The first Wake Forest Dance Festival will be held this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in E. Carroll Joyner Park on Harris Road.
Sponsored by the Wake Forest Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources Department, this free event will feature national and regional professional dancers from the Wake Forest dance community and beyond, including Greensboro’s Theatre of Movement, Durham’s Gaspard & Dancers and Renay Aumiller Dances, and Charlotte’s Movement Migration. Several former dancers with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Carolina Ballet will also participate. The event will also showcase local rising advanced dance performers from Dance Attic, Destiny Dance Institute, Franklin Academy, Get in 5th Productions, Wake Forest Academy of Fine Arts, and Meredith College.
There will be an educational technical rehearsal at 10 a.m. by the tour in motion from 1 to 4 p.m.
During the day, mini dance performances, showcasing various dance styles, will take place in select areas of Joyner Park. Genres will include classical ballet, modern, contemporary, jazz and world.
The event will culminate with the Festival Concert from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The staged performance will include a presentation of the iconic and celebrated solo Lamentation. Choreographed by Martha Graham, the dance will be performed by guest artist Miki Orihara. The festival will also feature Serenata Morisca, a solo choreographed in 1916 by the modern dance pioneer Ted Shaw, which will be performed by Masha Dashkina Maddux.
The Wake Forest Dance Festival will pay tribute to long-time Wake Forest dance instructor Elizabeth “Betty” Hunt Holding and her dance legacy. Having studied ballet under famed Russian choreographer George Balanchine and performed with the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, Holding arrived in Wake Forest in the 1940s. She opened Wake Forest’s most historic dance studio, The Holding School of Dance, in her home where she taught dance to students for more than 30 years until her death in 2007. Continuing the legacy of her great-grandmother, Millie Kerr will perform to celebrate the lineage of dance of the Holding family and the Wake Forest dance community.
For more information about the Wake Forest Dance Festival, visit wakeforestnc.gov and search “dance festival” or contact Wake Forest Arts’ Pamela Stevens at pamelastevens313@yahoo.com.
