Noël Duan writes for Yahoo! Beauty
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Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca West Park Presbyterian Church (165 W 86th Street) December 11 - January 23 Barrio’s critically acclaimed production of the Greek tragedy “Antigone” by Sophocles, adapted and renamed Antigona, returns for six weeks. Merging text, music and flamenco, “The company…reignit[es] the theatrical potential of the Greek chorus as the lyrical and rhythmic heart of the drama,” notes the release. Just Monday, December 14, Barrio received the very first Dance Magazine award as a flamenco dance artist. Antigona is adapted and directed by Martín Santangelo, choreographed by Barrio with additional choreography by Isabel Bayon. The music is by Eugenio Iglesias, Salva de Maria & Martín Santangelo. Find out more here The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater City Center December 2-January 3 For their annual, month-long season at City Center under artistic director Robert Battle, AAADT returns with premieres, new productions and repertory favorites. Find out more here Meredith Monk and Anne Waldman Danspace Project December 10-19 Monk and Waldman will close the fall 2015 season with 3 nights of new work and one collaboration. “Monk and Waldman first met in 1966 just after Monk premiered one of her earliest multi-media performances, 16 Millimeter Earrings, and Waldman was director of “The Poetry Project” (Danspace Project's neighbor at St. Mark's Church). This marks the first time in Monk and Waldman's nearly 50-year friendship that they will create and perform work together,” notes the release. Find out more here luciana achugar Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center December 17 - 19 achugar’s An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love which “…furthers [her] search for another kind of theater; performance as ritual,” according to the release, runs for two weeks. Find out more here Tuva Hildebrand with Sally O’Neill Dixon Place December 16 In the last event for the season, on a “SPLIT BILL” program, Hildebrand and O’Neill will present That Disgusting Thing Called Intimacy and the Brooklyn-based company, Current Harbor will present the dance/theatre work ‘59rpm. Find out more here Mark DeGarmo New York City Previews of “Las Fridas” The Clemente December 16 – 20 The choreographer and director, DeGarmo, with performers Marie Baker-Lee and Susan Thomasson presents LasFridas “…a 60-minute site-specific movement installation…love letter to Mexico, an offering to Frida Kahlo, and homage to women exploring life after 60,” according to the release. Reservations: LasFridas.eventbrite.com. Find out more here Larry Keigwin makes dances with a lot of substance. His work is often humorous or deep, with few people, or a gang of folks. For this season, he invited guest choreographers Loni Landon and Adam Barruch to make works; a first for the company. Landon made Wait Nearby a dark dance testing the women’s ability to dance in heels while the men accompanied them. Kudos to Naomi Luppescu whose costumes were both elegant and malleable at the same time. Barruch presented Drop on a separate evening. Keigwin’s huge cast of guest artists in Exit Like An Animal, originally made for the dancers of The Julliard School was typical Keigwin—large, complex and multipart, so if you blinked you would miss them darting on and off stage or carving crazy shapes at rapid speeds. Sidewalk (2009) danced by the company (Kacie Boblitt, Brandon Cournay, Benjamin Freedman, Kile Hotchkiss, Gina Ianni, Emily Schoen and Jaclyn Walsh, is classic Keigwin. Here, they are “regular people,” dressed in “regular clothes,” going about their “regular day,” never mind that there is an audience. At sometimes breakneck speed, they bobbed and weaved, clung to or thawed from each other for a good chunk of time off stage: in the aisles, on the stairs, along the front of the stage and in the front row. The gift of the evening was Keigwin’s 3 Ballards, marking a return to the stage for him after 10 years. Three times during the evening’s program, between the other works, he danced Ballard #1, #2 and #3, each filled with a Keigwin smile, gestures and perfectly-timed. Traversing the space differently each time, he shifts from movement to movement with precision and calm, seamlessly leaning into an attitude derriere , or smiles when his arms flapped low to the side as if trying to take flight. The guest artists were: Marcus Bellamy, Zackery Betty, Winston Dynamite Brown, Jourdan Epstein, Candace Jarvis, Blake Krapels, Rashidi Lewis, Amber Barbee Pickens and Taquirah Thompson.
For the 58th annual Dance Magazine Awards, the awardees represented a good mix of genres. Amy Cogan (Senior Vice President, Publisher, DanceMedia) with Jennifer Stahl (Editor in Chief Dance Magazine) opened and introduced the always candid and smart host for the evening, Wendy Perron, Editor at Large, Dance Magazine. First up was Mikhail Baryshnikov presenting to former ballerina and current artistic director of National Ballet of Canada, Karen Kain. Martín Santangelo presented the first ever flamenco Dance Magazine award to his wife Soledad Barrio who accepted after a breathtaking performance followed by a standing ovation of Solea. After a lovely Pas de deux from AfterEffect by Marcelo Gomes, danced by Cassandra Trenary and Thomas Forester (of American Ballet Theatre), Julie Kent presented to American Ballet Theatre principal and up-and-coming choreographer, Gomes. Nothing beats a heart-warming story of how anyone comes to dance, and Valda Setterfield told one of how dance archivist, writer and historian David Vaughn brought her to dance. Finally, after an awesomely danced excerpt of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Samantha Spies’ premiere, Walking With ‘Trane: Side, Freed(om) by Du’Bois A’Keen, Amanda Castro, Courtney J. Cook, Chanon Judson, Tendayi Kuumba, Stephanie Mas, and Love Muwwakkil (understudy), Millicent Johnnie presented the final award to Zollar, founding artistic director of Urban Bush Women.
The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI), a university-wide residency program heading into its third season, is awarding 23 dance companies/choreographers residencies at 12 CUNY colleges in 2016. CDI, led by New York City’s public university system, is a new model for collaboration. By facilitating residencies for New York City choreographers and dance companies on CUNY campuses, CDI aims to support dance artists, enhance college students’ cultural life and education, and build new audiences for dance at CUNY performing arts centers.
List of 2016 Residencies Baruch College: Baruch Performing Arts Center Gyre and Gimble/Gabrielle Lamb Urban Bush Women Brooklyn College: Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts Dance Heginbotham Makeda Thomas The City College of New York: Center for the Arts The Black Iris Project Syncopated Ladies College of Staten Island: Department of Performing and Creative Arts luciana achugar Melissa West Hostos Community College: Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture Bennyroyce Dance MAWU John Jay College: Gerald W. Lynch Theater Dzul Dance Melissa Riker/Kinesis Project Dance Theatre Kingsborough Community College: On Stage at Kingsborough Carlos dos Santos Ja’Malik LaGuardia Community College: LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Humans Collective Miki Orihara Lehman College: Department of Dance and Theatre jill sigman/thinkdance Khaled Barghouthi and Zoe Rabinowitz Queensborough Community College: Department of Health, Physical Education, and Dance Marjani Forte & Works Sydnie L. Mosley Dances Queens College: Kupferberg Center for the Arts Caleb Teicher & Company Vim Vigor Dance Company Tribeca Performing Arts Center at BMCC Azul Dance Theatre Between January and December 2016, 12 CUNY colleges in all five boroughs will host a total of 23 residencies. The residency artists and their projects represent a wide range of ideas and styles that reflect the diversity of the CUNY communities. In addition to providing space for artists to create work and rehearse, all of the CDI projects include programs for students and faculty (master classes and open rehearsals), along with public events such as work-in-progress showings and performances. CDI directly assists colleges with artist fees, rehearsal expenses, and marketing efforts. Artists are selected through an open application process, and each campus chooses its residency companies. For more information about the CUNY Dance Initiative, visit www.cuny.edu/danceinitiative or follow CDI on Facebook. Spring 2016 Showdown sign-ups are now open!
ShowDown provides dance artists an opportunity to show unfinished work in an informal, welcoming setting. Thirty artists will be selected to present their work this spring through a non-curated lottery system. Sign-ups are open until Monday, December 21! THE JOYCE THEATER FOUNDATION, INC. PARTNERS WITH SHARON GERSTEN LUCKMAN Former Executive Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater To Offer Customized Consulting Services for New York City-Based Dance Companies Initiative is Made Possible by a Grant from The Mertz Gilmore Foundation The Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. (Linda Shelton, Executive Director) announced today that Sharon Gersten Luckman, former Executive Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, will partner with The Joyce Theater to provide practical and customized consulting services for New York City-based dance companies who perform at The Joyce. Through this initiative, made possible by a grant from The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc., with the expertise of Ms. Luckman, will provide guidance and coaching in the following areas: board development, fundraising, organizational structure and staffing, budgeting, negotiation strategies, and the dynamics of the artistic director/executive director relationship. “I am thrilled with this opportunity to share what I’ve learned from my experience at Alvin Ailey with New York City dance companies,” Sharon Luckman said, “And I’m also delighted to be formally associated once again with Linda Shelton, who has been a cherished colleague since we worked together at the beginning of our careers. Executive Director of The Joyce Theater Linda Shelton added, “Thanks to the generosity of The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Joyce will continue to support the dance community by offering Sharon Luckman’s expertise to valued companies. I know they will benefit from her professional insight.” The Customized Consulting Services for New York City-based Dance Companies initiatives will address challenges confronting dance artists by strengthening the administration of small and mid-sized dance companies. In each of two years, Ms. Luckman and Ms. Shelton will invite 20 of the New York City-based dance companies who perform at The Joyce Theater to apply, with four companies selected to participate each year. By the end of the 6 month consultancy, a plan of action will be prescribed to improve and advance a company’s unique circumstances and goals and a grant will be awarded to each company to be used towards the implementation of new strategies. |
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AuthorI am a performer, historian, consultant and dance writer. I am a Empire State College's online program Center for Distance Learning. I am also a former faculty member at The Ailey School and the Alvin Ailey/Fordham University dance major program, Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College (Guest), Kean University and The Joffrey Ballet School's Jazz and Contemporary Trainee Program. I write on dance for The Amsterdam News, Dance Magazine and various publications. Click below to read more about me at my home page - "About Me." |