WOMEN / CREATE! A Festival of Dance by Jennifer Muller/The Works
Company:
Jennifer Muller/The Works (JMTW)
WOMEN / CREATE!
A Festival of Dance
2019 Season at New York Live Arts
Celebrating the Innovation of Women in Choreography
Featuring a World Premiere from Jennifer Muller/The Works and
Works from Armitage Gone! Dance, Buglisi Dance Theatre,
Carolyn Dorfman Dance, The Francesca Harper Project,
Helen Simoneau Danse, and Katarzyna Skarpetowska (featuring Richmond Ballet, The State Ballet of Virginia)
June 11- 16, 2019
New York, NY –For the past 7 years, Jennifer Muller/The Works (JMTW) has curated this festival, bringing together prominent female choreographers to present an annual New York City season in a shared program format. The festival format is popular and widespread; however, seven years ago it was still unusual for established companies to agree to share a series of performances, presenting work on the same program. With the overarching success of the festival, this year JMTW is proud to expand WOMEN / CREATE! – A Festival of Dance in order to present not four, but seven acclaimed female choreographers in the span of one week at New York Live Arts from June 11-16, 2019. This festival offers audiences a chance to savor works from several female-led companies and features a unique program each show.
Women choreographers have been pioneers of contemporary dance since its inception, and WOMEN / CREATE! - A Festival of Dance reconnects with those roots to present a season of strong works by seven visionary female choreographers. During this 8th season, Armitage Gone! Dance, Buglisi Dance Theatre, Carolyn Dorfman Dance, The Francesca Harper Project, Jennifer Muller/The Works, Katarzyna Skarpetowska (featuring Richmond Ballet), and Helen Simoneau Danse come together for a distinguished week of programming that celebrates women creators and their unapologetic voices in the dance world.
7 Choreographers – 2 Premieres – 49 Dancers
“WOMEN / CREATE! is an opportunity to witness companies of expertise and impact – choreographers, each with a powerful original voice who create work from unique points of view, yet share a sensibility that combines virtuosic movement with an expressive edge that moves minds and hearts – work that dances full out yet speaks of both individual experiences and shared humanity. This work is knowledgeable, long-lasting and current at its core.” – Jennifer Muller
The Program includes:
**Note: Program order will vary night to night**
You Took a Part of Me (Excerpt, Work in Progress for Japan Society, NY 2019)
Armitage Gone! Dance
Choreographer: Karole Armitage
Composer: Reiko Yamada
Costume Design: Peter Speliopoulos
Lighting Design: Clifton Taylor
You Took a Part of Me, inspired by the 15th Century Noh play, Nonomiya, explores erotic entanglement, unresolved attachments and the search for harmony that are hallmarks of Ghost Noh Theater. It features commissioned music by Reiko Yamada and highlights sinuous, erotic movement executed with ferocious intensity in a dream-like state. The world premiere was presented by Japan Society in New York in April 2019.
The Theory of Color (2019 World Premiere)
Jennifer Muller/The Works
Choreographer: Jennifer Muller
Composer: Matthew Schoening, Richard Cappadocia, Julia Kent
Lighting Design: Jeff Croiter
The Theory of Color creates its impact by an unusual treatment of the performing space where lighting generates a uniquely illuminated stage, saturating the space to such a degree that all action is immersed in
an intense color field. Moving through a selected array of colors, the piece investigates the unique attributes and power of each color to affect the eye, psyche and mind. As each section unfolds, the flooded stage, drenched by the intensity of a single color, transforms motion and personality, producing oddly unusual and vastly different sets of movement characteristics. The action varies from harsh elongated spectral elegance to boneless kelp undulation, from twisting ivy-like growth to sun baked arid expansion.
Moss Anthology: Variation #5 (Preview)
Buglisi Dance Theatre
Choreographer: Jacqulyn Buglisi
Commissioned Composer: Jeff Beal
Lighting Design: Jack Mehler
Dedicated to the preservation of the environment ,Moss Anthology: Variation #5 brings the arts and science together to unite community in a shared experience for humanity. The dance is inspired by Potawatomi botanist and poet Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” and “Gathering Moss” which gives insight into indigenous ways of knowing. “ Bless the Moss...the coral reefs of the forest, the bringer of oxygen to our planet forty million years ago. The tiny Moss builds soil, purifies water, teaches us how to cooperate, and awakens our Humanity to Reciprocity.”
Snap Crackle Pop (2018, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, NJ)
Carolyn Dorfman Dance
Choreographer: Carolyn Dorfman, Renée Jaworski Co-Artistic Director of PILOBOLUS, and the dancers of Carolyn Dorfman Dance
Composer and Performance by David Van Tieghem
Lighting Design: Thom Weaver
Snap Crackle Pop (SCP), co-commissioned by NJPAC (New Jersey Performing Arts Center), is a groundbreaking collaboration between Carolyn Dorfman, Renée Jaworski, Co-Artistic Director of PILOBOLUS, and the dancers of Carolyn Dorfman Dance. In SCP, Dorfman and Jaworski merged their signature styles to create a work about connection—past, present, and future. Delving into iconic American cultural experiences that create common bonds and shape us, they explored the phenomenon of commercial advertisements, the ever-changing socio-political events, the technological revolution and the evolution of human communication. The score, by virtuosic composer David Van Tiegham, is a montage of various textures, text, jingles and musical sources, adeptly manipulated. Dorfman, Jaworski and Van Tieghem worked together, interviewing dancers, researching historical ideas and shifting norms, while formulating a structure and sound score that carries us through and across time. Snap Crackle Pop will tour exclusively with Carolyn Dorfman Dance through 2020 and become part of PILOBOLUS’ repertory in 2020. This is the first time that PILOBOLUS has co-created a work on another company that will also become a part of their repertory. Other talented collaborators on this project included costumes designed by Anna-Alisa Belous, and lighting designed by Thom Weaver.
Unapologetic Body (Excerpt from A Work in Progress - World
Premiere, 2020)
The Francesca Harper Project
Choreographer: Francesca Harper
Composer: Nona Hendryx
Filmwork by Derrick Belcham and Francesca Harper
Lighting Design: Tuce Yasak
An Unapologetic Body is due to be an evening length dance-theater work currently in development as a response to global events regarding diversity, inclusion, and empathy, (or lack thereof). As an African American woman Harper realized that her own story needed to be told, but in its own way and on its own terms. The story of a black body in predominantly white spaces, the world of ballet, as a foreigner living in Europe, and on Broadway, while facing heartbreaks, and triumphs, she attempts to shatter the stereotypically classical, “traditional” mold and celebrates her evolution into an Unapologetic Body.
This work is supported by the Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative.
Moonlight Parade (2015, NYC)
Helen Simoneau Danse
Choreographer: Helen Simoneau
Original Music: Andy Hasenpflug and Michael Wall
Costume Design: Kathryn Grillo
Moonlight Parade is a dance of separating and intertwining choreographic paths with a sense of calm bravado. The bold angular shapes and quick changes are a challenge eliciting camaraderie that is joyous and mysterious all at once.
Akwarium (2018, Richmond Ballet Studio Theater; Richmond, VA)
Katarzyna Skarpetowska featuring. Richmond Ballet
Choreographer: Katarzyna Skarpetowska
Composer: Robert Henke and J.S. Bach
Lighting and Set Design: MK Stewart
Featuring Richmond Ballet, Akwarium is a work for 12 dancers set to the music of Robert Henke and J.S. Bach. MK Stewart’s scenic vision of 12 fluorescent light bars hung against the upstage scrim, and his cool aquatic lighting design, create an environment where various relationships can form and dissolve. There is an underwater deafness present in the sound of Henke’s score, which makes the space both intense and isolating.
The viewer finds oneself in a magical but contained place, inspired by the atmosphere of an aquarium, where characters, going in and out of focus, have no choice but to rebound from one another and interact in various ways.
TICKETS and LOCATION:
Tickets range from $15-$45 and can be purchased online at https://newyorklivearts.org or via phone at 212.691.6500. New York Live Arts is located at 219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
About Jennifer Muller/The Works (JMTW)
JMTW celebrates 44 years of presenting Muller's visionary approach to dance theater, incorporating the spoken word, live and commissioned music, media and unusual production elements to create multi- disciplinary productions that illuminate the human spirit. JMTW has electrified world audiences with passionate work and superb dancers in 39 countries on four continents, circumnavigating the globe from Buenos Aires to Toronto, Hong Kong to Moscow with 2017 appearances in Harbin, Tianjin, and Beijing. JMTW has toured 30 states, produced 27 NYC Seasons and performed in venues such as Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, City Center and David H. Koch Theaters; Bryant, Battery and Central Park Festivals and the United Nations. Muller has created over 117 pieces and worked with 30 international dance, theater and opera companies. Her prolific career has led to honors: Fortaleza's Trophy of Cultural Responsibility, and the publications: Tanz-Plan Berlin's Tanztechnik 2010 and Transformation & Continuance: Jennifer Muller and the Reshaping of American Modern Dance, 1959 to Present.
For the most up-to-date schedule for all JMTWprogramming, follow JMTW via the below links and visit: https://www.jmtw.org
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