Wolf Trap's Face

Dance On Film ~ Dance in America: Wolf Trap's Face of America

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 6:30pm to 8:30pm
  • Library Hall

A film by Joe Bruncsak and Walter Rissmeyer.

Four of the country’s most innovative choreographers combine the grandeur of America’s iconic preserved landscapes with the art of the camera...an on-location dance spectacular in America's national parks.

The Dance on Film series is presented by Bud Werner Memorial Library, Perry-Mansfield and Steamboat Dance Theatre. The free screening includes an introduction by dance history professor and Perry-Mansfield Executive Director Joan Lazarus.

About Dance in America: Wolf Trap's Face of America
Donald Byrd, Amelia Rudolph, Elizabeth Streb, Doug Varone, and their respective companies are joined by the U.S. Olympic Synchronized Swim Team and Hawai’i’s Halau O Kekuhi in an evening of breathtaking works showcasing aerial dancers off the cliffs of Yosemite National Park, synchronized swimmers underwater at Coral Reef National Monument, and following some of the country’s most exciting young dancers to Mammoth Cave, Wright Brothers National Memorial, the remains of a sugar cane plantation at Virgin Islands National Park, and the sacred terrain of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.

Launched in 2000, Wolf Trap’s Face of America commissions dance makers, musicians and performing artists from across the nation to explore the relationship between the natural stage and the creative process; and celebrate fellow National Parks and their cultural heritage using the language of the performing arts.

Featured are Amelia Rudolph and Project Bandaloop at Yosemite with the music of Native American flutist Robert Mirabal; Donald Byrd and members of his troupe with jazz composer/musician Steve Turre at Virgin Islands National Park; Doug Varone interpreting the songs of country music singer Patti Loveless at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park; and Elizabeth Streb celebrating the centennial of flight at Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk. Halau O Kekuhi chants and dances at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, while the Olympic Synchronized Swim Team salutes the aquatic life of Coral Reef National Monument.

Dance in America: Wolf Trap’s Face of America is a production of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in association with Thirteen/WNET New York.

Run time: 90 min.

About the film's commentator

Joan Lazarus


Joan Lazarus served as Executive Director of Oakland Ballet, General Manger of Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center, and Executive Director of WestWave Dance, an annual festival of new choreography presented in San Francisco. Joan has performed with or in the works of Alonzo King, Cliff Keuter, Ellen Bromberg, Victoria Morgan, Krissy Keefer, Frank Shawl, Bill DeYoung, Toni Pimble, Richard Colton and Alan Ptashek. She taught at the University of Oregon, Mills College, San Francisco Ballet, Dance Circle of Boston, The Princeton Ballet, RoCo Dance & Fitness, and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and co-authored the Dance Curriculum Guide adopted by the San Francisco Unified School District. She received Bay Area National Dance Week’s Contribution to the Field of Dance Award in 2006, and in 2012 she received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Sustained Achievement. Lazarus was named 2011 Dance MVP by the San Francisco Chronicle. Joan joined the staff at Perry-Mansfield in June 2012.

About Dance On Film

This 2013 Dance On Film series is presented by Bud Werner Memorial Library, Perry-Mansfield and Steamboat Dance Theatre. Perry-Mansfield celebrates its 100th anniversary as the oldest continuously operating arts camp in the United States this year. Steamboat Dance Theatre is a community dance organization presenting its 41st annual concert March 14-16, 2013, in addition to year-round dance scholarships and education programs in Yampa Valley schools and throughout the community. This collaborative and educational dance film series features free screenings of the hottest new dance documentaries along with the finest classic dance films from a variety of genres filmed throughout the ages.