Writer’s Choice

Arts faculty, staff to headline in spring dance, opera performances

Caught in a rare siege of indecisiveness, Writer’s Choice couldn’t decide which faculty performance to highlight, since both the dance and opera options were so intriguing. Breaking again with precedent, we decided to feature them both.

Arts faculty often come to UW–Madison as recognized performers or visual artists as well as scholars. Presentations this spring in dance and opera offer ample evidence for this point:

Moving Heaven and Earth

This might appear to be a daunting task, but Larry Keigwin seems more than able to handle it.

A guest artist in the Dance Program this spring, the New York-based dancer-choreographer will join forces with UW–Madison dance faculty, staff and students to celebrate Earth Day. Keigwin will have two works performed in the concert, Thursday-Saturday, April 20-22.

A veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway, cabaret, burlesque and many dance ensembles around the country, Keigwin has used his three-week residency here to teach a class and to work with students, faculty and staff in the dance program.

In addition to Keigwin’s pieces, the concert also will feature works by UW–Madison’s Li Chiao-Ping, Peggy Choy, Maureen Janson, Marlene Skog, Otehlia Kiser, Elizabeth Johnson, Collette Stewart and others. Keigwin also will talk about his life in dance and opportunities that dance presents. He will lecture at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, April 21, in Lathrop Hall.

All performances begin at 8 p.m. in Lathrop Hall’s Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space. Tickets, $12 general/$8 students, are available at the door. Student tickets for the April 20 performance will be $5. For more information, contact Doreen Adamany, 262-1691 or dadamany@education.wisc.edu.

Mirror Story

“How high can you sing?”

A messenger conveyed that query, rather frantically, from a composer to soprano Mimmi Fulmer.

“I was in a practice room learning a piece for that evening’s concert, pretty much as the composer was writing it,” Fulmer says.

Despite the above story, there are certain major advantages to having music composed expressly for you. Fulmer, a professor of voice, can tell you exactly what they are.

“The composer takes into account my vocal range, flexibility, ability to deliver text at different speeds and how loud or soft I can sing in various parts of my voice. This composer was very willing to change things that didn’t work out on the first try — she even reset an entire scene at a different pitch level,” Fulmer says.

That scene will be in the opera “Mirror Story,” receiving only its second performance on Friday, April 28, through the University Opera. Its accommodating composer, Alicyn Warren, wrote the work for Fulmer, whom Warren has heard sing a variety of roles and pieces over the course of two decades.

William Farlow, director of the University Opera, will be at the helm of the production. He says that it will present something of a learning curve for him, since it is the first work he’s directed with an electronic tape score.

And he had better get it right, since the tape will be pivotal to the performance.

“The UW Opera production will feature the tape as the main element,” Fulmer says. “There can be a lot of glitches getting the machinery to work — and the challenges of memorizing a 50-minute piece, especially with the complex tape part, was a big consideration.”

The story traces a woman’s life in reverse, starting with the moment of her death, a la the movie “Memento.”

About a dozen students in this spring’s Opera Production class also will be taking part in the performance. “Members of the class will see first hand and close up how an opera comes together,” she says. “They also will see same of the pressures of putting together a new work with a lot of technical elements.”

“Mirror Story” will begin its one-performance-only Wisconsin premiere at 7:30 p.m. at Music Hall. Tickets, $10 general/$5 UW–Madison students, are available through the Vilas Hall box office, 262-1500.