A phalanx of Southern Methodist University dance students has been invited to perform Martha Graham’s 1935 social-protest classic, Panorama, when the Graham troupe appears at the Winspear Opera House next month. First, the restaged work will be part of the school’s Meadows Spring Dance Concert next week at the Bob Hope Theatre.

“It’s an honor to be invited and totally unexpected,” says SMU dance professor Myra Woodruff, a former Graham company member who has set the work on 35 of her students. “They’re going to get a glimpse of what a professional life as a performer is all about.”

Graham made Panorama at Bennington College in Vermont during a particularly fruitful period for early modern dance. Though the choreography is abstract, she meant the piece as a statement against social ills of the time, including the rise of fascism and the oppression of African-Americans. It has become a university-dance staple since it was re-created in the early 1990s from an old filmed version.

The Meadows concert also features a new pas de deux, Camille … a Poem of Intimacy, by visiting professor and artist-in-residence Jean Paul Comelin. He is a dancer, choreographer and educator who started with the Paris Opera Ballet in 1956 and has worked with some of the masters of 20th-century dance, including George Balanchine, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The duet is inspired by the sculptor Rodin’s relationship with his student and mistress, the artist Camille Claudel.

Also on the bill: choreographer Jessica Lang’s restaging of her 2007 work, Prayers; a reimagined and expanded version of SMU assistant professor Christopher Dolder’s Vigeland’s Garden, from 1987; and No Contact, a new work by SMU dance student Jamal Jackson White.

While the Meadows concert runs from Wednesday through next weekend, the dancers will perform Panorama on Friday and Saturday only and again on April 30 when the Martha Graham Dance Company visits Dallas as part of the TITAS series.

Manuel Mendoza is a Dallas freelance writer.

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Wednesday through April 3 at the Bob Hope Theatre, 6101 Bishop Blvd., Dallas. $7 to $13. 214-768-2787.

Link to Original Article: http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/arts/headlines/20110325-smu-dancers-to-perform-reimagined-classic.ece