WOMEN / CREATE: A Festival of Dance

VIP tickets include premium seats, admission to the opening night reception, and a signed photo from the companies.

Armitage Gone! Dance, Buglisi Dance Theatre, Carolyn Dorfman Dance, and Jennifer Muller/The Works join forces to present a series of five Shared Program Performances featuring 4 Pieces –  2 Premieres – and 27 Dancers.

Four distinguished and innovative choreographers, at the height of their careers, each with a powerful original voice, present a vibrant evening of dance with an expressive edge that moves minds and hearts with a shared humanity. The 27 extraordinary performers stand out as individuals, yet work in cohesive ensembles.

WOMEN / CREATE! – A Festival of Dance offers an amazing opportunity to experience four acclaimed choreographers and their exceptional dancers together on one stage!

The Program includes… (in order of appearance)

DONKEY JAW BONE (Excerpt/Preview)
Armitage Gone! Dance
Choreographer: Karole Armitage /Composer: Traditional pre-Columbian Mexican music played live on Teponatzli and Quijada

Donkey Jaw Bone, an excerpt from a new work commissioned by National Sawdust and the Mexico Now Festival, is loosely based on Mexico’s theatrical sport, Lucha Libre. It sits at the border of sport, dance and ritual, invoking connections between sometimes contradictory domains: rural and urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle. Performed on pre-Columbian instruments, the teponaztli (a pitched slit-log drum) and the quijada, (a donkey jawbone), the dance draws on Balanchine’s Agon, ancient and contemporary minimalism, drag queen style and re-enacts documentary Lucha wrestling matches. The full production premieres on October 20, 2018 at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust.

PAUSE

SHOCK WAVE (World Premiere)
Jennifer Muller/The Works
Choreographer: Jennifer Muller / Composer: Gordon Withers
Shock Wave was made possible, in part, by a live music grant from The O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation

In physics, a shock wave is a cataclysmic disturbance, characterized by destructive interference and abrupt, discontinuous change. The piece Shock Wave treats this explosive impact as a symbolic event, interpreting it as a widespread, deeply felt feeling of shock caused by unexpected events. From sudden, inconceivable changes that destroy normality, the sequence of the piece proposes that “the life we expect”, when disrupted by tumultuous events can lead to emotional devastation, followed by an urgent attempt at healing and finally arrive at the need to “battle back” in order to create a regained sense of community.

INTERMISSION

THRESHOLD (1991)
Buglisi Dance Theatre
Choreographer: Jacqulyn Buglisi / Composer: Composer: Arvo Pärt / Lighting Design: Clifton Taylor

Performed by renowned dancers Virginie Mécène and Kevin Predmore, the “bewildering beautiful” Threshold is a primal, expressionistic work about life and death set to a haunting score by Arvo Pärt. “Who if I cried out would hear me among the Angels’ hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart, I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.” – Rainier Maria Rilke

PAUSE

WAVES (2015)
Carolyn Dorfman Dance
Choreographer: Carolyn Dorfman /Composers: Pete List, Jessie Reagen Mann and Daphna Mor
Waves was made possible, in part, by grants from New Music USA, The O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation with generous support from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.

In Waves, Dorfman uses an eclectic and unusual grouping of instruments, sounds, vocals, and artists to create new and visceral movement connections between her dancers, the musicians, their sounds, and the dance. The extraordinary composer/musicians of the work include cellist Jessie Reagen Mann, beat boxer, Pete List, and recorder player, Daphna Mor. In exploring the multi-faceted meanings and metaphors of ‘waves’; Dorfman and the dancers created reactions to the sound waves and vibrations and the musicians responded to the movement in tone and sound. This creates a rich dialogue; a sensation based exploration of sound and motion.

Run time: 110 minutes (including intermission and pauses)