Live Arts Plus

10 Dancers / 3 PREMIERES set to music by Chopin, Ethel, Henryk Gorecki and The Bad Plus.

“Johnson is a craftsman and a poet; her works, which stress the ensemble and attend closely to the music, have an ebb and flow in addition to a strong emotional current. The basis of her technique is ballet, and her dancers are strong.” ~ The New Yorker

“Among current choreographers, Lydia’s work bristles and blooms with a poignant sense of humanity. There’s nary a trace of theatricality in her dances; rather, she uses the music as a canvas on which emotions – both the deep and the subtle – are painted. Expressions of tenderness (so lacking in our lives today), hope, remorse, uncertainty, and the frailty of the human heart well up on the music, sometimes unexpectedly.” ~ Philip Gardner, Oberon’s Grove

“What seems to count most for Ms. Johnson is music. The four pieces…all showed uncommon skill at matching ballet movement to music, both at the large scale of structure and in small, felicitous details.” ~ Brian Seibert, The New York Times

Dancers: Guest Artist Craig Hall, Laura DiOrio, Minseon Kim, Katie Lohiya, Chazz Fenner-McBride, Michelle Lauren Siegel, Catherine Gurr, Emily Sarkissian, Amanda Egan, Willy Laury, Michael Miles, McGee Maddox, Ali Block, Lindsey L. Miller

FJK Dance Season 2022 features the company’s signature work in cross-cultural dialogue, where contemporary dance meets visual art live on stage. The program presents a full preview of the multimedia new work by Fadi J Khoury titled “Off Limits”, which was brought to life thanks to the CUNY Dance Initiative residency award at On Stage at Kingsborough, and other repertory work celebrating diversity and inclusion. Our dancers and musicians come from around the world. Fadi J. Khoury’s innovative style – both as dancer and choreographer – showcases his life-long immersion in a world of dance forms. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq, surrounded by the folkloric music and dance of Arab culture.

Fate, murder, incest, truth, justice, power- these are just some of the themes of Sophocles’s 2500-year-old tragedy, Oedipus Rex, reimagined by Tabula Rasa Dance Theater as a dance piece and resituated in a present-day fictional nightspot called the Thebes Palace. As the COVID pandemic wreaks havoc on his business and his workers, Oedipus, proprietor of the club, frantically searches for vital financial information that could save them. But these missing records were the property of the club’s previous owner, Laios, now deceased. Though valiant, Oedipus’s quest for the truth leads only to the terrible fulfillment of an ancient curse. Using up-to-the-minute technology, including lasers and A.I., and an original EDM score, TRDT, a 4-year-old Manhattan-based company, presents its most ambitious program to date. Though complex, the story is expressed with clarity, a result of artistic director’s Felipe Escalante’s pristine, visceral choreography. Tabula Rasa Dance Theater has built its reputation on addressing social-justice issues, including domestic violence and conversion therapy. At the same time, the company has been lauded for its sensual, propulsive style, grounded in ballet, modern, and folkloric dance techniques and the close observations of everyday human gestures and animal locomotion. While activists have alleviated the stigma attached to victims of sexual assault, the traumas of incest survivors, by comparison, remain shrouded in silence and shame. Oedipus Rex confronts this disturbing fact, calling attention to the deleterious effects the taboo continues to have on individuals, society, and human evolution.

Salvatore LaRussa Dance Theatre presents it’s 17th Annual NYC SEASON, with choreographer, SALVATORE LARUSSA. The evening includes one world premiere with living installation by Special Guest Performing Artist, GAGE SPEX, and features eight dancers with unique expressive approach to LARUSSA’s work.

The world premiere also includes Lighting by BECKY NASSBUAM and Costumes by ABRAHAM JOSHUA LOPEZ.

An exciting program of 8 modern dance works choreographed by Ms.Cook-Beatty. The pieces are set to music, including classical and contemporary artists such as JS Bach, Ingram Marshall, Karl Jenkins, Philip Glass, and David Lang. As well as music from the 1960s from Peter, Paul, and Mary, Joan Biaz, Richie Havens and original songs. The performance will include live music in collaboration with The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The evening includes one world premiere and a revival from 2013 for the full company, which will also feature alumni dancers. Guest Artists such as White Wave Dance, The Youth Ensemble of The Joffrey Ballet School, and others will join us. The Company features eight dancers, each with an individually expressive approach to Ms. Cook-Beatty’s work. Alison Cook Beatty Dance has been consistently praised for the storytelling of Ms. Cook-Beatty’s choreography and the emotional expression in her work.

Barnard and Columbia students perform in original works by four exceptional choreographers: Jenna Riegel, Jennifer Archibald, Norbert De La Cruz III & Tiffany Mangulabnan.