Chinese dance company Shen Wei Dance Arts will perform for all Syracuse University freshmen Sept. 24 and 25 as part of the recently created Shared First-Year Experience. The new program replaces the Shared Reading Program, which required incoming students to read a book that would be incorporated into their class curriculum. SWDA will be the focus of the new program and will kick-off the year with a performance at the Landmark Theater in downtown Syracuse. Students are required to attend the event with their freshmen forum classes.The dance group, known for its work at the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony, will perform ‘Re-,’ a piece inspired by previous visits Shen Wei performers made to Tibet, Cambodia, and the Silk Road, said Susan Wadley, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.The dance company developed part of its upcoming performance during a three-week residency at Syracuse University in the spring of ’09. During its stay on campus, the group performed at Syracuse Stage, gave a university lecture, conducted community workshops and worked with an honors class, Wadley said. SWDA intended to perform at the university in the fall regardless of whether or not it was chosen as the Shared First-Year Experience. They were originally selected to perform as part of the annual First-Year Forum Milton Lecture Series – lectures geared toward the incoming Arts and Sciences class, Wadley said.’SU had been doing significant work in the arts,’ Wadley said. ‘Shen Wei has an important and interesting view on dance and art. We felt like this would be a different kind of Milton Lecture for our students, but one that would challenge them in new and different ways.’ Discussions about the issues the performance presents will take place in each college’s freshman forum classes, said Judy O’Rourke, director of undergraduate studies. This differs from the Shared Reading program, which was discussed in the introductory writing courses that not all freshmen took.Each school will approach the discussion of the Shen Wei performance from its own angle. For example, O’Rourke said, Arts and Sciences has compiled a book of readings that deal with cultural and political issues, while the L.C. Smith School of Engineering is bringing in a guest choreographer to talk about the technicalities of staging a performance. ‘As a program matures, as the Shared Reading program matured, you need to look at ways to improve it, and I think that we were trying to find something that would appeal to people in a different way,’ O’Rourke said. ‘I really hope that Shen Wei is going to be able to do that because it’s really going to have all sorts of levels – from the technical, to the artistic, to the cultural, to the political – that will engage people in different ways.’ Jerry Evensky, an economics professor and member of the advisory committee that created the Shared First-Year Experience, said he believes the performance will lend itself to courses beyond the freshmen forums. For instance, he can relate the Silk Road segment of the performance to topics discussed in his regular classes. ‘I don’t think anybody’s going to change their curriculum because we don’t want the tail to wag the dog,’ Evensky said. ‘But probably people, including myself, will think about ways we can integrate it in courses that we know (involve) freshman.’rhkheel@gmail.com