An NIU professor and a DeKalb dance group have combined talents to develop a dance presentation which will be featured at Expo ‘92 this fall.

NIU Art Professor Norman Magden and the Emergence Dance Theatre will present a multimedia performance in September at the U.S. Pavilion in Seville, Spain.

Magden said the combination of different media mixed with live performance gives the illusion of more than one dancer.

“I use six to ten projectors at one time,” he said. “This creates images of the dancers themselves and integrates the visual art with the dancer.”

Magden said that this project is a personal professional activity, but he hopes to enhance his multimedia classes at NIU with this experience.

Choreographer Sandra Schramel said the dance group was chosen to perform at the Expo after submitting a proposal.

“We sent a video of some of our performances, and we were chosen immediately to participate,” she said. “Our dance theatre has performed in Europe before, but this will be the first time in Spain for us.”

Schramel said a repertoire of six pieces will be presented with different methods of integrating the media with the dancer.

“One method we will use is to duplicate the performance of the live dancer on film, which will create a different perspective of the single view of the live performance,” Schramel said, who is an NIU alumnus.

The Expo will open April 20 and is titled, “The Age of Discoveries.” It is a walking tour through five centuries of humankind’s greatest achievements.

Other Expo attractions will include operas, classical and avant-garde theater, symphonies, ballet, musicals, jazz, rock and pop, as well as folk singing and dance, circus and exhibitions of painting, sculpture and videos.