Spring Rise Up: A Dance Sensorium | Dancer silhouettes and flowering tree

SPRING MAIN STAGE AUDITIONS + ASSISTANTSHIPS

ABOUT THE SHOW

MAIN STAGE | SPRING RISE UP: A DANCE SENSORIUM
Choreography by Aleta Hayes, Alex Ketley, and Raissa Simpson

Spring Rise Up: A Dance Sensorium will consist of three dance pieces for the Harry J. Elam, Jr. Theater. Choreography by TAPS Senior Lecturer Aleta Hayes, and TAPS Lecturers Alex Ketley, and Raissa Simpson.

Two pieces, Ode to Intimacy with Raissa Simpson and TBD with Aleta Hayes, are seeking dancers/performers as part of these auditions. Read more about the pieces below.

Promotional Illustration by Jasmin Zazaboi

Stanford TAPS seeks to build a diverse cast for this production and encourages members of any race, gender identity, and ability to audition. If any accessibility accommodations are needed please email tapsinformation@stanford.edu for assistance.

ABOUT THE AUDITIONING PIECES

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Ode to Intimacy is a dance + technology piece for 7 performers from multiple dance disciplines (contemporary, hip hop, social dance, etc.) Influenced by how intimate relationships are curated through algorithms (e.g. dating apps) in online exchanges, Ode to Intimacy centers around navigating harmonic and chaotic situations that technology can create. This episodic dance + technology piece will be built in collaboration together and with an original sound track.

 

Independent Study credit is available for the Winter quarter rehearsal portion of the project, and DANCE 27R course credit is available for the Spring.

 

Technology students interested in adding production elements to the dance piece and who work with robotics and/or motion capture technology are welcome to apply using the applications below.

 

ABOUT RAISSA SIMPSON

Raissa Simpson

 

Raissa Simpson is a scholar and artistic director of the San Francisco-based PUSH Dance Company. Her multidisciplinary dances are at the intersection of complex racial and cultural identities and centers around discourse on the complex experiences of racialized bodies. 

 

A graduate of SUNY Purchase with an MFA from UC Davis, Simpson had an extensive performance career with Robert Moses Kin and Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theatre. Her choreography honors include Magrit Mondavi Award, San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, California Arts Council, San Francisco Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and Grants for the Arts. 

 

Simpson has also taught for PUSH’s robust outreach program, which encompasses engaging youth with elements of dance and technology. She has held positions at UC Davis, San Francisco State University, Santa Clara University and as a visiting scholar for Sacramento State University. She is currently a lecturer at San Jose State University’s Communication Studies dept. teaching Race and Performance in addition to Contemporary Modern Dance at Stanford University. 

 

She has been presented by Joyce SoHo, Aspen Fringe Festival, Dance St. Louis, Ferst Center, Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival and Black Choreographers Festival. She has held creative residencies at Dance Initiative Carbondale, Bayview Opera House, Margaret Jenkins’ CHIME, African American Theater Alliance (AATAIN!) and CounterPulse. Her most recent writings on dance and technology were published in the Afrofuturistic anthology Critical Black Futures by Palgrave MacMillian.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Project description TBD.

ABOUT ALETA HAYES

Aleta HayesAleta Hayes is a dancer, choreographer, performer, educator and lecturer. Hayes holds an M.F.A. (1993) in Dance and Choreography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a B.A. (1991), with Departmental Honors, in Drama, with a concentration in Dance and the Visual Arts from Stanford University.

 

Hayes worked in New York City for fifteen years, choreographing solo and group dance pieces. Performances interpolated acting and singing with dance. She had leading roles in major productions such as Jane Comfort’s dance/opera Asphalt (book by Carl Hancock Rux, music and lyrics by Toshi Reagon) and Robert Wilson’s The Temptation of St Anthony (with music and libretto by Bernice Johnson Reagon). Hayes taught for eight years at Princeton University in the Program in Theater and Dance and the Program in African American Studies. While at Princeton, she developed pedagogically innovative courses that combined cultural history, theory, and performance. 

 

In 2004, Hayes returned to Stanford on a Ford Foundation Resident Dialogues Fellowship through the Committee on Black Performing Arts. A Lecturer since 2006, Hayes’s contemporary dance classes are a hybrid of dance, drama and performance. Introduction to Contemporary Modern Dance: ‘Liquid Flow is the gateway, foundational dance and movement course for Contemporary Dance in TAPS. Other notable classes include, Dance Improvisation StratLab, Afro-Styles and Dance-Making and Musical Theater Dance. For the course Stanford Dance Community: Inter-Style Choreography Workshop, taught since 2018, guest instructors include leaders and choreographers from dance clubs on campus.

 

The Chocolate Heads Band started as a performance-making workshop created by Hayes to teach choreography, interdisciplinary research, and collaboration. An admixture of dance styles, genres, and contemporary performance, this class welcomes student artists from dance, music, visual and spoken word art, and design, as well as from non-art fields. Taught each Fall as a choreography workshop and performer training lab, Chocolate Heads becomes a ‘prototypical’ dance troupe that performs frequently around the campus.

 

Hayes also teaches at the d.school, (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) and other arts entities and programs on campus. At Stanford, Hayes has had many leading roles as a dancer, singer and actor including, most notably: Suzan-Lori Park’s In the Blood, directed by Professor Harry J. Elam, Jr. (2005). In the spring of 2006, she choreographed, performed a multimedia solo piece, Deianeira (an adoption of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis) created for her and directed by Drama and Classics Professor Rush Rehm. She performed the role of ‘Mama’ in Raisin in the Sun (2019), directed by Elam. Hayes has choreographed musicals and plays in TAPS, including Everybody (2020), directed by Michael Rau, Revival: Remembering the Afro Now-One Nation Portal to the Future (2019) directed by amara tabor-smith, Spring Awakening (2016) directed by Elam, and Helen/Hecuba (2018), directed by Rehm.

ABOUT AUDITIONS

Auditions will be held as in-person group workshops. Students should expect to stay the whole time for the audition. If you are unable to attend auditions in person, please email tapsinformation@stanford.edu to explore alternatives.


WHAT TO PREPARE

Wear comfortable clothes, you can move in and be prepared to dance. Students will learn phrases from the dance piece and may be asked to work in a group collaboration. Please be prepared to learn set choreography in addition to your own improvisation.

ASSISTANT POSITIONS

TAPS is also seeking design and rehearsal assistants for this production. Applications are due via email to TAPS Production Manager, Tyler Osgood: tosgood [at] stanford.edu. General crew and behind-the-scenes inquiries are welcome as well!

DESIGNER/ASSISTANT APPLICATIONS 

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AUDITION DATE/TIME

WED JAN 22 from 7:30-9PM

WHERE TO GO

Roble Gym 113

PERFORMANCE DATES

THU-SAT MAY 22-24 in Harry J. Elam, Jr. Theater

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Must be logged in on an @stanford.edu account to view

Theater Standards
Rehearsal/Tech Schedule

ACCESSIBILITY NOTE

If any accessibility accommodations with auditions or callbacks are needed please email tapsinformation@stanford.edu for assistance.

SPONSORS

This production is  made possible in part by the Pigott Fund for Drama, the May Ellen Ritter Production Fund, and the Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson Fund.