My AmNews February 2015 dance calendar.  Featured: Ronald K. Brown, Evidence A Dance Company - They Joyce Theater - February 24-March 1

Some thoughts on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for AmNews

Abrons Arts Center presents the U.S. premiere of Montreal-based choreographer Daniel Léveillé’s Solitudes solo. Léveillé’s performance is part of Abrons’ new dance series, Travelogues, curated by Laurie Uprichard. Performances will take place Friday and Saturday, January 30–31, at 8pm, and Sunday, February 1, at 3pm, in Abrons Arts Center’s Experimental Theater.

TRAVELOGUES
A travelogue is defined as a lecture or brochure on travels.  This new dance series introduces Abrons’ audiences to choreographers and dance works that come from right here in NYC, or not, and which Laurie Uprichard, the curator, has seen in NYC, or not. She was Director of Danspace Project from 1992-2007 and of the Dublin (Ireland) Dance Festival from 2007-2011.

Daniel Léveillé Danse: Solitudes solo  (US Premiere)
January 30-31 | 8 PM
February 1 | 3 PM

On the horizon of purity where this pared-down choreography unfolds, an impossible expectation questions “the beyond.”  In Solitudes solo, each dancer exposes a particular facet of ourselves, a temporal moment in a life aiming toward unity and beauty, knowing it can only attain this height at the risk of breaking and falling. Five solos evanesce into immateriality. Daniel Léveillé founded his company in 1981.  Three previous works, Amour, Acide et Noix, La Pudeur des Icebergs, and La Crépuscule des Océans were presented at Danspace Project, during Uprichard’s tenure, to audience and critical acclaim.  Uprichard has seen Solitudes solo in Paris and in Montreal.


Find out more here

Nominated For 2015 Helen Hayes Award Best Choreography in a Musical

From the Princess Mhoon Dance Institute (PDMI) - In the height of energy and movement towards progression we are proud to announce that Founder and Director of Princess Mhoon Dance Institute, Princess Mhoon, has been nominated for a 2015 Helen Hayes Award. 

Princess is being acknowledged for "Best Choreography in a Musical" for her work in Theater Alliance's production of Black Nativity by Langston Hughes.

DC Metro Theatre Arts calls the riveting play "a gloriously joyful noise indeed!" 

TICKETS 

Enjoy this memorable moment with Princess Mhoon on April 6, 2015  at the National Theatre. Please let us know if you plan to attend.

ABOUT HELEN HAYES AWARD:
Celebrating its 30th year, the Helen Hayes Awards is a prestigious annual recognition of outstanding achievement in theatre. It is named after the world renowned actress, Helen Hayes, also known as "The First Lady of American Theatre."     

See full list of all 264 nominations  

Renegade Performance Group
Irondale Center 
- FLICfest 2015
January 31
Renegade Performance Group premieres their first full-length evening work under the AFROFUTURISM Series: The Inscription Project inspired by the late artist Rammellzee and which examines urban graffiti as a form of AFROFUTURISM.   Choreography and multimedia installations are by artistic director André M. Zachery.  Find out more here








Parsons Dance
The Joyce Theater
January 21–February 1
Parsons Dance, under the artistic direction of David Parsons, will perform Robert Battle's Train, Trey McIntyre's Hymn, and Parsons' Whirlaway.  The company will also debut Within by former company member and GenerationNOW Fellow, Natalie Lomonte, along with Parsons’ Bachiana and Caught. Find out more here

Panel: Edward Henkel's Movement Talks
92nd Street Y
January 30
“Shell Shock: Dance Serves Veterans of War” highlights the work of Exit12, founded by veteran Roman Baca.  Find out more here 

Robyn Orlin with Germaine Acogny's Compagnie Jant-Bi
Peak Performance
January 24-February 1
South African choreographer Orlin, premieres At the same time we were pointing a finger at you, we realized we were pointing three at ourselves danced by the men of Acogny’s Compagnie Jant-Bi  of Senegal.  Find our more here 

Film: Meredith Monk's Girlchild Diary
Dance on Camera Festival
January 30
Monk’s  1993 documentary Girlchild Diary premieres as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s  “Dance on Camera” series. Find out more here 

Maré Hieronimus & Sharon Mansur
Triskelion Arts
January 31
Hieronimus & Mansur performs leveling as part of the Never Before, Never Again Festival featuring artists who “…regularly harness the ephemeral in work never before seen and never to be seen again beyond this one presentation. “  Find out more here

Film: Dave Iverson’s Capturing Grace
Dance on Camera Festival
February 1
Iverson’s Capturing Grace which “…follows a group of people with Parkinson's disease as they train with dancers from the Mark Morris Dance Group…” premieres as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s  “Dance on Camera” series.  Find out more here 

Panel: “Solidarity Beyond Colored Pointe Shoes”
The Riverside Church
February 2
Hosted by DANCE IQUAIL! in partnership with Harlem Arts Alliance and Dance/NYC at The Riverside Theater.  This discussion will be moderated by Baraka Sele with Zita Allen, Delores Brown, Karen "KB" Brown, Iquail Shaheed, and Andrea Long-Naidu. Admission is free.  Find out more here

Panel: “LIFE IN MOTION: An Unlikely Ballerina”
Glenfield Middle School
February 2
Misty Copeland in conversation with author Charisse Jones and SMAPA dance academy director and founder Sharron Miller.  Panel will be held in Montclair, New Jersey.  Find out more here  

MMDG MASTER CLASS SERIES - 
INCUBATOR SERIES - LEESAAR THE COMPANY

Be part of the creative process of a new piece with LeeSaar The Company. Over the course of two days, dancers will work directly with experienced choreographers Lee Sher and Saar Harari to workshop new ideas and utilize the choreographic tools of the featured artists to inform their own movement language for which a portion will be dedicated to discussion and feedback. This mini-intensive will also serve as an audition. 

Thursday, January 29th @ MMDC

Register here

CALL FOR PROPOSALS New Waves! 2015 Dancing While Black Performance Lab

What practices constitute Caribbean dance? In what ways has Caribbean dance been recognized and acknowledged - within and outside the geocultural region? Is there a Caribbean embodied archive? How does dance, as a field of study, define Caribbean diasporic movement? 
 
New Waves! 2015 invites proposals from choreographers, dancers and performance artists to submit proposals for the DANCING WHILE BLACK PERFORMANCE LAB. Co-curated by New Waves! Director, Makeda Thomas and Paloma McGregor, Director of Dancing While Black, this experimental, multi-performance, interdisciplinary environment will feature dance and performances in the yard of and on stage at Port of Spain’s Big Black Box.
 
The New Waves! 2015 Dancing While Black Performance Lab is a manifestation of the New Waves! Commission Project, which has offered a presenting platform for dance artists in the Caribbean since 2012. We welcome proposals from dance and performance artists working in the Caribbean and those throughout its diaspora whose work is grounded in Caribbean aesthetics. In a riff off “Dance a yard before yuh dance abroad”, we will also explore how Caribbean dance artists create and perform work in the international landscape and how a new generation of cultural producers is transforming the ways the region is imagined and represented.  
Performance themes could include:

• Migration 
• The Body as Home
• Spaces, Objects, The Body as containers of memory
• Hybridity, Authenticity & Otherness
• Water, land and spirit
• What is Black? Proximity to Blackness
• Identity and community making
• Gender and sexuality
• Colonialism, nationalism, citizenship and commodification
• Caribbean dance and mediated technologies

Proposals should be no more than 2 pages, single spaced, 12 pt. font and include:

• Statement of how your work connects with theme(s) for this year’s Performance Lab.
• Explanation of how your practice has engaged with site and space, including ways you envision that practice living in a multi-performance setting during New Waves!
• A link to a work sample - 5 minutes or less - that demonstrates your aesthetic leanings, with a 150-word or less statement about how the work is connected to your proposal.

Due Date for Proposals: February 20, 2015
Confirmations: February 27, 2015
Submit a proposal to: dancingwhileblack@gmail.com
Questions to: institute@makedathomas.org
 
Registration must be paid by May 15, 2015. Additional details are available at http://makedathomas.org/institute.newwaves. 
 
Since 2012, Dancing While Black has supported dialogue, documentation, process and performance for Black dance artists living and working in the U.S. context. What carries over, strips away, shifts, amplifies when the context for presenting these platforms is a place where Black culture is the dominant culture? For the NEW WAVES! 2015 DANCING WHILE BLACK PERFORMANCE LAB, DWB founder, Caribbean-born Paloma McGregor, is interested in the way context plays a role in cultural production among people of color whose aesthetics are connected to Caribbean identity. Selected participants will be asked to submit a brief statement after the experience that helps to illuminate the myriad experiences that will emerge. These statements will be considered for publication in the forthcoming journal Dancing While Black: In Our Own Words.
 
Let’s Dance!

Robyn Orlin with Germaine Acogny's Compagnie Jant-Bi
Peak Performances
January 24-February 1

Orlin premieres At the same time we were pointing a finger at you, we realized we were pointing three at ourselves with the dancers of Germaine Acgony’s Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal described as “…a spectacle of music, dance and song that confronts, celebrates and instructs…  [And]…of la danse du faux lion, a traditional Senegalese coming of age ceremony created to banish the fear of lions in young males…[this]… cast of seven male dancers each of whom embody a separate character…reveals personal childhood stories, unusual in a culture in which men consider expressing personal feelings a weakness…integrated into the dance.”  Find out more here

Mariinsky Ballet
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
January 15-25
The Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra makes a rare appearance…with a series of full-length classics and contemporary ballets. Representing three centuries of Russian ballet:  two full-length works—the Tchaikovsky classic Swan Lake by Petipa and Ivanov, revised by Sergeyev; and Prokofiev’s Cinderella from contemporary ballet choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. The company will also present Chopin: Dances for Piano—a repertory program featuring Michel Fokine’s Chopiniana, Jerome Robbins’ In the Night, and Benjamin Millepied’s Without.  Find out more here

"The Role of Class in Current Dance Practices"
Gibney Dance Center
January 20
Organized by Movement Research in collaboration with Beth Gill, Lance Gries, Eva Karczag and Gwen Welliver and conceived in conversation with MR faculty, this discussion with various teaching artists will address questions and ideas about dance and movement-based class through their own practices and histories.  Participating speakers include Julian Barnett, Michelle Boulé, Wendell Cooper, Jeanine Durning, Barbara Forbes, Zvi Gotheiner, K.J. Holmes, John Jasperse, Joanna Kotze, Nia Love, Juliette Mapp, Cori Olinghouse, Janet Panetta, Shelley Senter, Vicky Shick, RoseAnne Spradlin, Karinne Keithley Syers and Jesse Zaritt.  Find out more here 

Parsons Dance
The Joyce Theater
January 21–February 1
Parsons Dance, under the artistic direction of David Parsons, will perform Robert Battle's Train, Trey McIntyre's Hymn, and Parsons' Whirlaway.  The company will also debut Within by former company member and GenerationNOW Fellow, Natalie Lomonte, along with Parsons’ Bachiana and Caught. Find out more here

RIOULT Dance NY
Manhattan School of Music
January 22
RIOULT Dance NY performs the Dance to Contemporary Composers Series with Tactus where Rioult commissions new music, collaborates with American composers, and presents dance performance with live music.  Find out more here

Renegade Performance Group
Irondale Center
January 22 & 31
Renegade Performance Group premieres their first full-length evening work under the AFROFUTURISM Series: The Inscription Project as part of the FLICfest 2015. Choreography and multimedia installations are by artistic director André M. Zachery.  Find out more here

Mari Meade Dance Collective
Danspace Project’s Dance Access
January 22-24
The all-male troupe, PROJECT 44 joins Mari Meade Dance Collective to present two premieres, Meade’s Brood III and the Interloper, plus Gierre J. Godley’s Black Dolphin. Find out more here

New York Theatre Ballet
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
January 23-24
NYTB’s community series, “Dance on a Shoestring” which showcases ballets from their current season, will feature works-in-progress by contemporary and emerging choreographers. Find out more here

Steps Beyond's Artists Talk: "Hear It From The Pros,"
Steps on Broadway
January 24
This discussion on working in the business of Broadway will feature three stars who have enjoyed successful and long-term careers: Donna Mckechnie, Grover Dale, and Randy Skinner.  The artists will also take questions, and a reception will follow. Find out more here

Nai Ni Chen Dance Company
January 25
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts
The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in one of their many productions of the Celebration of the Lunar New Year of the Sheep, happens at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts with traditional dances, new work, music, visual art and crafts, showcasing the diverse talents of Chinese American artists from the NY/NJ area, directly from China and that of the Company.  Find out more here