Dance On A Shoestring
Company:
New York Theatre Ballet
The third performance of New York Theatre Ballet’s Dance On A Shoestring series will take place on Friday and Saturday, February 25 & 26 at 7 pm at The Dance Gallery, 30 East 31st Street, 5th Floor, NYC. Hailed as “an invaluable company” by Alastair Macaulay this performance features guest artists David Parker and The Bang Group in excerpts from Parker’s ShowDown. Tickets are 5. The program runs approximately one hour. Advance reservations guarantee a seat. Seating is extremely limited. For reservations and information, call 212-679-0401, or visit www.nytb.org.
Working with recordings from Irving Berlin’s musical comedy classic, “Annie Get Your Gun,” made by Judy Garland and Howard Keel for the 1949 MGM, ShowDown takes the songs out of their original narrative context and places them in a wholly contemporary, choreographic world. It unravels the venerable musical’s themes of a show down between the sexes, the lure of show business and the juncture of love and ambition with freewheeling and anarchic vigor. No one is Annie and yet, perhaps, everyone is. Parker treats the score seriously as music and poetry and allows the humor to bubble up inevitably where it will.
“This is flamboyant, contemporary choreography that apparently is free-wheeling and free associative, drawing from the styles of current New York trends, and is set to the tunes of 'Annie Get Your Gun'. Every routine offers confident, bold performances and impressive displays. This is physical theatre influenced by musical elements that is of an obviously very high quality, with bucketloads of graceful vigour from the group of eight. Three Weeks, Edinburgh, Scottland.
Other selsctions include NYTB's works from the 2011 season including Keith Michael’s The Alice-in-Wonderland Follies and Antony Tudor’s Soiree Musicale.
The Alice-in-Wonderland Follies recreates a gala evening at New York's Palace Theater in 1913 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Lewis Carroll classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and is set in the electric atmosphere of a vaudeville extravaganza. Headliners reminiscent of Joe Weber and Lew Fields, Lillian Russell, Helen Hayes, and Marie Dresler parody Alice’s adventures with dance routines incorporating burlesque, soft-shoe, acrobatics, and ballroom dance all finessed with a touch of classical pointe dancing.
Soiree Musicale, which premiered at London’s Palladium Theatre in 1938, was performed professionally for the first time in decades by New York Theatre Ballet to critical acclaim in 2010. It is danced to a suite of Rossini melodies arranged by Benjamin Britten. Sylvia Nolan, Resident Costume Designer of The Metropolitan Opera, reconstructed new costumes from the original design drawings by Hugh Stevenson.
About David Parker and The Bang Group
David Parker founded The Bang Group in 1995 as a choreographic laboratory in rhythm, rigor and humor. Pressing through boundaries which once separated high and low art, comedy and tragedy, vaudeville and concert dance, The Bang Group has developed a solid reputation in both Europe and North America for its uncompromising wit, innovative movement and ribald approach to gender and sexuality.
About New York Theatre Ballet
New York Theatre Ballet was founded in 1978 by its artistic director, Diana Byer. It is the most widely seen chamber ballet company in the United States. NYTB has earned national acclaim for its restoration and revival of small masterworks by great choreographers and for its innovative hour-long ballets based on children’s literature. NYTB tours family and adult programs both nationally and abroad. Its audiences know the Company for its theatrical expressiveness, high production quality, and intimate accessibility to every audience member.
For more than 30 years, NYTB has produced, for adult and family audiences, dozens of classic masterpieces and contemporary ballets. Its roster includes dances by Frederick Ashton, Merce Cunningham, Agnes de Mille, José Limón and Antony Tudor. In April and December 2010, NYTB appeared with The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall to a sold out houses. NYTB has been invited to perform at dance venues such as Jacob’s Pillow, Kaatsbaan, and New York’s City Center.
