Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company in The Legacy Project
This weekend, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company presents The Legacy Project: Echoes, an evening of dance, theater, and live music. Dorfman, who founded CDDC in 1983, created The Legacy Project to honor her Eastern-European Jewish heritage and explore the trials, triumphs, and commonalities this legacy has with others throughout history and across cultures. I was impressed when I saw the company perform the first part of this two-year project last July at Dance Theater Workshop.
The upcoming performances include the collaborative piece Silent Echoes and the world premiere of Tikkun (To Repair), with a commissioned score by jazz and Klezmer musician Greg Wall. While Silent Echoes challenges the audience to look at the past, Tikkun encourages them to look forward. The piece explores the ways we separate or divide, bind or link, engage or disengage by using images of the fractured and broken, and by interweaving individual bodies and the whole ensemble. Bente Kahan, a Jewish Norwegian actress and vocalist, will perform on stage with the company, singing in German, Yiddish, English, and Ladino, the Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardic Jews. Kahan gave a powerful performance in the first part of the project last year.
Performances are this Friday and Saturday, 7:30 PM, at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Dance. 111 Second Avenue, 5th Floor Theater. Order tickets online or call 800.838.3006.
The Legacy Project: Echoes is part of the Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas, which consists of performances on Jewish themes at venues throughout the city from May 20 through June 14. The festival is produced by Untitled Theater Company #61.
