North Carolina Dance Theatre will host the fourth annual Fellowship N’ Movement concert, a community collaboration featuring local churches' dance ministries and NCDT's dancers, on Friday, April 23. The performance, which culminates several months of planning, training, and rehearsals, is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at the Bette Rae Thomas Recreation Center. The concert is free and open to the public.
Charlotte Dance Examiner attended the event last year and found the concert a joyful meld of music and dancing. The rich diversity of expression, uniting dancers and professional artists from several churches and dance groups from throughout the Charlotte area, was as uplifting and exhilarating as the performance itself. The concert represented something wonderful and unique in Charlotte--the Church as one body, dancing, with a professional ballet company as its sponsor.
April Berry, Dance Theatre director of education and outreach, chairs the event. “This collaboration has had great impact both on the dance ministries and on NC Dance Theatre,” Berry said. “This project has afforded wonderful opportunities for dialogue, dance, and fellowship, and lives have been transformed.”
NC Dance Theatre Company member Mary Ellen Beaudreau, dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, hip-hop artists from Charlotte and Atlanta, and a former dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company have conducted workshops for adults and youth throughout the winter and early spring. Many of the pieces to be performed this Friday are the result of the creative process fostered through the dance workshops.
In addition to first year partner Friendship Missionary Baptist Church and second year partner New Birth Charlotte in Huntersville, the concert will showcase works from these churches' liturgical dance ensembles:
Resurrection Lutheran Church
Christ Lutheran Church
New St. John Missionary Baptist Church
Hickory Grove Baptist Church’s Latino Campus
NC Dance Theatre and NC Dance Theatre 2 dancers will also perform. Company member Mary Ellen Beaudreau is choreographing a work incorporating dance ministry members and coordinators, and NC Dance Theatre apprentices. The collaboration, previously known as Dance Friendships, is made possible by a Front Porch Grant.
Fellowship N’ Movement Performance Details
Date/Time: Friday, April 23, 2010, 7 p.m.
Location: Bette Rae Thomas Recreation Center, 2921 Tuckaseegee Road, Charlotte, N.C.
Cost: Admission is free
Information: For more information, please call 704.372.0101 x109 or visit ncdance.org.
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