Allied Motion Dance Company and Ivyside Dance Ensemble are 'Mixing It Up!'

Mixing It Up Dancing artwork
Credit: Penn State

ALTOONA, Pa. — Allied Motion Dance Company and Ivyside Dance Ensemble will perform “Mixing It Up” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Nov. 11-12, in the Wolf Kuhn Theatre of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts. The performances, which are free and open to the public, are sponsored by Chancellor and Dean Lori J. Bechtel-Wherry and Timothy L. Wherry.

Choreographers KT Huckabee, Bethany Miller and Caitlin Osborne will present new and old pieces performed by both Allied Motion Dance Company and Ivyside Dance Ensemble. Ivyside Dance Ensemble will offer new works by each of the three choreographers.

“Being thrown back together after many months separated from people we know, people we are newly meeting, and the spaces we spent hours in sometimes feels like nothing relates to who we are/were, and what we want/need. Slamming these things together forces us to create a new reality or perspective. And as humans, that is what we do; create meaning where none may exist,” Huckabee says of her new exploration, “Hello, I am/I was” with a new group of dancers just getting to know each other.

Other pieces include repertoire for Allied Motion: “Third Wave” and “Journey,” choreographed by Osborne and Miller. Also featured will be two dance films by Osborne; one created and filmed during the height of the pandemic and a new venture into a site-specific work filmed in the Scotia Barrens near State College. Miller has restaged “Intangible,” a movement that explores memories for graduating senior Devin Poplin. The concluding dance, “In My America,” is a multimedia piece choreographed by Huckabee, teaching professor of dance and integrative arts, inspired by the poem created by the campus community in April 2021. The poem was conceived and coordinated by Erin Murphy, poet and professor of English. Naomi Baker, assistant teaching professor of theatre and integrative arts, created the video element by individually filming students, faculty and staff reading lines from the poem.

Tickets may be acquired at the box office, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and before and during all performances. For further information, call the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts at 814-949-5452. Masks are required to attend this performance.

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