Modern Dance Performances Usher in College’s Art Season

Palomar College will kick off its performing arts season tonight with a concert that reflects a vision to expand the dance experience on campus.

The three performances will feature a split bill that includes Gloria Newman Dance Theatre (an Orange County-based modern dance troupe) as well as the familiar faculty dancers on the Palomar staff. Performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. today and 3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

“This is the first time we’re inviting a professional dance company to perform with us,” said Dorothie Bleth of the dance department. “Whenever we can, we’d like to have more school-sponsored professional dance. This time it’s modern, and we’ll have four members of the modern dance faculty perform with the company. But, in the future, we hope to do it with jazz and ballet, too.”

“It’s an opportunity to share with our students in North County various points of view in modern dance,” said Jacqueline Weiss, a soloist on the faculty portion of the concert. “We’d like to invite other companies--especially when we’ve had some ties with them, like this one.”

Bleth studied with Newman several years ago and is the faculty link with Newman’s dance troupe. Company dancer Karol Lee teaches at nearby MiraCosta College. But it is Newman’s complementary choreographic focus that appealed the most to the Palomar faculty.

“She has a view of modern dance that we haven’t seen in San Diego,” Weiss said. “The issues the company addresses are either dramatic or very contemporary, and we want to expose our students to as many styles of dance as we possibly can.”

“That’s what modern dance is all about,” Newman said by phone from her studio. “We’ve been around 25 years, but we have never performed in the San Diego area before. I’m going to home in on a different vocabulary for this performance--very contemporary, and very off-the-wall.”

Newman selected three of her dancers and excerpts from a full-evening work for this weekend’s concert at Palomar College Theater. The zany bits and pieces will be a “dance of juxtapositions,” Newman said.

When the faculty takes the limelight, Weiss will dance two solos--a recent work by San Diego-based Mieczslaw Morawski and a new dance of her own design. Faith Jensen-Ismay, a Three’s Company principal, will perform Jean Isaacs’ “Red Dress,” which was well-received at a recent company Lo-Tec concert.

Also, Mary Neuru will dance and choreograph, and Dana Dominic will present two group pieces.