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MFA in Dance from Arizona State University. Upon graduating from ASU, she was named the Outstanding Graduate of the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts.

Harper stays inspired by reading voraciously, traveling often, and singing while commuting. She is slowly working on writing her family back into the novel they abandoned.

Nancy King – Soprano

Nancy King, soprano, associate professor/coordinator of vocal studies at UNCW, is an active performer and guest lecturer. Recent concert appearances include Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Wilmington Symphony, the Brahms’ Requiem with the UNCW Concert and Chamber Choirs, and a Southeastern North Carolina tour of Bach concerts with Chamber Music Wilmington. Ms. King has appeared as soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Toronto Classical Singers, Vaughn Williams Serenade to Music with the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus in Eugene, Oregon, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Canteloube’s Chants D’Auvergne, and the Poulenc Gloria with the Wilmington Symphony.

Operatic roles include Hannah Glawari in Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Cunegonde in Bernstein’s Candide, Adele in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Ms. King was also a member of the Grammy award-winning Oregon Bach Festival Choir, from 1998-2004, under the direction of Helmuth Rilling. She proudly serves as Artistic Director of Opera Wilmington, performing the role of Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte with them this past summer.

Danijela Žeželj-Gualdi – Violinist 

Distinguished performer on both Violin and Viola Danijela Žeželj-Gualdi has appeared as a concert soloist, chamber and orchestra musician throughout Eastern and Central Europe and USA. Her assertive style and strong musical personality have thrilled audiences including Carnegie Weill Hall, Carnegie Isaac Stern Hall, Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, Schwartz Hall at Emory University, Legacy Hall in Columbus GA, Kolarac Belgrade Serbia, and in Vienna, Graz, Grumo Italy, Atlanta, Athens GA, Florence SC, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Savannah and Wilmington. Her concert tours included appearances in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Austria, and Italy.

As a concerto soloist she appeared with Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, DeKalb Symphony Orchestra and University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra. Her musical career is noted for collaborations with remarkable musicians, including Evgeny Rivkin, and Levon Ambartsumian, and contemporary composers Augusta Reed Thomas, James MacMillan.

Žeželj-Gualdi earned her Violin Diploma with highest honors at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia. While in the U.S., she earned a Master Degree at Carnegie Mellon University, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Georgia. Zezelj-Gualdi worked extensively with Eugenia Tchougaeva, Irina and Marina Jashvilli, Manana Dugladze, Cyrus Ferough, Carolyn Huebl, and Michael Heald and took part in master classes with Andres Cardenes, Thimothy Baker, Pamela Frank, and Misha Emory among others.

In January 2008 she became a founding member of the Balkan Quartet, a string quartet which focus is to involve and inspire composers to create new music that would use an indigenous Balkan language, reviving the rich Balkan folk heritage on a high artistic level.

Dr. Danijela Žeželj-Gualdi serves as a Violin and Viola Instructor and an Artistic Director of the Community Music Academy at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, as well as an Artistic Director and founder of the Cameron Arts Museum Young Musicians Competition.

Julia Walker Jewell – Pianist

Composer and keyboardist, Julia Walker Jewell is a native of Wilmington, NC. She is currently the full time Director of Music at Wrightsville United Methodist Church, where she serves as organist and directs the adult, handbell and children’s choirs. She is also the leader of the Port City Trio, a long time Wilmington band featuring pieces from The Great American Songbook. Along with her husband, Kelly, she owns and operates Ted’s Fun on the River, a popular music venue in downtown Wilmington.

As a composer, she writes in both the classical and jazz idioms. In addition to writing for her Jazz Quintet, her classical works have been featured by the Tallis Chamber Orchestra of Wilmington, the “ComposerWorks Series” on the local and state level for many years and the “Very Special Arts Festival” (Brussels, Belgium).

She received her B.A. from UNC-W where she studied piano with Dr. Richard Deas and did her graduate work at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, studying commercial music and jazz.