'Beauty' Mark

Photo courtesy of Rino Pizzi

For almost 50 years, Deborah Hay has been not only a major artist in the world of American modern dance but an influential force in its development, and now scholars and dancemakers are convening on the University of Texas campus to consider her impact on the form. An Uncanny Beauty: A Celebration of Deborah Hay features a keynote address by UCLA professor Susan Foster, a choreographer and author of several books on dance, including Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance and Choreography and Narrative: Ballet's Staging of Story and Desire. Her speech will be preceded by three panels covering Hay's ideas and work with subjects such as the body and consciousness, community, the counterculture, and aesthetics. The discussions will be led by UT's Susan Heinzelman, Charlotte Canning, and Rebecca Rossen and include choreographers Tere O'Connor, Christopher House, and Gabriel Smeets, as well as scholars and writers Ann Daly, Karen Schaffman, and Danielle Goldman. The symposium, which is sponsored by the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at UT and co-sponsored by the College of Fine Arts, the Department of Theatre & Dance, the Office of Graduate Studies, and Performance as Public Practice, is open to the public and free of charge. The evening before An Uncommon Beauty, Hay will perform No Time to Fly, a new solo dance, in the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center. The event is already sold out.

The UT Fine Arts Library is also showing "The Rightness of Movement," an exhibit of photographs by Phyllis Liedeker Finley depicting Hay's work from 1983 to 1997, through April 8. The exhibition is presented by the Center for Women's and Gender Studies and the Fine Arts Library, with support from Women & Their Work and Nancy Scanlan.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7

Long Center for the Performing Arts, Rollins Studio Theatre

7pm, No Time to Fly performed by Deborah Hay, SOLD OUT

THURSDAY, APRIL 8

Blanton Museum of Art, Smith Building, Blanton Auditorium

10-11:30am: Consciousness/Body/Practice

Panel led by Center for Women's and Gender Studies Director Susan Heinzelman, with choreographer Tere O'Connor, choreographer/scholar Karen Schaffman, and Toronto Dance Theatre Artistic Director Christopher House

1:15-2:45pm: Politics/Counterculture/Community

Panel led by head of the graduate programs in Performance as Public Practice Charlotte Canning, Dance Advance Director Bill Bissell (Pew Center for Arts & Heritage), School for New Dance Development Artistic Director Gabriel Smeets (Amsterdam, Netherlands), and scholar Danielle Goldman

3-4:30pm: Aesthetics/Art/History

Panel led by Department of Theatre & Dance assistant professor Rebecca Rossen, with historian Selma Odom, author Ann Daly, and choreographer/scholar Nina Martin

5:30-6:30pm: Keynote Address

Speech by Susan Foster, professor in the Department of World Arts and Culture at UCLA and author of Reading Dancing and Choreography and Narrative

7-8:30pm: Reception on the mezzanine