Playbill: Three Front Range Dance Events September 24-27

Dance takes center stage — and even the silver screen — this week in Denver, with a performing-arts calendar that includes a stopover by Twyla Tharp’s golden-anniversary tour, a celebration of dance on film, and a fall premiere from Denver’s own Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. Twyla Tharp Dance: 50th Anniversary...

By Susan Froyd

September 23, 2015

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Dance takes center stage — and even the silver screen — this week in Denver, with a performing-arts calendar that includes a stopover by Twyla Tharp’s golden-anniversary tour, a celebration of dance on film, and a fall premiere from Denver’s own Cleo Parker Robinson Dance.

Twyla Tharp Dance: 50th Anniversary in Dance
Newman Center for the Performing Arts
7:30 p.m. Thursday, September 24
7:30 p.m. Friday, September 25
Tickets: $23 to $63
303-871-7720
Macky Auditorium, CU-Boulder campus
7:30 p.m. Sunday September 27
Tickets: $33 to $48
303-492-8008
Twyla Tharp has been shaking up modern dance, from ballet to Broadway, for fifty years with genre-crossing choreography set to classical, pop, jazz and avant-garde music. Tharp is celebrating with a ten-stop anniversary tour of all-new work that brings her to stages in Boulder and Denver this week.

Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema
ATLAS Black Box Theater, CU-Boulder campus
7 p.m. Friday, September 25 and Saturday, September 26
Free
Co-founded in Boulder in 2003 by inter-arts dance creative Michelle Ellsworth and Brandi Mathis, the internationally known San Souci Festival of Dance Cinema extends the creative boundaries of dance by mixing it up with film and video. This year’s selection of video installations and film screenings will be spread out over six sessions, with the first two taking place this weekend at CU’s Atlas Black Box Theater (subsequent events are on October 25 and November 22 at the Dairy Center’s Boedecker Theater and November 9 and November 16 at the Boulder Public Library). Most screenings, including this weekend’s kickoff, are free, and every program is unique.
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance
Bamboula: Musician’s Brew
Newman Center for the Performing Arts
7 p.m. Saturday, September 26
2 p.m. Sunday, September 27
Tickets: $32 to $45
303-871-7720
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance heads into a new season with Bamboula, choreographed by Millicent Johnnie and inspired by the Mardi Gras beat of the Zulu minstrel parades of New Orleans and the Minstrel Carnival in Cape Town, South Africa. Set to compositions by jazz artists Donald Harrison and Charles Vincent Burwell, performed live by the Isaac Points Jakarta Band, Bamboula bears the colorful and exuberant CPRD signature, as do past works from the company’s decades-long run that will also be presented.

Find a stage near you: Check out Westword's online listings for more theater events for this week. And watch for our Winter Arts Guide, coming out on October 1.

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Susan Froyd started writing for Westword as the "Thrills" editor in 1992 and never quite left the fold. These days she still freelances for the paper in addition to walking her dogs, enjoying cheap ethnic food and reading voraciously. Sometimes she writes poetry.

Contact: Susan Froyd

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