PERFORMANCE NOTES.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Concert Choir offers free Christmas song warm-up

The Eugene Concert Choir will sing Christmas carols and holiday favorites in a free SHOcase concert at 12:15 p.m. Thursday in the Hult Center lobby.

"Silent Night," "O Tannenbaum," "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Carol of the Bells' and "O Come All Ye Faithful" are among the songs that conductor Diane Retallack and her chorus are preparing for a Dec. 7 concert at the Hult Center.

Eugene's Encore Theatre wins national award

The Senior Theatre League of America has given the Encore Theatre company of Eugene its 2003 Community Service Award.

Encore founder Eliza Roaring Springs will receive the award at the International Senior Theatre Festival in Las Vegas in January.

The Senior Theatre League and its sister organization, the Educational Theatre Association (formerly, the National Thespian Society), organize and promote the semiannual senior festivals. Encore Theatre performed at the 2002 summer festival in Columbus, Ohio.

Utah dancers to perform, show films at UO

Works by choreographers David Dorfman and Sara Rudner will be performed by dancers Pamela Geber and Eric Handman at the University of Oregon this weekend.

Recipients of the 2003-04 UO Boekelheide Creativity Award, Geber and Handman are modern dance professors at the University of Utah.

Also, Handman, who recently has been concentrating his efforts in dance for the camera, will show two films at the concert, ``Exile'' and ``White Room.''

They will perform at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Dougherty Dance Theater in the Gerlinger Annex, 1484 University St., on the University of Oregon campus. Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens, will be sold at the door, beginning at 7 p.m. Information: 346-3386.

Play from Shakespeare festival will visit England

David Edgar's "Continental Divide," a co-production by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, will be staged in England next year.

Productions of the two interconnected plays about U.S. politics have been invited to Birmingham Repertory Theatre (March 6-13) and to London's Barbican Theatre (March 20 to April 4).

This will be the first international tour in either company's history. The plays premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March and ran through July. They are now running at Berkeley Rep until Dec. 28.