PULLMAN – In a sensory journey of discovery, WSU dancers present “Awakenings” on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1.
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Daggy Hall’s Jones Theatre. Choreographed and performed by WSU’s senior dance instructor, Phyllis Gooden-Young, and her students, with set construction and lighting design by Dean Bourland, “Awakenings” is an immersion experience of movement, sight, sound and touch.
In an exciting collaboration between WSU Theatre and Dance, the Department of Interior Design, the School of Music and Health and Wellness Services (HWS), the event begins in a transformed Daggy Hall.
Theatregoers enter Jones Theatre through a Grecian lobby created by students of interior design professor Robert Krikac. Music by members of the music school fills the air, and the staff of HWS provides free hand, head, neck, and shoulder massage before the performance and during intermission.
On stage, dancers perform a program of modern, jazz, tap and hip-hop in this multimedia theatrical production, and a storyline emerges. “Awakenings” tells the tale of lessons to be learned, where turmoil leads to self-examination and ultimately to an empowering inner peace.
Gooden-Young, a native of Houston, Texas, has worked as a dancer, actress and director and has toured nationwide. She has danced in Houston with the Heritage Dancers and Stanze Peterson’s Dance Theatre and in New York with the LaRoque Bey and Rod Rogers Dance Companies.
Tickets are available at the Daggy Hall box office 2-5:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday the week of the performance and an hour prior to the 8 p.m. curtain. General admission tickets are $5. WSU graduate/professional students and their partners are admitted free of charge with valid identification. For ticket reservations, call 509-335-7236 or e-mail reservations@wsu.edu.
