Dance Festival Marks Thirty Years

Special delivery: Crowd favorite Pilobolus returns. John Kane

Thirty years ago, the American Dance Festival moved to North Carolina and made Duke its home. In June, the annual festival returned to kick off yet another summer installment, offering dance instruction and more than sixty performances.

The regulars—Pilobolus, Paul Taylor—were back, but there was also a certain international flavor to the performances. In early July, ADF held an "Argentine Festival" to highlight the deep inroads modern dance has made into that country's culture. The festival-within-a-festival showcased five works from some of Argentina's most heralded young dance artists. A second miniseries focused on works from Russia.

The 2007 edition also featured, among other premieres, a first peek at the re-envisioned update of Martha Clarke's 1984 dance theater masterwork, the Hieronymus Bosch-inspired "Garden of Earthly Delights."

Festival director Charles L. Reinhart said the thirtieth anniversary of ADF's relationship with Duke was a big event and also promised another spectacular festival for 2008, ADF's seventy-fifth year of existence.