September 2002

Internationally-renowned choreographer Gus Solomons, Jr. is currently an Artist in Residence at MIT in the Department of Music and Theater Arts. Mr. Solomons, is making a new, untitled environmental work with students in the MIT Dance Theater Ensemble, a newly-formed performance group sponsored by faculty in the Music and Theater Arts section. The work will be performed at 12:30pm on Sunday, September 29 at the Rotch Library (Building 7, Room 238 at 77 Massachusetts Avenue) on the MIT campus. The work will feature an original musical score composed and performed by Music Faculty composer Brian Robison. The event will be free and open to the public.

Mr. Solomons, a graduate of MIT with a BArch (1961), has performed with national companies including Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. He has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including a 2000 Bessie Award for his contributions to choreography and dance, is artistic director and founder, in 1972, of the Solomons Dance Company, for which he has created over 100 dances. He has originated more than 70 works as a soloist in the companies of Donald McKayle, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. In October 2000, he received the first Robert A. Muh Award honoring an MIT graduate for noteworthy contributions in a School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences field. He currently teaches dance at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and reviews dance for the Village Voice, Dance Magazine and the Ballet Review. While attending MIT, Solomons studied ballet with E. Virginia Williams, founder of the Boston Ballet Company.

Mr. Solomons' residency is sponsored in part by the Theater Arts section, as well as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Scholars Program. For this intense residency, he has decided to make the work as an "installation" in the space of the Architecture Library itself.

Thomas DeFrantz
Associate Professor, Theater Arts
Class of 1948 Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 10-272
(617) 253-6957