Project 7 Contemporary Dance Company presents EquiLIFTrium in Roswell

With special guest Swagger Crew, from America's Best Dance Crew, Project 7 Contemporary Dance Company's "EquiLIFTrium" offers the audience a journey of emotions and makes connections through captivating contemporary dance.

Currently in its fifth year, Project 7 Contemporary Dance Company is celebrating with its new show EquiLIFTrium on Friday, Oct. 19 at 8 p.m. in Roswell.

This performance is the second in the Roswell Presents: Friday Nights Live! event series hosted at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center.

In the process of building EquiLIFTrium, director/choreographer Cherrise Wakeham focused on human connections. Be it brief or long lasting, random or planned, these connections have the potential to lift awareness and shift perspective, creating a new sense of balance amidst uncertainty. The constantly evolving energy of urban consciousness and the vastness of these personal exchanges therein provide the inspiration behind EquiLIFTrium.

In the performance, the five female Project 7 dancers represent five different characters from various walks of life. Each with an individual agenda, the characters’ paths cross, their lives merge, and one by one, they experience a deeper understanding of the world through seeing one another with new eyes.

During the second half of the show, Project 7 will collaborate with Swagger Crew’s five-member male group on the event’s featured piece “Promises,” which will explore the mental realities of one of the character’s roles as a psychologically impaired homeless woman, performed by Ashley Watson. "Promises" examines a world this character might create in her mind to cope with the challenges of life. While Swagger Crew enters the scene as a representation of the hard-edged corporate world, "Promises" may be interpreted as somewhat of a dream sequence in which Ashley's character imagines passersby coming to life on her terms, in her world, and from her perspective on the way in which people might connect were it not for race, sex, age, or socioeconomic divide.

With this being their first collaborative effort, Wakeham has enjoyed watching the 10 dancers work together and discover a new respect for one another's strengths in contemporary and hip-hop dance. She believes these two genres are much more closely related than one might think and is looking forward to sharing the collaboration with audience members.

Dance Informa magazine recently said of Project 7, "The dancers of Project 7 are stunning, expressive dancers, who can explode into a dynamic leap out of nowhere, but also melt with coolness and calm. Under Wakeham’s direction, this group of talented young dancers has the world at their feet.”

The show features a variety of music including a spoken word comedic piece by Julia Sweeney, as well as intentional and powerful selections by Bjork, Nathan Fake, James Blake, Zoe Keating and others.

Get your tickets for the second Roswell Presents performance on Friday, October 19 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 each. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit the Roswell Presents website.