LEVYdance Returns to Joyce SoHo
January 22, 2012
In 2010, the San Francisco-based company LEVYdance brought its interactive installation Everyone Intimate Alone Visibly to Joyce SoHo, which proved to be a riveting experience. The company returns to Joyce SoHo next month for the New York premiere of ROMP, another interactive experience in which the audience and performers inhabit the stage together. The piece has already received positive reviews in San Francisco, and was named one of the “Top 10 Dance Moments of 2011” by the San Francisco Chronicle. For a glimpse of ROMP, watch the rehearsal footage above. Performances are February 17th through 19th at Joyce SoHo and tickets are now on sale.
Dance Photography Seminar at Joyce SoHo
June 8, 2011
Gallim Dance in "Bread & Circus", photo by Christopher Duggan
Each spring, The Joyce Theater Foundation presents Free Advice, a series of seminars for dance companies and choreographers spanning a wide range of management and presentation subjects. This coming Monday, there will be a seminar on quality dance photography, which is always of utmost importance for marketing and press materials. Christopher Duggan, a wonderful New York-based dance photographer with whom I collaborated last fall, is speaking on the panel along with The Joyce Theater’s Marketing Manager, Rennica Johnson, and Jenny Lerner, Joyce SoHo’s press representative.
Seminars are free, but space is limited. Reservations are highly recommended by filling out the form at the bottom of the Joyce’s Free Advice page. Seminar details are below
The Importance of Quality Dance Photography
Monday June 13 at Joyce SoHo – 155 Mercer Street between Houston and Prince
6:15-7:45 PM
Moderator: Cathy Eilers
Panelist: Christopher Duggan (photographer), Rennica Johnson (Marketing Manager, The Joyce Theater), and Jenny Lerner (Joyce SoHo Press Representative)
Learn the importance of properly shot dance photos for marketing and press requirements. The event will focus on various uses for the photos from the perspective of the many people involved: photographer, presenter, marketer, and press representative. Additionally, learn about the different requirements for online and internet marketing.
YelleB Dance Ensemble Presents Pericardium
May 26, 2010
This weekend at Joyce SoHo, YelleB Dance Ensemble presents the premiere of Pericardium, a multicultural, multidisciplinary work that reveals human stories of physical and emotional walls.
Since 2006, NYC-based choreographer Ella Ben-Aharon has engaged in an artistic collaboration with Israeli video artist Adi Shniderman and German architect Matthias Neumann, continually exploring the use of portable walls as means of reconfiguring space while finding the delicacy of influences between body, virtual, and physical spaces. In Israel, Edo Ceder has started creating a video dance with British filmmaker Dan Farberoff to be filmed at the Separation Wall (also called the Israeli West Bank Barrier or Security Fence) in an attempt to screen it on both sides and spark a dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis who live daily by the wall.
The essence of Pericardium lays in the ambiguous consequences of building a wall: Protection vs. Isolation, Visible vs. Invisible, Unity vs. Separation, Support vs. Obstacle, and Inside vs. Outside. Does building a defense wall bring familiar comfort? Who does it really enclose? Who does it protect? Pericardium strips political agendas and reveals personal stories within.
Pericardium will be performed at Joyce SoHo, May 27th through 29th, at 8 PM. Tickets can be ordered online or by calling 212.242.0800.
Open Rehearsal: Pontus Lidberg’s “Labyrinth Within”
May 18, 2010
Pontus Lidberg, photo by Lasse Lychnell
Ever wonder how dances are created? Are you curious about the questions artists ask as they create? Joyce SoHo opens its doors for work-in-progress rehearsals with its Artists-in-Residence. Next up is Pontus Lidberg on Monday, May 24th at 2 PM.
Labyrinth Within is Swedish-born choreographer Pontus Lidberg’s new creation for camera. Lindberg has been developing the work over the last three years and it is finally taking shape this spring and summer. The project takes off from the worldwide success of his 2007 dance-film The Rain. The new creation features some of the world’s foremost artists in their fields, including Pulitzer Prize Award-winning composer David Lang, world-renowned cellist Maya Beiser, New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan, and the choreographer and director Pontus Lidberg. The cast also includes stellar dancers from the US and Sweden: Gabrielle Lamb and Giovanni Bucchieri. The end result of the project will be a new dance piece created for the camera, as well as a chamber version of the same choreography for stage.
During the open rehearsal, in addition to screened excerpts of The Rain, sections of Labyrinth Within will be shown and rehearsed. A Q&A with the artists will follow the open rehearsal.
Monday, May 24th from 2 to 4 PM at Joyce SoHo: 155 Mercer Street between Houston and Prince. FREE with reservation: call 646.792.8377.
DOORKNOB COMPANY: We Are Here After
May 15, 2010
DOORKNOB COMPANY in We Are Here After, photo by Corrine Furman
DOORKNOB COMPANY transformed Joyce SoHo into a frigid winter land on Thursday evening in the world premiere of We Are Here After, choreographed by company co-founders Shannon Gillen and Elisabeth Motley. It was not a pristine, sparkling winter scene, but rather a harrowing, immersive environment in which Gillen and Motley, along with Janna Diamond and Xan Burley explored the mysterious afterlife and the fragility of fragmented memories. Shifting from past to future in a series of dream-like narratives and events, the four dancers and three on-stage musicians that make up Colonna Sonora created an intensely unpredictable journey into the unknown.
Xan Burley and Shannon Gillen in "We Are Here After", photo by Corrine Furman
Before the eerie, sometimes jarring sounds of Colonna Sonora flooded the snow-covered space, a dancer laid perfectly still, and later it became clear that another was buried under a large pile of snow. The former seemed to be sleeping, while the second dancer – who was discovered by the first – looked dead. Their colliding worlds raised questions about the connections between life and afterlife, while fluid time-travel throughout the work blurred the lines between the two. Indeed, the compelling dancers – all dressed in white street clothes – individually and collectively navigated through a constantly shifting world, always struggling to find their way. Just when it seemed like they were on the verge of settling into their environment, harsh noise or an abrupt change in the delicate lighting (designed by Amanda K. Ringger) signaled a shift as they encountered new terrain. All four dancers were deeply committed, but Shannon Gillen, in particular, was startlingly absorbed in her performance, pulling the audience right into her world and her experience.
Combative duets flowed into desperate digging amidst the snow; a white tree draped in white lights blinked slowly as Motley plugged and unplugged the cord; and the dancers and musicians swayed to White Christmas, which dissolved into choppy memories and awkward embraces as Motley gasped and made kissing sounds into a microphone. These and other vignettes – enriched by the musicians’ astute playing – revealed the fragile spaces between memory and the unknown, and the sense of loss and yearning and dizzying uncertainty while wandering through a cold, strange world.
