Live Arts Plus

Over The Rainbow: The Rock Ballet 2.0 features an all youth multicultural LGBTQ+ and allies youth cast. Over The Rainbow dubbed OTR has cast young dancers from all over the country; New Jersey, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, Florida and Nebraska all of whom have a passion for dance. The 70 minute one act production presents the story of The Wizard of Oz through dance (Contemporary, Hip Hop, Jazz), 2K music (Hip Hop, Rock, Pop) and customized 3D technology. The rebranded Rock Ballet will premier January 29th with additional performances January 30th. Encore performances throughout 2022 include; Jersey City LGBTQ+ Pride Festival, and an east coast three city mid-summer tour with an end goal of attaining a Broadway Theater residency. Auditions, casting, rehearsals, and multiple storylines will be filmed and edited for a four episode Docuseries, to be released on a future date.

Over The Rainbow: The Rock Ballet debuted in New Jersey in the Fall of 2016 and continued its success in the Summer of 2019 in an Off Broadway venue, The Hudson Guild Theater, in which all shows sold out. The production won Most Creative Musical, Best Director, Best Lighting Design and Best Stage Manager in the NYC Theatre Festival, Summerfest, in the Fall of 2019. Over the Rainbow continued its momentum in early 2020 with a second sold out run on the Mainstage Theater at Playwrights Horizon, an Off Broadway venue on 42nd st. Now, Over the Rainbow: The Rock Ballet 2.0 is reinventing itself, bringing a fresh new approach to the Dance and Theatre industry with a diverse all youth cast supportive of and a part of the LGBTQ+ community.

70 minutes 1 Act

Lead Roles Featuring:

Simone Cooper, Luka Gabriel, Andrew Dyer, Jalen Lybbert

Punk Ballerina Karole Armitage presents A Pandemic Notebook, a collection of world premieres with her company Armitage Gone! Dance. An intimate look at Armitage’s creative, cinematically driven explorations over the past 18 months, A Pandemic Notebook is the company’s final season presenting new work by Armitage before it transitions to a new mission – with Armitage herself taking the stage with NYCB legend Jock Soto.

The opening diptych, Beautiful Monster and Louis, was inspired by Italian art cinema and Trump’s presidency, revealing how celebrity and fashion can distract from the manipulation of power.

The second section of the program illuminates connections between film and live dance for the stage. Two world premieres, adapted from works originally created for the screen, are juxtaposed with two selections from Armitage’s screen series, Under the Dancer, which captures the body from extraordinary angles and perspectives, often with surreal distortions.

In Time/Times, an homage to slow cinema, Armitage performs for the first time since 1989, dancing with former New York City Ballet Principal Jock Soto in his first NYC appearance since 2005. They’ll present live excerpts from the film, framed by on-location stills from the remote wilderness.

A real-time experiment, 6 Ft. Apart rigs the dancers with visible wires and devices – iPhones and accelerometers, a type of on-body sensor – that trigger sound in relation to motion.

The program closes with Marc Jacobs, with the dancers in fantastical outfits from the eponymous designer’s Fall’21 collection. Set to Native American saxophonist and composer Jim Pepper’s Goin’ Down to Muskogee, it is a celebration of bouncing back and Armitage’s long-standing connections to the fashion world.

Run time: 75 minutes, no intermission

Armitage Gone! Dance @New York Live Arts March 16-19, 2022.mov from Armitage Gone! Dance on Vimeo.

Show dances of all styles, prepared by the students and professional of Fred Astaire NY Midtown dance Studio inspired by the theme “Life Is A Carnival”.

1:30:00 (Approx Runtime)

Featuring works created by Vicky Shick, this year’s Guest Artist Resident; Larissa Velez-Jackson, Movement Research Artist-In-Residence; and Rebecca Stenn, Lang faculty; along with student-created works. All works will be performed by students of the Eugene Lang College Contemporary Dance Program.

Runtime: 90 mins

forever for now is a work about love… a phenomenon that none of us fully understand. We grew up watching stories where people fell for their soulmate, overcame insurmountable differences, and lived happily ever after – permanently fixed, in love. In practice, it feels much harder to place your finger on the one “thing” we’re apparently all here to find. And when there are so many kinds of love, so many shapes and shades and different people for that one-true-emotion to land on, how do we know when we’ve got “it?” Why one word for something so complex? Why just one story for an experience that we’ll inevitably practice over and over with lovers, friends, parents, children, strangers, fellow humans, ourselves? For all the ways we’re confounded by love, there’s one thing we know to be true: in the unpredictability of life, nothing is permanent. And whether our love changes in the morning, for right now, it’s everything.

forever for now is a final work by cullen+them’s young dance collective.

The Company:
Liam Mackenzie
Mieke Matteson
Nyah Raposo
Pilot Roberts
Beatrice White

Artistic Director Hannah Cullen

Lighting Design Christopher Theilking

Set + Costume Design Victor Jeffreys II

Music + Sound Design Hannah Cullen and Ian Noel