[540] MTSU welcomes the season at Spring Dance Concert April 24-26

MURFREESBORO — MTSU Dance Theatre will celebrate a fresh new season with its Spring Dance Concert, scheduled for Thursday, April 24, through Saturday, April 26, in the university’s Tucker Theatre.

Performances are set at 7:30 each evening. General-admission tickets for the Spring Dance Concert are $10 for adults and $5 for K-12 students and MTSU staff. MTSU students will be admitted free with a valid student ID.

Directed by Professor Marsha Barsky, the 2014 Spring Dance Concert will highlight original choreographic works from MTSU dance faculty and selected students alongside dances created by visiting guest artists Teena Marie Custer and Jesse Zaritt. 

Custer and Zaritt shared their creative processes with MTSU Dance Theatre students during their weeklong campus residencies this semester.

Custer’s “Turn on the Black Light,” which is part of the Spring Dance Concert, features nine MTSU dancers performing street dance styles they learned during Custer’s residency. Zaritt’s work “Garden Party” presents new and exciting compositional structures for 12 dancers.

“Dance is how we experience the world and communicate expression,” Zaritt told the students during his residency at MTSU. “I believe that people should have access to the expressive power of their body. That is how we experience conflict, trauma, joy — it all lands in the body. It is important to use the body expressively, not just functionally.”

The concert also will feature seven pieces that display the scope of MTSU’s dance training and the talents of the university’s dance faculty in contemporary ballet, jazz and modern dance.

Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.showclix.com/events/18277 or at the door. The Tucker Theatre Box Office will open one hour before each performance for ticket purchases.

For more information about the performance, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/dance. You also can call the Tucker Theatre Box Office at 615-494-8810.

A searchable campus map with parking details is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap13-14.