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FRIDAY & SATURDAY
Conspiracy theorists could have a field day trying to document correlations between the work of George Washington University dance professor Maida Withers and the world’s conflicts and disasters. Like a zealous sports fan who guarantees that her team wins by wearing the same underwear three weeks straight, Withers incorporates themes into her work that seem to have some bearing on the workings of the universe—or else her timing just stinks. In 1990, the year the United States began to take its first crack at Saddam Hussein, Withers debuted Sands Cycles—a mix of dance and earth-art video. In July 2002, Withers traveled to Brazil to present A River Runs Deep, just months after the country was ravaged by floods and mudslides that left scores dead and hundreds homeless. Now, weeks after the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia, Withers presents Maida on Maida in the Universe. The show features an installation of screens that mix images from Withers’ extensive body of work with pictures from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope—juxtaposing the larger universe with her own. The 30-plus-year dance veteran is known for playing with relationships between art, science, nature, and man—maybe she’s just so avant-garde that it simply appears she can predict the future. Or perhaps she really does possess a morbid clairvoyance—the dance world’s own Nostradamus. Consult the great oracle at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, and Saturday, Feb. 15, at George Washington University’s Marvin Theatre, 800 21st St. NW. $18. (202) 432-7328. (Sarah Godfrey)