Motionhouse's SCATTERED Dance-Film Spectacle Plays UConn's Jorgensen Tonight

Dance is fluid and so, no wonder, Motionhouse, the celebrated troupe from the UK, has chosen water as its context in a dance-film-spectacle called "Scattered," playing Jorgensen tonight, Feb. 14, at 7:30 p.m. The 25-year-old dance theater company is making its U.S. debut tour this January and February. After tonight's Feb. 14 performance, the artists will hold a Q&A with Jorgensen audience members.

Dance-film-spectacle is what co-founder and artistic director Kevin Finnan calls the show that employs film, original music and aerial movement to explore our everyday, and sometimes exotic, relationship with water. A massive set employs a half-pipe-like wall that evokes water in all its form and movement - tidal wave, rainstorm, ice floe, swimming pool, waterfall. Seven dancers are at one moment on the stage and then suddenly sprinting upward, immersing themselves in the most changeable of elements, flinging themselves into deck chairs, throwing and catching one another in impossible embraces.

Finnan collaborates with award-winning Spanish filmmakers, Logela Multimedia, to blend athletic movement with inspiring projected imagery. Set design is by longtime collaborator Simon Dormon, with lighting by Natasha Chivers. Original music by Sophy Smith brings the whole together.

Scattered is performed by Jade Barton, Claire Benson, Martina Bussi, Giorgio De Carolis, Danny Connor, Junior Cunningham (Rehearsal Director), Anthony Middleton, Alasdair Stewart and Becci Williams.

Motionhouse was founded in 1988 by Finnan and Louise Richards. The company has toured 18 full-scale productions and pushed contemporary dance into the aerial arena by combining choreography with sling and bungee skills.

Jorgensen was named Best College/University Performing Arts Center in the Hartford Advocate Best of Hartford Readers' Poll for 2012, and was recently named a Reader's Choice Winner by the Mansfield-Storrs Patch.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Ticket prices are $36, $33 and $31, with some discounts available. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient, free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.

Pictured: Motionhouse: Scattered. Photo by Chris Nash.