obsession | calm
Company:
SENSEDANCE
obsession | calm
OCTOBER 27 at 8:30pm & OCTOBER 28 at 6:00pm
At Salvatore Capezio Theater at Peridance
Henning Rübsam's SENSEDANCE will present two premieres celebrating his 21st year as founding artistic director of his ensemble on Saturday, October 27th at 8:30pm and Sunday, October 28th at 6:00 pm at Salvatore Capezio Theater at Peridance, 126 East 13th Street, NYC. The premieres will include, "obsession | calm" and "Brahms Dances". Also on the program will be a reprise of "Petit Pas” as a tribute to the late Neil Armstrong, whose voice is featured in the work; and “HALF-LIFE 102”. The Dancers for the season are: Cynthia Dragoni, Erin Ginn, Heidi Green, Temple Kemezis, Jacqueline Stewart, Nathan Bland, Uthman Ebrahim, Oisín Monaghan, Matt Van, and Henning Rübsam. Tickets are: General Admission: 0.00; Student w/ ID: 2.00. They are available by calling SmartTix at (212) 868-4444 and on the web: http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=SEN15
The premiere "obsession | calm" features the women of the company in two contrasting movements of composer Ernest Bloch's "Four Episodes." The short, colorful and fascinatingly scored miniatures by Bloch provide a perfect playground for the choreographer's imagination.
"Brahms Dances" is the beginning of an output of exploration that has lasted for more than twenty years. Rübsam collected songs of Brahms' oeuvre to create a short suite that ends with the memorable song set to the Goethe poem "Wechsellied zum Tanze." It will be Rübsam's third foray into the world of the German master composer after his ensemble work "Brahms Double Concerto" in 2001 and the solo (for former Nikolais dancer Christine Reisner) "Gesänge Op.6" in 2003.
"HALF-LIFE 102", premiered last year expressing some of the anxiety that Rübsam felt after the combined catastrophic events of earthquake, tsunami and reactor melt-down in Japan. Featuring a dynamic score by the Slovenian band LAIBACH, the quartet has now been reworked into a sextet for three male dancers and three female dancers on pointe. The title "HALF-LIFE" refers to a commonly used parameter to measure the radioactive decay of substances and elements. The addition of the number "102" for this new version of the dance evokes the "No" (the synthetic and highly radioactive element Nobelium) in the periodic table.
An homage to the late astronaut Neil Armstrong, "Petit Pas" opens the program. The two dancers comment on his small step with giant leaps in a combative duet. Set in Petipa's traditional outer form of a grand pas de deux, the dance breaks with every tradition and raises the question how far along humanism has come in a society that is still defined by sex and race.
SENSEDANCE is represented in North America by River City Artists Management. http://rivercityartists.com/index.php/sensedance
