Critically acclaimed choreographer Heidi Latsky brings her unique dance performance, “GIMP,” to Scripps College’s Garrison Theater on Wednesday, October 6, at 5:30 p.m. The performance is co-sponsored by the Scripps College and Pomona College Dance Departments, and is the last performance of the fall 2010 semester being presented by the Scripps College Humanities Institute. The event is free and open to the public.
GIMP challenges notions about physicality and the “ways we are often identified or defined” by it by bringing together performers beset with physical challenges, including undeveloped or amputated limbs, as well as physically “able” performers. Latsky has received several distinguished choreographic commissions, including the Cannes International Dance Festival and the American Dance Festival. Latsky has toured with her New York City-based dance company, Heidi Latsky Dance throughout the United States and Europe since it was founded in 2001.
GIMP has received ebullient praise from numerous publications, such as, The New Yorker: “GIMP beautifully resets preconceptions about bodies and movement”; Dance Magazine: “GIMP is without doubt a gleaming milestone in the progress of contemporary dance and theater, proving that the term ‘disabled dancer’ is an oxymoron”; and The Washington Post: “Latsky asks us to look at people for what they are capable of, rather than what they can’t do…GIMP takes the ‘dis’ out of disabled and reveals a whole new realm of abilities.” For more information about GIMP, visit their website.
The Scripps College Humanities Institute fall 2010 program is “Engagement: Mind, Body, and Soul.” What does it mean to be engaged mind, body, and soul? The seminars explore these and other questions with scholars, performers, and activists in diverse fields through their lecture, film, and performance series. For more information, please contact the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8237 or visit their website at scripps-staging.skybox0.com/hi.