Fleming Floats In Contemporary Dance
In a series of floating dance expressions, Maureen Fleming, in her work Decay of the Angel, is the first presentation in the Teatro Los Fundadoris at 7:00 tonight.

A serious accident at two years of age, which left a fractured bone and inflicted the casualty of a lost disc between the fourth and fifth vertebra, did not stop Maureen Fleming, a contemporary dance artist born in Japan of North American parents, from becoming according to the experts, an icon of dance theater.

'Decay of the Angel', the work that the artist will present again tonight in the International Theater Festival of Manizales, in a production of multimedia theater that incorporates the use of several scenic elements. The control of the body by the dancer suggests numerous forms that coalesce with a dance that appears to float.

Fleming, who performed in the Festival of 2003, considers the change of the Teatro Los Fundadores as positive, because it is now a superior space, with greater possibilities and conditions for presentations.

In this second visit to Manizales, Fleming reminds us of her previous presentations, compelling the public through the way she becomes jumbled within her works and that the audience manages to lose the ability to recognize her, within the movement theme she appears.

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The goal of the artist is to reveal the images that are centered in the human body, as vehicle of the transformation. She wants to find a universal art within the characteristics of human evolution. One of the aspects of the work of the dancer is an "archetype", that consists of a universal symbols that incorporate a pattern of life experience.

As far as the workshops that were conducted in the last days, she thinks that the level of dance in Manizales is very good, since the students that participated in the workshop made in the University of Caldas, demonstrated their capacities and facility for the style that the dancer proposes, who bases her technique on the protest to the atomic bomb. These students will have the opportunity to be involved in an internship after the workshop.

Her designer Christopher Odo, will help her with the assembly of the stage scenery of her presentation as well as the details of the lighting and set.

For the theater critic Rubén Darío Zuluaga, the work of dance of Fleming is inner and very important, where the movements do not remain in the technique but go beyond the dance…the body is revitalized. The pedagogical work projects in a very spiritual way. "In addition, the students of Manizales have learned much and they have developed many tools", Zuluaga said.

"It seems to me that Fleming's dance performance is scenic art, it is an artistic gift for the city. It is justified that this dance theater opens the Festival, because Fleming's art is where the protagonist is the movement, it does not matter that there are not words, because the body speaks ", explained Zuluaga.

This work will be able to be seen again, tomorrow, in the same schedule and the same room.

Choreography, Performance: Maureen Fleming.
Stage scene, illumination and visual design: Christopher Odo.
Sound design: Brett R, Jarvis. Videography: Jeff Bush and Hiroshi Onhiro.
Images: Lois Greenfield. Music:
Philip Glass.