North Shore Civic Ballet to Perform in World Community Festival

The North Shore Civic Ballet (NSCB), a nonprofit dance company based at the Marblehead School of Ballet in Marblehead, Massachusetts, is getting ready to perform again in José Mateo Ballet Theatre's 8th Annual Dance for World Community Festival. The NCSB invites the public to see the free performance on Saturday, June 11 at 4:40 p.m. at Sanctuary Theatre, located at Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The ballet company has provided performances and arts education to the Greater Boston community for more than 30 years. Under the direction of Artistic Director Paula K. Shiff, the NSCB is home to an ever-changing group of talented dancers made up of both seasoned professionals and aspiring young dancers.

At the Dance for World Community Festival, the performance features the NSCB's resident choreographer, Ivan Korn, and his original works, 'I Insist' and 'Saturn Clouds'. The solo, 'I Insist', is performed to cellist Zoe Keating's percussive, lyrical music in a journey of determination. The choreography of 'Saturn Clouds' represents a metaphor of outer space performed to Pink Floyd's music.

"Due to the length and beat driven musical landscape in 'I Insist', the solo dancer pushes her physicality to the edge. Although abstract, the piece contains a subtle narrative with natural gestures incorporated into the dance. Determination is not stubbornness nor arrogance but a clear-minded sense of where one wants to go, knowing some hurdles are in between, said Korn.

"In 'Saturn Clouds', the movement and patterns of the dance inspires common themes from science fiction stories, gravitational waves, time dilation, thermodynamic entropy, and magnetic fields. Perhaps the dancers are not real human beings, but they may be the recurrent transformation of cosmic energy into a new state of matter."

NSCB dancers from the area are scheduled to appear in the performance. Dancer Mia Chung attends Boston University Academy in Boston and Gabby Todtfeld is a student at Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts. Performer Mollie Frederiksen is pursuing a doctorate in physical therapy at Massachusetts General Hospital.

For more information about the performance and the North Shore Civic Ballet, call 781-631-6262 or visit the organization's web site or follow the organization on Facebook and Twitter.