Take a look at some behind-the-scenes footage of the creation of Skyscrapers, the brilliant piece making its New York premiere at The Joyce tonight. A live performance inspired by a sensational OK Go video, Skyscrapers is a co-collaboration between Pilobolus associate artistic director Renee Jaworski and filmmaker Trish Sie.
Purchase tickets to see Skyscrapers performed live!
Take a look at this beautiful portrait of renowned ballerina Suzanne Farrell. Her company makes its Joyce debut with an all-Balanchine program next week.
Purchase tickets here.
Dances For A Variable Population/Naomi Goldberg-Haas creates work with dancers ranging in age from 22-92. For our performances at Joyce SoHo, Oct 13-15, 2011, we are rethinking some of our dances created for outdoor spaces. We are also re-staging choreography created with dancers in residencies outside of NYC. This “Mambo” from our popular show “Street. Straight. Mambo. Disco.” was created during a residency at The Yard in Chilmark, MA and then performed in the outdoor Downtown Dance Festival at Chase Plaza. The work was created in collaboration with Sandy Broyard, who had a nightclub act in Paris in the 1960’s and Kathy Joyce Costanza, a founder of Vineyard Dance, the oldest established dance company in Martha’s Vineyard. Here’s a clip of how we are working.
Mambo for OUT TO IN - Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances For A Variable Population
Video by Don Mount
Dancers: Sandy Broyard and Kathy Joyce Costanza; Jamie Graham and Ani Javian
OUT TO IN, rehearsal for Joyce SoHo, Oct 13-15, 2011
Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances For A Variable Population
In other news, we are excited about our new pieces set to a collage of ideas from Jad Abumrad’s Radiolab NYC*. Guest performers to DVP company include Chad Lindsey, who recently played Sascha in Pig Iron Theatre’s Obie award-winning Chekhov Lizardbrain, and Dina Paisner, who worked Judith Malina and Julian Beck’s Living Theater in its founding years.
Purchase tickets now for Dances for a Variable Population at Joyce SoHo Oct 13-15 7:30pm.
*Radiolab is a production of WNYC Radio. You can hear more Radiolab programs and download the podcast at radiolab.org
Read what dancer Elyse Morris has to say about the DANY Master Class Series:
“I really like this new contemporary master’s series. I was blessed to take workshops from both Camille Brown and Andrea Miller – two artists I greatly admire! Camille challenged us to be clearly intentional with the energy and rhythm of our movement as if we were performing in front of a deaf audience. Andrea gave us a gaga-inspired warm up, which challenged the way in which I initiated movement. She spoke of the body, not only having one plumb line, but actually utilizing several lines of energy to support the body. Learning diverse approaches to movement expand the language of the mover, inspires creativity in future visionaries, and also further aids in the promotion of this art form we call dance.”
The series continues with classes led by choreographer Robert Battle and dancer Desmond Richardson.Last week, I caught up via cell phone with a very busy Robert Battle, who is preparing this week’s class. Battle will become the Artistic Director Designate of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on July 1, 2010. The Joyce and Robert Battle have had a longtime friendship. Battle was a veteran dancer of Parsons Dance, appearing numerous times on the Joyce stage. He was also introduced as a choreographer to New York audiences at The Joyce when he created well over six works for the Parsons company. His company, Battleworks, has also appeared at The Joyce.
Robert Battle received his training at Juilliard, and he is fluent in the classical modern dance idioms of Graham, Limón and Taylor. His choreography is inspired by that classical tradition, upon which he aspires to build. Battle’s dance class begins with a warm-up based upon classical modern dance principles and culminates with phrases from his theatrical, inventive and physically strenuous choreography. The Friday, June 1st class he conducts at DANY Studios may be among the last opportunities to study with him in an intimate laboratory setting.
Desmond Richardson’s class follows on Friday, June 18.
Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup (gracing the stage at Joyce SoHo this weekend) has created Proximity Spiral, a dark and sexy evening length work based on the structure of a Fibonacci sequence. If the promise of a red marley floor isn’t enough to get you in the door (it looks amazing), perhaps this review of an excerpt from Proximity Spiral will do the trick.
Last week, the Maryland-based Kalanidhi Dance performed at Joyce SoHo to raves from audience and critics alike. The New York Times‘ Alastair Macaulay had this to say about the work:
“New York is internationally celebrated for ballet and modern dance. But I find it remarkable that of the five live performances I watched last week — which included ballet and modern dance, ranging from 1950s works to premieres — by far the freshest dancing, and much of the most enthralling choreography, came from a group from Maryland specializing in the Kuchipudi style of India.”
Read the full review here.
Next week, the world-class Gyor National Ballet from Hungary will return to The Joyce (they performed Purim in 2002 to great critical acclaim) with an exciting, all-Stravinsky program featuring Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Both pieces are re-envisioned (by choreographers Dmitrij Simkin and James Sutherland, and Attila Kun respectively) on the occasion of the 20 year anniversary of the fall of communism (the performance is part of the Performing Revolution Festival, organized by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts).
The company’s programming choices and collaboration with international choreographers (such as the Russian/German Simkin) is part of Gyor’s mandate under the artistic directorship of Janos Kiss. Company Director since 1991, Kiss focuses on “keep[ing] traditional dance theater elements and the high artistic and professional standard,” while adopting “a wider scope of themes and styles, using a more varied range of artists, composers and authors as well as world-famous choreographers and stage designers.” Such vision, essential for the dancers’ growth as they get exposed to a variety of styles from an international culture, has been embraced by audiences in Hungary and worldwide. Janos Kiss attests:
“The Gyor National Ballet […] always reaches out to new ideas and more often than not offer[s] a chance to young choreographers to test their talent on the very talented and technically capable dancers of the Ballet. The choreographic choices are well received as the frequent tours and invitation in Western Europe demonstrate. The Ballet reaches to younger audiences, and this is assured by the excellent school that the Gyor National Ballet subsidizes and supports. It may be said that there is a constantly growing young audience for the Gyor National Ballet in Hungary”.
The choice to perform Petrushka and Rite of Spring for the 20 year anniversary draws on the works’ themes, which explore the relationship between the individual and the collective. While Janos Kiss believes that “it is impossible to express in dance historical occurrence and happenings on a chronological level meaningfully,” he sees the works as intellectually challenging insofar as they “explore those inner feelings, which may be part of the complex themes of oppression, personal sacrifice and the relation of society to the individual.” In this context, the classic works are reinterpreted from new perspectives. The character of Petrushka, for example, is conceived anew, not as a puppet but as “an individual who refuses to give up his individual freedom” while it is the rest of the characters, led by The Sorcerer (or, in this case, Commissar) who act as puppets, manipulated by a totalitarian regime. Simkin describes his intentions:
“in my choreography I would like to show the antagonism between the Sorcerer and Petrushka, in the milieu of the 1930 time period in the Soviet Union, which made possible tragic, and almost theatrical exaggerations in every day life. In these times “Happy Totalitarianism” prevailed, the “Big Chief” and the “tiny wheels of the system,” the small individuals, were well differentiated from each other. I present here not dolls with human feelings [and the drama which is based on this phenomena], like in Fokine’s work, but humans who act like puppets in a society where misleading the masses and brainwashing controls [people]. […] It interested me how I can approach this topic, which is usually coupled with tragic circumstances and physical sufferings, in a satirical manner”. 
It is on this level, of a shared, common humanity despite different experiences and backgrounds, despite cultural or linguistic barriers, that Janos Kiss believes that the audiences will identify with the performances: “the basic human emotions are the same everywhere in the world. Love, fear, terror, sympathy, hatred, etc, are basic feelings, which know no language barriers and dance is an excellent medium to represent and communicate these emotions”.
The Gyor National Ballet from Hungary performs at The Joyce Theater Jan 26-31.
In a recent blog post about the creation of Serenade/The Proposition drawn from a lecture delivered at at the NY Historical Society, Bill T. Jones remarks, “a dance theater work about Mr. Lincoln as I conceive it comes with some obstacles. They might be roughly delineated by these two familiar categories: form and content. Formally, I remain suspicious of the biopic narrative and yet, if there was ever an individual and an era, which cried out for a narrative it is this man and that time. Over the last 25 years of creation I have often used elements of narrative that have - because of my bias - resulted in what I call quasi-narrative. An important notion I have relied on in the past and will certainly rely on again is that each piece and its various parts “suggests” rather than illustrates. In other words I set out to suggest a personality, to suggest a story, to suggest a world.”
Read the complete blog entry on the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company website.
Purchase tickets to the company’s upcoming engagement at The Joyce.
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet brings Orbo Novo—the company’s latest commission from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to The Joyce stage Oct 20-25. The work features one of Europe’s most successful and inventive choreographers and an original score for string quartet and piano by Szymon Brzóska performed live by The Mosaic String Quartet with pianist Aaron Wunsch.
Listen in as Cherkaoui talks about the process of creating Orbo Novo.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui - Orbo Novo process from Caleb Custer on Vimeo.
In a recent Washington Post preview article of Emio Greco|PC’s [purgatorio] POPOPERA, Lisa Traiger writes, “…there’s something vital and thought provoking in the way Greco’s five dancer-musicians and one singer overpower a stage. Critics from Seattle to Sydney have lauded the Amsterdam-based company for its dynamism, its mixture of classical ideas and contemporary vocabularies, its eccentricity and ferocity.”
Read the full article here.
See the NYC premiere of [purgatorio] POPOPERA at The Joyce Theater Sep 29-Oct 4.
