Parsons Dance brings an all-new version of last season’s sold-out, rock dance opera, Remember Me to The Joyce this season. In addition to the dance company, the work features the lead vocalists and music of the Grammy-nominated rock opera band, East Village Opera Company (EVOC).

Started in 2004 by Peter Kiesewalter and Tyley Ross, EVOC is a musical group dedicated to re-imagining the greatest opera arias through the use of modern instruments and creative arrangements, all the while balancing tradition with renewal.

EVOC turned the heads of New York’s music community with a series of electric genre defying shows at Joe’s Pub, the intimate venue housed by the New York Public Theatre. Initially meant as a one-off project, they were quickly signed to Decca/Universal records and met with universal praise from both classical and rock critics and fans. The band has recorded three CDs and toured the world with a unique live show that combines a seemingly incongruous classical string section with a powerhouse rock band. The Washington Post proclaimed, “Opera crossover acts are becoming a veritable cottage industry, but the East Village Opera Co. is markedly different.”

The Joyce is pleased to welcome RIOULT back to our stage Jan 19-24. As we gear up for the engagement, we invite you to get to know the dancers of the company.

In this video, Jane talks about what is like to be a dancer in RIOULT as well as experiencing stage fright and how she overcomes it. It also includes behind the scenes footage of Pascal’s highly anticipated world premiere set to Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”

More interviews and other great behind the scenes information can be found at http://rioult.wordpress.com/

Purchase tickets for RIOULT’s upcoming engagement at The Joyce here.

At a press conference on Monday, January 11, it was announced that The Bessie Awards (honoring dance and performance in NYC) would return in the fall of 2010.

Since 1983, the Bessies, New York’s Dance and Performance Awards have saluted outstanding artists and works. Following last year’s hiatus, the producers of the Bessies undertook a series of listening and planning sessions with leading members of the dance community. The purpose of the discussions was to discover new ways that the awards could engage, support, and celebrate the great variety of dance and performance work going on in the city. It is with great excitement that the Bessies embark on this important work of reinventing and reenergizing the awards for the next decade.

The Bessies will launch a new web presence through DanceNYC, which will also take over the administration of the awards.

The current producers of the awards—Danspace Project, the Joyce Theater, and Dance Theater Workshop—will work in partnership with DanceNYC as it assumes the day-to-day responsibilities of producing The Bessies. DanceNYC, working with the acclaimed team at Design Brooklyn, will also create and maintain The Bessies homepage on the web. The site aims to become a hub for the New York dance world, a place to share information on companies, shows, and projects, as well as the place to go to for detailed info on the Bessie Committee and ongoing developments related to the awards.

The Bessies is actively working to find new ways that the awards can benefit the community and the honored artists.

A few of the ideas in development are an annual Bessie-related event during the APAP Conference to promote the work of the past year’s honorees, streaming honored artists work on the Bessie web site, pursuing commissioning grants to accompany certain awards, and more.

The Bessie Committee for the 2010 awards is Nolini Barretto, Rashida Bumbray, Lili Chopra, Joan Finkelstein, Boo Froebel, Stephen Greco, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Stanford Makishi, Brian McCormick, Nicky Paraiso, Brian Rogers, Philip Sandstrom, Yoko Shioya, Sydney Skybetter, Ivan Sygoda, Charmaine Warren, Susan Yung

A Bessie Steering Committee is being created that will work with Michelle Burkhart of DanceNYC, Martin Wechsler of The Joyce, Judy Hussie-Taylor of Danspace Project, and Andrea Sholler and Carla Peterson of Dance Theater Workshop to provide leadership for the Bessies going forward.

DanceNYC will work with Lucy Sexton as an independent fundraiser for and producer of The Bessies.

Look for the announcement of further details on the Bessie web site and via our press correspondence. All questions should go to Lucy Sexton at thebessies@gmail.com.

March 15: Bessie web site launched by DanceNYC.

May 1: Date, location, and updated information on the awards for the fall 2010 ceremony announced.

Wally Cardona and Rahel Vonmoos returned to Joyce SoHo for an encore presentation of their A Light Conversation. Once again it received popular and critical acclaim.

Following the premiere of this season’s production, The New York Times‘ Claudia LaRocco said, “Kierkegaard, with his interest in indirect communication and subjectivity, might well have found great riches in the complex ambiguities of nonrepresentational dance, particularly when performed by sophisticated artists like Mr. Cardona and Ms. Vonmoos.”

Read the full review here. And don’t miss your opportunity to see these two extraordinary artists in this stunning work. The final show is tonight. Tickets are still available here.

This week, Richard Alston Dance Company brings the New York premiere of Movements from Petrushka (among other works) to The Joyce stage. With Gyor National Ballet’s presentation of Petrushka just weeks later, audiences are invited to compare two significantly different interpretations of the same work.

Set to Stravinsky’s classic score, Petrushka tells the tale of a Russian puppet who comes to life and reveals human emotions. In the hands of Alston, the work is graceful and lyrical, with an emphasis on pure movement. The choreographer frames the work to mirror of the mental breakdown of Nijinsky, who danced the title role in the original production. In Alston’s portrayal, Nijinsky was ill-equipped for the public existence thrust upon him by his tremendous talent.

Gyor National Ballet choreographers Dimitrij Simkin and James Sutherland’s Petrushka is an artistic portrayal of the manipulation and dehumanization that occurred under the totalitarian regime in Eastern and Central Europe. Simkin is quoted as saying, “I present here not dolls with human feelings … but I present humans who act like puppets in a society controlled where misleading the masses and brainwashing controls the society. The death of Petrushka is a symbol of an ideology gone wrong, let it be either Communism or National Socialist excesses, or the sacrifice of human rights for the benefit of a cruel ideology.”

Listen in as Alston discusses his Movements from Petrushka in a recent interview with John Shafer on WNYC:

See Richard Alston Dance Jan 12-17.
Tickets are available here.

See Gyor National Ballet Jan 26-31.
Tickets are available here.

As part of New York City’s Age-Friendly NYC initiatives, the Department of Cultural Affairs has worked with the City’s local arts councils and the Department for the Aging on Space for Art, a new program that makes free studio space available for artists in senior centers across the five boroughs. Through Space for Art, artists provide programming at their senior center in exchange for free work space.

Applications for participation are available through the local arts councils. Due dates vary (see below). Please alert the artists and teaching artists with whom you work about this exciting new opportunity.

Space for Art application links:

Bronx Council on the Arts
http://www.bronxarts.org/documents/SpaceforArt_001.pdf

Application due date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Brooklyn Arts Council
http://www.brooklynartscouncil.org/documents/1287

Application due date: Monday, January 11, 2010

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
http://www.lmcc.net/blog/2009/12/lmcc_seeks_applications_for_ne.html

Application due date: Monday, January 11, 2010

Queens Council on the Arts
http://queenscouncilarts.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=160&Itemid=316

Application due date: Monday, January 11, 2010

Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island
http://www.statenislandarts.org/resource-flyers/Space%20for%20Art%20Call%20to%20Artists%20(2).pdf

Application due date: Monday, January 18, 2010

For more information, please visit the Department of Cultural Affairs website at http://nyc.gov/culture.

Researching the recent history of Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), one cannot help but to notice the unanimous praise for Peter Boal’s charismatic presence and his role in the present blossoming of the company. At the Dance Talks last Monday, in front of an eager and well versed audience of students and dance enthusiasts, moderator Linda Szmyd Monich’s followed suit by commending Boal’s qualities and leadership. Monich placed Boal within a genealogy of visionary artistic directors (she mentioned Diaghilev and Baryshnikov, among others) who radically shaped companies and, by extension, audiences and the dance form itself, from a position that requires, as she noted, vision, focus, taste, education, patience and leadership.

Boal’s artistic vision–and according to him, his obligation–to keep the art form relevant and vital has led to the inclusion of over 50 new works in the PNB repertory in the span of just five years. But while this aspect of his work had been widely discussed, in the press and interviews, it is the ethos of his work along with his wider intellectual impact that Monich’s presentation stressed. The choice of new and often controversial work does not only serve the purpose of renewing interest into contemporary dance, it also demonstrates a trust and faith in the artists who are given space, time and opportunities to experiment and learn. Monich notes that in forging new collaborations and inviting young and established choreographers, Boal “allows great work to happen without imposing himself on the process.” In a recent New York Times interview, a PNB dancer expresses the same sentiment: “I feel like more of a grown-up. The ballet world, you get in as a kid, and that relationship can be maintained through your years, even though you are becoming a mature adult. And I like how here [in PNB] I can voice what I have in mind.”

Such trust in the process extends to the relationship that PNB is building with its audiences: debate is welcome (Monich quotes Boal as having said, “when people are arguing over the water-cooler about the performance they saw, we’re doing something right.”). The company encourages this sort of discourse by maintaining a great variety of programs – post-performance talks, presentations in bookstores, educational luncheons, open rehearsals and a website and blog rich with information about the company. The value placed in connecting with the audience is evident in Boal’s own active communication with them through his blog and his openness in sharing ideas not only on particular performances but, perhaps most importantly, on issues of culture, the role of artists and institutions, and the importance of the arts, placing his work within a larger context of intellectual formation and debate that is rare to find.

That the admiration towards Boal’s artistic leadership is, far from an hagiography, rooted in a common sentiment, was evident by the audience’s curiosity, participation and interest in the work of PNB. Their questions and responses as they sought to know more or fill in with more information made this talk a particularly lively and interactive one, proving that audiences need and appreciate the integrity of an artistic vision such as Boal’s.

PNB will be performing at The Joyce until January 10.