Diavolo, a dance-theater company that performs works it calls “architecture in motion,” combines movement, ballet, contemporary dance, acrobatics, gymnastics, martial arts and hip-hop. The Los Angeles company performs two works, “Fluid Infinities” and “Transit Space,” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, in Penn State’s Eisenhower Auditorium on the University Park campus.
Jacques Heim, the French-born artistic director who created Diavolo in 1992, and his performers use abstract and recognizable structures as focal points in which performers come together to confront, challenge and manipulate their environments.
Tickets are $44 for an adult, $19 for a University Park student and $34 for a person 18 and younger. Buy tickets online or by phone at 814-863-0255. Outside the calling area, dial 800-ARTS-TIX. Tickets also are available at four State College locations: Eisenhower Auditorium (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday), Penn State Downtown Theatre Center (9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday), HUB-Robeson Center Information Desk (11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, resuming Jan. 12) and Bryce Jordan Center (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday). A grant from the University Park Allocation Committee makes Penn State student prices possible.
Diavolo premiered “Transit Space,” a work inspired by skateboard culture, at Penn State in 2012. The company returns to Eisenhower to perform an evolved version of the piece, which the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State co-commissioned.
“‘Transit Space’ has an infectious rock soundtrack … and a hip, contemporary vibe, thanks to street-clothes costumes and the loose way the dancers hang about the stage,” wrote a Los Angeles Times critic.
Heim created Transit Space with the help of 10 Penn State students who traveled to Los Angeles in June 2011 as part of a Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program collaboration called “The Secret Life of Public Spaces.”
Watch a preview of “Transit Space.”
“Fluid Infinities,” a 2013 production, is performed on an abstract dome with patterns that evoke the craters of the moon, a honeycomb of bees, a shifting brain and an undiscovered starship. The performers explore metaphors of infinite space, continuous movement and humanity’s voyage into an unknown future.
“‘Fluid Infinities,’ set to Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 3 and NASA-control-center voiceover, is pure camp, and the work’s 10 performers are exceptional physical comedians,” wrote a reviewer for OregonLive.com. “Emerging from a translucent tube onto an alien lunarscape, they’re filled with tremulous wonder at a large cratered dome, only to get sucked into its portals as if by an unseen magnetic force.”
Blake and Linda Gall sponsor the presentation.
Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring a visiting artist, is offered in Eisenhower one hour before the performance and is free to ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity, so seating is available on a first-arrival basis.
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