GIMP Dance Company To Perform At Lied

Revolutionary dance company GIMP will perform at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Lied Center for Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 29 as part of a week-long residency with the Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium of UNL's Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.

GIMP is a company of mixed-ability dancers, some with physical challenges including muscular dystrophy or prosthetic limbs. The performance will be followed immediately by a discussion between GIMP artistic director Heidi Latsky and Joan Acocella, a writer for The New Yorker magazine.

"Gimp" is a taboo word in today's society, just as unacceptable as staring at people who have physical disabilities. But the dance company, GIMP, also transforms it to mean "fighting spirit," "interwoven fabric" and "trembling with ecstasy." It is all of those meanings that truly define GIMP, which challenges all accepted notions of dance, performance and body image.

According to Dance Magazine, "GIMP is without a doubt a gleaming milestone in the progress of contemporary dance and theater, proving that the term 'disabled dancer' is an oxymoron." The New Yorker said, "GIMP beautifully resets preconceptions about bodies and movement."

As a complement to the week-long GIMP residency, Acocella, an award-winning author and writer, will also hold a separate, public lecture on the art form of dance at 5:45 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Van Brunt Visitor's Center, 313 N. 13th St.

Acocella is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she reviews dance and books. She edited the first unexpurgated edition of "The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky." Her other books include "Mark Morris," a critical biography of the choreographer; "Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism," and "Creating Hysteria, Women and Multiple Personality Disorder." Acocella also edited "Andre Levinson on Dance" with Lynn Garafola.

Acocella's recent collection of essays, "Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints," now in paperback (Vintage), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism and winner of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She also received the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research from the Congress of Research on Dance, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. Acocella was a Guggenheim fellow and is a fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities.

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium is sponsored by the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. It is presented in part by the Lied Center for Performing Arts and funded in part by the Hixson-Lied Endowment. For more information on IAS, visit www.unl.edu/ias.

IAS fall 2010 activities are supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

GIMP tickets are free for all UNL students as part of the Lied Center's "Free for All" program. Tickets for the general public are $16 and are available at www.liedcenter.org or by calling (402) 472-4747 or (800) 432-3231.

The Lied Center for Performing Arts, 301 N. 12th St., is a state-of-the-art performing arts facility. Opened in 1990, it is Nebraska's "Home for the Arts." The facility offers major regional, national and international events designed to attract, entertain and inspire a statewide audience. The Lied Center and its programs are made possible through the generous 2010-11 season support of Christina Hixson and the Lied Foundation Trust, Friends of Lied, Ameritas and Union Bank.

 

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