Original dance pieces by Cornell faculty, students and guest artist Jie-Hung Connie Shiau will headline “Liminal,” the 2026/27 Annual Dance Presenting Series, Nov. 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts Class of ’56 Flexible Theatre.
The performance will feature the world premiere of “Rainbow Body,” a dance piece Shiau composed inspired by the color-saturated work of Swiss-born artist Ugo Rondinone and by Tibetan Buddhist concepts of the body transforming into light at death.
Also on the program: “I dwell in possibility,” by Danielle Russo, assistant professor of the practice in performing and media arts in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). Russo and Shiau are longtime collaborators similarly drawn by places of transition in the body, the mind, society and culture, Russo said.
A cast of 11 undergraduate and graduate students will perform these works and pieces composed by student choreographers.
“I have been on a creative journey this year exploring the internal landscape,” said Shiau, an award-winning Taiwanese dancer, choreographer and teacher. “Coming to Cornell, I had some phrases prepared that I used that as a foundation for ‘Rainbow Body.’ I enjoyed collaborating with the dancers to create materials based on what we share. I want their colors and freshness and ideas.”
Colorful costumes and lighting design for this piece reflect the five colors of Tibetan Buddhism and Rondinone’s installation series The Rainbow Body, Shiau said.
Shiau was in residence on Cornell’s Ithaca campus for three weeks this semester to rehearse and develop the piece. She also gave a PMA professional directions talk and led a community workshop co-sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor.
Russo’s piece “I dwell in possibility” is inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem with a similar title. Dickinson uses the image of home – both its metaphorical imagery and the felt experience of dwelling, she said, poised between inhabitation and lingering at its edge.
“Possibility also carries weight,” Russo said. “To navigate a liminal world is to contend with its suspended matter: environmental, psychic, and political conditions, phenomena and holding patterns. This dance is a study that seeks to challenge our experiences and perceptions of time, memory and our capacity to hold multiple, shifting realities within ourselves.”
The dance uses stage design and effects to create a tangible atmosphere that also mirrors the liminal elements and the ephemeral qualities of the natural world, Russo said.
“Liminal” is part of “Subject to Change,” a yearlong series of live performances, guest artist residences and experiences that resonate with the work of poet and cultural critic Charles Baudelaire and dance performance scholars Randy Martin, Erin Manning and Fred Moten, among others. Inspired by these thinkers, the year’s focus is designed to engage artists, students, and the community in “the unfinished, the fugitive, the minor, the contingent, the not-yet-legible,” Russo said.
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