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CFA to host inaugural dance festival
The inaugural Buffalo Dance Festival, featuring the Buffalo-based LehrerDance and Configuration Dance Theatre, will take place Aug. 1 in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
The festival will include a performance by the dance companies at 8 p.m. in the Mainstage Theatre, as well as two-hour master classes earlier in the day conducted by Joseph Cipolla of Configuration Dance Theatre and Jon Lehrer of LehrDance. For more information on the master classes, email Buffalodancefest@gmail.com.
As Western New York’s premier presenter of dance, the Center for the Arts is a natural host for the Buffalo Dance Festival. Since 1997, the CFA has presented more than 50 different national and international dance companies representing a wide variety of genres. Its annual dance residency program has introduced live dance performance to more than 20,000 area school children. The CFA also is the performing home of the UB Department of Theatre & Dance, and has served as a multi-year host of such national dance conferences as Jazz Dance World Congress and Dance Masters of America.
Organizers say the goal for the festival is to grow over the next several years to include additional companies, combining collaborative performance experience and offering summer classes to pre-professional and professional dancers and educators.
The highlight of the festival will be the performance by Configuration Dance Theatre and LehrerDance.
Configuration Dance Theatre combines classical ballet's formal traditions with modern dance’s dynamic expressiveness to create dramatic and emotional performances. The ability to bring studied discipline to contemporary choreography extends from the wealth of professional experience within the troupe. The company's compelling performances have drawn rave reviews from critics, both locally and around the country. The New York Times wrote: “The dancer’s innate classicism was the first great pleasure of Configuration Dance Theatre.”
Under the direction of Jon Lehrer, LehrerDance showcases Lehrer’s unique choreography and embodies his definitive style. His extensive background in both modern and jazz dance fosters choreography that is organic, artistic, accessible and often humorous, reflecting life experience and the human condition. Dance Magazine wrote: “LehrerDance took the house, not so much by storm as by quantum physics.”
Tickets for the performance by LehrerDance and Configuration Dance
Theatre are $22 for the general public and $17 for students. Tickets are
available at the CFA box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at all Ticketmaster locations, including ticketmaster.com.
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