Dance Guest Artists 2011-12

An Evening of Percussive Dance and Percussion created and performed by:
Joe Chvala, Karla Grotting, Charles Robison and Peter O’Gorman

Performers-Joe Chvala, Karla Grotting, Peter O’Gorman, Charles Robison
Lighting Design-Heidi Eckwall
Sound Design-Cody Anderson
Tech Directors-Heidi Eckwall, Mike Grogan

Flying Feet Forum will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012
in the Ted Paul Theatre of the Earley Center for Performing Arts.
Tickets are $10 regular, $9 discounted and $8 for current
Minnesota State Mankato students with a MavCard.
Purchase tickets here.

The Flying Foot Forum Since it was founded in 1991 by Joe Chvala,
the Flying Foot Forum has created numerous original percussive works that have toured
both nationally and internationally from New York City to Paris and from the
Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival to Russia. The exciting mission of the Flying Foot Forum
is to re-imagine the potential of all forms of percussive dance and percussion and
to explore their full range of dramatic and musical possibilities. Most percussive
dance companies concentrate on one or two traditional forms of percussive dance.
The unique contribution of the Flying Foot Forum is its dedication to expanding
the definition and the applications of percussive dance. The company creates new
hybrid dances using them to explore ideas and narrative material. Through our forum
of percussive arts, we have found that percussive dance and percussion are versatile,
malleable, and expressive art forms that are equally potent as the main focus of a work
or as one element in an inter-disciplinary collaboration. This idea has led the company
into a range of work that has mixed percussive dance with theater, video, music and
other performing arts. Historically, we have created a wide range of pieces that deal with
universal ideas and issues, creating multi-faceted characters, while telling unusual tales in
fascinating new ways. In recent years, the company has concentrated on artistic and choreographic
collaborations. Unpredictability is its trademark. Imagination and virtuosity are its core.

In this “percussion project”, once again the company takes a new and unusual approach
to the idea of percussive dance as performance, music and theater. The three performers
and Mary Ellen Childs pool their artistic inclinations in an evening of work that is more
intimate than most of the company's work, paring down to three performers, a sleek, elegant,
bare bones style, and an almost purely abstract concept. "Flying Feet" adds to the ever-expanding
definition of percussive dance.