One challenges society’s portrayal of the perfect family. Another examines how we translate the mundane into the profound. And another explores the incorporation of the human element into symbolic machines.

One shows the entanglement of limbs, creating a kaleidoscope of flesh. Another describes life’s constant and unpredictable movement. And one is an interactive meditation on the individual in our mass-oriented culture.

These are the themes of six new choreographies by UC Davis graduate students and undergraduates, whose work comprises this year’s Main Stage Dance-Theatre Festival, scheduled to be performed six times from April 10 to 19, including two one-hour matinees on Picnic Day.

“There is a wide, substantial range among the stories being told and the issues being explored, from personal and cultural relationships, to scientific principles,” said Professor David Grenke, chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, who serves as the Main Stage festival’s artistic director.

“The interactions among the graduate and undergraduate choreographers are greater than ever before. This has a positive influence on the type of questions the undergraduate choreographers are asking.”

Grenke added that doctoral candidate Keith Hennessey has been a driving force as an instructor in composition for the undergraduates this year.

More about each piece, and the people involved in the productions:

Picture Imperfect Portraits—Undergraduate Hillary Feineman-Klausner uses stereotypical family roles to deconstruct the concept of the ideal family and its expectations. The choreography explores a family’s idiosyncratic members—their relationships with one another, and how they form a unit.

Isaac Blackstock, composer-sound designer, created music for Picture Imperfect Portraits. His influences are from Romantic and contemporary composers, including Gustav Holst, Danny Elfman, and the electronic music of Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka. This variety of stylistic influence lends an eclectic and modern edge to the score.

Costumes also play an important role in Picture Imperfect Portraits, rendering a cartoonlike quality. “I had fun designing exaggerated clothing and hope the audience enjoys the humorous effects,” said Olufunmilayo Alabi, costume designer. Circus tent, clown and ringmaster elements are reflected in the brightly colored designs.

I, Saint John, the Speaker—Undergraduate Tyler Eash asks why we gather meaning from our physical and mentally cultivated environment, and examines how we find value and potential spectacle in mundane performance. The work’s creative catalysts include perceptions of common ideas, unfiltered thought processes, translations through forms of measurement, early iconic Christian art, and grandiose exaggerations of pedestrian movement.

Christina Moore, costume designer, said: “My designs contributed to Tyler’s storytelling in a subtle deconstruction of street clothes mixed with dance wear. My biggest challenge was finding a balance between innovative design and dance practicality.”

Computer Games—Undergraduate Lucas Macdonald explores the interaction of six simple rules in the making of dance. “Each dancer is given the same set of basic commands based upon the actions of the dancers around them,” Macdonald said. “Like a game of chess, the simple movements of many pieces create a deceptively complex system.”

Computer Games is performed on a grid with seven dancers who follow Macdonald’s rules, which include: If there is an invader in your square move once space forward; if the person in the square in front of you has their back to you, enter their square.

Symmetry Study #15—Jess Curtis, a Master of Fine Arts candidate and an award-winning choreographer, explores and manipulates perception, revealing the body’s awkwardness, monstrosity, and potential failure and limitations. Study #15 also presents the possibility of the unknown, the wondrous, the ecstatic and the infinite.

Study #15 is the most recent installment of The Symmetry Project, an ongoing series of installations and presentations by Jess Curtis/Gravity. Curtis describes the project as a journey through perception. “Bodies interact through a highly structured improvisational score, constricted in a specific physical habit; that of moving symmetrically, relative to themselves or to each other. In this space, bodies are constantly tuning, reformulating the perception of the self and of the other. Limbs entangle and intertwine, blending, merging, and then again differentiating, they become ‘unfinished entities’—improvising new habits, ‘perceiving the possible.’”

Aller/Arret—The title is French for “go/stop,” describing Kelly Fleischmann’s reflection of life’s constant state of momentum—which inevitably stops to change direction. Fleischmann, who graduated from UC Davis last year, noted: “Life takes us on a journey that can often times be monotonous until we’re given the chance to just be free.” Aller/Arret suggests that everyone has the opportunity to embark on a means of expression, if only briefly.

The choreographer drew her inspiration from her many trips to France and elsewhere in Europe, where vast amounts of open tranquil space create a suspension of time, and her realization of how individuality is further explored when given just a moment.

Fleischmann noted: “Life takes us on a journey that can often times be monotonous until we’re given the chance to just be free.”

Aller/Arret's lighting, in amber shades and leaf patterns, exemplifies Fleischmann's selection of French style for every element of the play. Catherine Frye, lighting designer, said: “My lighting underscores Kelly’s theme. I accentuate the back and forth of the dancers with variations in color and intensity.”

Life Among the Institutions—Created and performed by MFA candidate Nina Galin, an artist and educator whose works integrate theater, dance, and classical and contemporary music. Life Among the Institutions playfully blurs boundaries among these genres with a contemporary score. It jumps off of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” text and proceeds as interactive meditation on the relationships between individuals and institutions, both in the administrative and cultural sense.

“Narrowly, the institutions on my mind are the California educational system and Shakespeare. More broadly, I am concerned with how the mass production and distribution of goods and services has become institutionalized in our culture, and how I (and my fellow citizens) may relate to these cultural, political, and economic institutions," Galin said.

•••

Stage manager Sarah Norton described the challenge of organizing six different choreographies. "Being so involved in every aspect of the festival makes me realize how crucial every part of the production team is, and that even small details cannot go overlooked," she said.

“It is an amazing feeling to know that everyone is on schedule, and that everything is going as planned.”

Choreographer biographies

Jess Curtis (Symmetry Study #15), who lives and works in San Francisco and Berlin, has created a body of work ranging from the underground extremes of Mission District Warehouses with Contraband (1985-1994) to the formal refinement of European state theaters with Jess Curtis/Gravity (2000-present).

Along the way he has co-created ground breaking circus works; and has been commissioned to create works for companies such as FabrikCompanie in Germany, the English Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company, ContactArt in Italy and Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company in Ireland.

He founded Jess Curtis/Gravity in 2000 as a research and development vehicle for very live performance. At Gravity, he has created four full-evening performance works—No Place Like Home (2000), fallen (2001), Touched: Symptoms of Being Human (2005) and Under the Radar (2007)—and a variety of smaller repertory works and site specific installations.

Curtis' fallen garnered him a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2002, and Gravity is the recipient of six Izzies (Isadora Duncan Dance Awards).

Curtis is working toward an MFA in choreography at UC Davis and has been a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley and the University of the Arts in Berlin.

More information: jesscurtisgravity.org.

Tyler Eash (I, Saint John, the Speaker) is a third-year undergraduate, with a double major in dramatic art (dance emphasis) and landscape architecture. He attended the Marysville Charter Academy for the Arts, where his emphasis was visual arts.

His focus of study ranges from spatial design, fine art, theater, writing, dance, voice and architecture. He has been studying dance for the last three years at UC Davis. I, Saint John, the Speaker is his third choreography. He recently received a Young Artist Award scholarship to attend the American Dance Festival.

Hillary Feineman-Klausner (Picture Imperfect Portraits) has been passionate about dancing since she took her first modern class at UC Davis, where she is a fourth-year psychology and dramatic art (dance emphasis) double major. She most recently danced in John Jasperse’s Beyond Belief. Upon receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, she plans to further her education in graduate school and then become a dance therapist.

Kelly Fleischmann (Aller/Arret) is a December 2008 graduate of UC Davis with a major in dramatic art (dance emphasis). Aller/Arret is her first self-choreographed piece performed at UC Davis.

She is no stranger to UC Davis theater, onstage and off: Measure for Measure (appearing as Orangina-dancer), Main Stage Dance Theatre Festival 2008 (assistant stage manager), Fate and Spinoza (video technician), THIRDeYE Theatre Festival 2007 (playing Echo April) and Man of La Mancha 2006 (Sancho Panza puppeteer. She enjoys taking modern, tap and ballet classes, and working as well, as a dance teacher at the Woodland Opera House.

Nina Galin (Life Among the Institutions) has been developing works that integrate theater, dance and music (both classical and contemporary) since 1987. From alternative venues in New York City to the converted warehouses of San Francisco's Mission District, to the formica tabletops of southern California Starbucks stores, Galin blurs boundaries between audience and performer, and incorporates explicit awareness of place into each performance.

As an artist, educator and citizen, she explores connection and complexity on somatic, aesthetic, social, political and economic levels of experience. A broad concept of musicality underlies Galin's approach to performance. She is pursuing an MFA in the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Lucas Macdonald (Computer Games) is a graduating senior who abandoned computer science for dance. Computer Games is his first choreography.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Main Stage Dance-Theatre Festival

WHERE: Main Theatre

WHEN

April 10-11 and 17: 8 p.m.

April 18 (Picnic Day): 1 and 3 p.m. (special one-hour matinees)

April 19: 2 p.m.

TICKETS

General admission: $14 and $16

Students and children: $10 and $12

Picnic Day: $5

Tickets are available through the Mondavi Center for the Per-forming Arts: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org.

Groups: $5 per ticket for school and youth groups of 10 or more, at the teacher or group leader’s request (by calling the Department of Theatre and Dance, (530) 752-5863).

NOW PLAYING

WHAT: Solo Explorations, thesis presentations by four candidates for MFA degrees in acting: Rebecca Michelle David, Hope Mirlis, Timothy Orr and Christine Samson.

WHERE: Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center

WHEN: 8 p.m. April 3 and 4

ADMISSION: Free

More about Solo Explorations