Bates Dance Festival celebrates 25th anniversary.

The sprawling campus of Bates College is in full bloom during Maine's adventurous summer dance festival. While there is plenty to see onstage, there's also a lot going on around the college grounds, like site-specific works in a field or in dorm windows. Even the cafeteria provides the opportunity to ruminate with students, faculty, and guest artists about contemporary dance.

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, director Laura Faure calls the Bates Dance Festival "a seed bed, a birthing center for new work." It has commissioned works by Mark Dendy, Keigwin + Co., Vincent Mantsoe, and Tamango. In addition, it has training programs for young people as well as outreach programs and community projects.

As a faculty member who has taught at Bates several summers starting in 1996, choreographer Sean Curran met students who would later dance in his company and composers with whom he would later collaborate. Some of his pieces had their origins in his rep classes at Bates. Curran will perform during the 25th-anniversary gala July 28, along with other dance luminaries who are Bates regulars: David Dorfman, Rennie Harris, Liz Lerman, Bebe Miller, Doug Varone, and PearsonWidrig DanceTheater.

The festival, which runs July 7-August 12, offers weekly performances and related talks. This summer there will be panel discussions such as "Global Exchange: Sharing Across Cultures" and a "Dialogue with Dance Makers," including Danny Buraczeski, Doug Varone, and Rennie Harris.

Curran says that the lack of competition at Bates is rare. "The students who show up there want a profound experience and they are receptive about going deeper," he says. "Many professionals who teach elsewhere come to Bates to get refreshed and intellectually inspired." See abacus.bates.edu/dancefest.