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Penn State College of Arts and Architecture
Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State
A close up photo of Bazemore wearing a tank top and large hoop earrings.

A Movement for Five:
Dialogue with Choreographer Dawn Marie Bazemore

12:00 pm Friday, October 27, 2017

Arts and Design Research Incubator
Borland Building ground floor

Free and open to the public

Hear choreographer and former Philadanco dancer Dawn Marie Bazemore in conversation with Kikora Franklin, associate professor of dance at Penn State. Bazemore created A Movement for Five for Philadanco in 2015. She will discuss the subject of the work—the case of the Central Park Five—and her connections to it. She will also describe the development of the dance and the reasons why socio-political art is vital to the community. Feel free to bring a lunch. Dessert and bottled water will be provided.

A Philadelphia-based performer, choreographer, and dance educator, Bazemore is assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Rowan University. She has been a master lecturer/artist in residence at The University of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of North Carolina School for the Arts. After being a member of Philadanco from 1998–2009, Bazemore performed featured roles in Broadway and regional productions of the first national tour of The Color Purple, Dreamgirls, and All Shook Up. In 2001, she performed Strange Fruit, choreographed by Pearl Primus, for the Emmy Award-winning American Dance Festival documentary Dancing in the Light. That performance is on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bazemore has created work for Philadanco and Grace Dance Theater, and has presented solo work at the American Dance Festival. After the premiere of her ballet A Movement for Five, she wrote an essay documenting her experience. It was later published in the online journal The Dancer-Citizen. A native of Brooklyn, Bazemore trained at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ballet Academy East, and Covenant Ballet Theatre of Brooklyn. She earned a bachelor of fine arts from the State University of New York at Purchase and a master of fine arts from Hollins University. She was a finalist in the 1994 ARTS Recognition and Talent Search, and is a recipient of the Bonnie Pfeifer Evans Educational Scholarship and Helen Tamiris Award for Excellence in Dance.

This presentation is part of the Center for the Performing Arts Diversity and Inclusion Collaborative, which seeks to: immerse an array of people in the performing arts; educate the community about cultures and art forms different from the familiar; influence thinking so we become a community that embraces diversity and promotes inclusion; ensure the activities of the collaborative have a sustainable impact on the community. Funds from across Penn State and throughout the community support the initiative. The University’s Equal Opportunity Planning Committee provides lead funding. Sandra Zaremba and Richard Brown provide support.