My January 2018 Dance Calendar for AmNews

Featured: The "American Realness" Series (January 9 - 16).  Find out more here 

TEN HUTS by Jill Sigman (2017)
Published by Wesleyan University Press, Ten Huts documents Sigman’s expansive choreographic project collecting cast off materials, building site-specific structures in different parts of the world, and using them as gathering spaces for performance, community dialogue, tea serving, and discussions about waste, real estate, and the future of the planet. From the Norwegian Arctic to The Ringling Museum in Sarasota to the basement of the former Greenpoint Hospital, Sigman embraced trash as a way of connecting with people, choreographing with materials, understanding communities, and highlighting the significant challenges we face to ecology and environmental justice. The full color book includes 499 illustrations, an artist essay, theoretical reflections on the project by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Andre Lepecki, Elise Springer, Matthew McLendon, and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and a Foreward by Pamela Tatge, Director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance.

Direct link HERE

"Where do I start? You're going to grow tremendously this summer...Take as many pictures as you can, have real conversations with every artist that comes through, and work hard. I promise that what you get out of the work you put in will come back to you tenfold."

- Juan "Coel" Rodriguez

Now seeking applicants for:

MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS & EDUCATION
ARTIST SERVICES
TECHNICAL PRODUCTION
DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING

​Apply HERE

The Department of Health, Physical Education and Dance at Queensborough Community College invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor in Dance to teach dance history and theory courses in the program. (NOTE: this is not a studio position- it is teaching dance history and theory in a classroom setting). Participation in academic advisement, department committees, program development, and assessment is required. The successful candidate, as an integral part of the college community, must be willing to take part in College committees and initiatives that carry out the mission of the College. Position to start Fall 2018.

Read more HERE

FROM Peter Kyle:

American choreographer Peter Kyle and Ukrainian choreographer Anton Ovchinnikov have launched DANCING THROUGH TRANSLATION, a yearlong research and performance project exploring contemporary dance as a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange. The collaboration is part of a larger celebration of 25 years of bilateral relations between the United States of America and Ukraine. The project will be implemented with the support of the Public Diplomacy Small Grants Program of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

DANCING THROUGH TRANSLATION builds on Kyle’s earlier choreographic investigations including his 2012 solo, 100 DAYS. It challenges the artists, who met in 2016 while Kyle was in Kiev, Ukraine on a Fulbright Specialist grant, to look with fresh eyes at the wealth of human physicality that surrounds us, and explore questions of how we process movement as language. Over the next year Ovchinnikov and Kyle will catalog, transcribe, and learn borrowed movements from everyday people they encounter in their daily travels on opposite sides of the planet.

Drawing on the material they collect, Ovchinnikov and Kyle will build a new production with a team of four dancers (two from the U.S. and two from Ukraine), an American composer, Ukrainian costume and lighting designers, and a Ukrainian tour manager. Kyle and Ovchinnikov met for project planning in person this fall in New York City, and continue to do so in regular videoconferences. In March 2018 Kyle travels to Kiev to work with the Ukrainian team. The final phase of the collaboration takes place in summer 2018 when Kyle and U.S. dancers travel to Ukraine for an intensive rehearsal and performance period with the other artists. The completed project tours to multiple cities across Ukraine including: Kiev, Kherson, Kharkiv, Lviv and Dnipro.

An important outreach component of the project expands on Kyle’s 2016 Fulbright project in Kiev and seeks to engage college and university students in several dance departments in the U.S. and Ukraine. Student work groups in both countries will be invited to conduct their own movement observations, write detailed transcriptions of the material they observe, and share these with their international peers to create their own choreographic translations inspired by one another’s writings. The students will meet to share their creative work via videoconference, establishing a foundation for a “culture-bridge” between populations.
By investigating the varied communicative processes involved in dancing the artists hope to refine their understanding of the art form, and provoke new research in dance across cultures. They hope the project will inspire new international collaborations, reinforce and deepen the role of dance in cultural diplomacy, strengthen fledgling ties between the contemporary dance communities of Ukraine and the United States, and establish a basis for far-reaching international artistic exchange.

For more information:  Peter Kyle, Artistic Director, Peter Kyle Dance
                              347.218.1820, info@peterkyledance.org, www.peterkyledance.org     

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
Until  – December 31
For the final weeks of their annual five-week season, see more of the world premieres: Victoria by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, and Members Don’t Get Weary by Ailey dancer Jamar Roberts, plus new productions by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Shelter (1992), Twyla Tharp The Golden Section  (1983)  and Talley Beatty’s Stack Up (1983). Other season highlights include the Family Matinee Series which runs every Saturday afternoon, plus the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve performances.  The artistic director is Robert Battle. Find out more here

Dorrance Dance
The Joyce Theater
December 19 - 31
Artistic Director Michelle Dorrance and her Company brings two works to their holiday engagement at The Joyce.  Featuring 12 dancers,  and originally presented in 2015 as part of NY City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, a reimagined and extended version of Myelination which looks at “…the process through which the myelin sheath – a membrane that allows nerve impulses to move more rapidly – forms around nerve fibers.”  Also on the program is the world premiere of Until The Real Thing Comes Along (a letter to ourselves)set to the music of Fats Waller.  Find out more here 

Hofesh Shechter Company in Grand Finale @ BAM

Pam Tanowitz (choreographer) and Simone Dinnerstein’s (pianist) New Work for Goldberg Variations at Peak Performances in Montclair

“Fall For Dance Festival” - Kyle Abraham’s Drive (Fall For Dance commission/world premiere) and Ballet BC in Bill (2016) by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar @ New York City Center

Faustin Linyekula’s In Search of Dinazord (Sur les traces de Dinozord) @ NYU Skirball as part of BRIDGING: An International Dialogue on Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts, and in association with the French Institute Alliance Française’s annual Crossing the Line Festival

Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal @ BAM

DanceNow Festival @ Joe’s Pub (binbin Factory/Satoshi Haga & Rie Fukuzawa, Kyle Marshall Choreography and Jane Comfort Company, Deborah Lohse as host and more)

The dancers of the Limón Dance Company (Kathryn Alter, Bradley Beakes, Leon Cobb, Elise Drew Leon, Kristen Foote, David Glista, Ross Katen, Logan Frances Kruger, Alex McBride, Brenna Monroe-Cook,  Jesse Obremski, Savannah Spratt and Mark Willis)  in their season @ The Joyce 

Okwui Okpokwasili in Poor People’s TV Room @ New York Live Arts

Jennifer Harrison Newman in The Geneva Project @ BAAD!

Larry Keigwin & Nicole Walcott in Places Please! @ Joe’s Pub

Stephen Petronio Company’s entire season of new and repertory works, plus “Bloodlines” series @ The Joyce Theater

Martha Graham Company’s entire season of new and repertory works @ The Joyce Theater

Batsheva Dance Company in Last Work @ BAM

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group in Citizen @ BAM

Fana Fraser in Three Faces of Fana @ BAAD!
​
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre’s new production of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter after 25 years.

The Tricia Brown Dance Company’s (TBDC) recent season at The Joyce Theater (December 12 – 17) was built around three works created between 2000 and 2009, Brown’s last years of dance making.    A good deal was riding on the anticipation of what from the past would be present in this newer version of the company Brown founded in 1970.  Past members of TBDC, Carolyn Lucas and Diane Madden were named associate artistic directors in 2013, and are now charged with carrying out the Company’s mandate to “…present her dances in a variety of spaces, indoors and out, proscenium and alternative; develop, deepen and expand the Company’s educational initiatives; and treat the Company’s archive as a living organism to be used to better understand her work, in particular, and dance in general.” The Joyce season was the Company’s first in New York in six years, and another first since Brown passed in March of this year.  Lucas and Madden scored big.  The lineup, L'Amour au théâtre (2009), Geometry of Quiet (2002) and Groove and Countermove (2000), was a fitting reminder of Brown’s genius.  And the Company, five are new, is lovely in the way they danced each work with Brown-esq cool.   In small or large groups, each work showed Brown’s lush and sumptuous movement style.  The silky circles and weavings in L'Amour au théâtre were satisfying, while the quiet tangling and untangling of body as puzzle pieces in Geometry of Quiet made us wonder what body part was where.  The lively flutist Sato Moughalian shared the stage in Geometry. The evening closed with the colorful, linear and mostly unison Groove and Countermove. In the opening duet, Leah Morrison, past performer with TBDC (2005 - 2013) and a guest for the season, was as cool as they come with her dagger-like timing and attack.  

When Trisha Brown died, The New York Times paid tribute to her by remarking that “few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential.” Hands down, this re-entry for the Company, the new directors, the dancers (old and new) is a success, the question now is will there be more TBDC on the proscenium stage?

The Dancers are: Oluwadamilare Ayorinde, Cecily Campbell, Marc Crousillat, Kimberly Fulmer, Leah Ives, Amanda Kmett’Pendry, Kyle Marshall, Patrick McGrath and Jacob Storer.  

​Kudos and plaudits to Jennifer Tipton for lighting each piece so wonderfully and to Elizabeth Cannon for designing or re-imagining those fabulous costumes.

With a $600,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dance in Process (DiP) will provide 24 mid-career, New York City-based artists with immersive residency support over the next two years. Additionally, two of the 2017-18 DiP Resident Artists will receive fully supported Production Residencies.

The 2017-18 Dance in Process Resident Artists are:
Nora Chipaumire (in partnership with JACK)
Moriah Evans
Daria Faïn
Jack Ferver (Production Residency)
Miguel Gutierrez
It’s Showtime NYC! (in partnership with Dancing in the Streets)
Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith
Juliana F. May
Marie Poncé
Alice Sheppard (Production Residency)
Edisa Weeks
Ni'Ja Whitson

Read more HERE