ArtPlay will host Leah Tubbs, founder of New York City’s ModArts Dance Collective, in residency June 3-June 21, 2013.
As part of the residency, Tubbs will teach Horton modern dance technique in a three-week workshop with ArtPlay Teaching Artist William-Michael Cooper. The workshop will consist of a class to prepare dancers for rehearsals, followed by rehearsals. The workshop will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. each night Monday-Thursday, with rehearsals from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, in the UAB Hulsey Center for the Arts, Room 312, 950 13th St. South. The cost for the three-week workshop is $200. Scholarships are available. Drop-ins are $15. For more information, call 205-975-4769 or visit ArtPlay online at www.ArtPlayASC.org.
Tubbs will teach repertory from ModArts. Students from the workshop will then have the opportunity to perform in concert in “Homegrown: a Celebration of Contemporary Dance,” at 7 p.m. Friday, June 21, in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, 1200 10th Ave. South.
The performance will celebrate choreography created by performers with Alabama roots. Performers will include Tubbs, Cooper and ModArts company members, as well as Rhea Speights, artistic director of Sanspointe Dance Company of Birmingham; Cindy Free, director of Birmingham Ballet; Jacqueline Lockhart, director of J. Lockhart Performing Arts Institute of Birmingham; and Kendia Bennett, company member of Alabama Ballet, who was recently accepted to SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Dance in New York.
Tickets to the performance are $25, general admission. For tickets, call 205-975-2787 or visit www.alysstephens.uab.edu. ArtPlay will also present a free Meet the Artist performance earlier that day at 1 p.m. for children in summer camps, as part of its education and outreach mission.
Tubbs, a native of Birmingham, Ala., studied dance at Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and at the University of Alabama. She toured with the Alabama Ballet while at ASFA. She is a former scholarship recipient of the American Ballet Theater Summer Intensive. She is the founding artistic director of ModArts Dance Collective, as well as the creator and program coordinator of a dance program for ages 2-7, “Arts in Motion (A.I.M.).” ModArts Dance Collective (MADC), a professional contemporary dance company, employs a synthesis of ballet and modern dance blended with Afro-centric undertones to articulate the human condition and spirit through the unbounded art form of dance.
This residency will take the place of ArtPlay’s previously announced dance camps and intensives.