APAP Dance Showcase 2019
The Flea welcomes its Anchor Partners for a spectacular showcase of contemporary dance. Designed for presenters and fans alike, the performances feature LAVA, Tiffany Mills Company, Elisa Monte Dance, and The Bang Group. A perfect sampler of 4 companies at the top of their form presenting excerpts of these choreographers’ most recent work.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Friday, January 4 @ 8pm
Saturday, January 5 @ 8pm
Sunday, January 6 @ 12pm
LAVA presents excerpts from A Goddessey
In A Goddessey, LAVA presents a ground-up reworking – literally – of the classic “hero’s journey.” Our Heroine is no single swashbuckler but rather a plurality of beings, embodied by the diverse wonder women of LAVA who travel from a bleak and blurry patriarchal present into a rainbow-colored feminist future. Using their signature hybrid of acrobatic feats, contemporary dance, humor, and playful athleticism, they personify Amazonian strength, spirit, and resilience as they dive through hoops, hang from trapezes, ropes, and nets, build teetering human pyramids, wrestle, spar, and fly through the air onto each other to deliver a message of hope and vision for all.
Conceived and directed by Sarah East Johnson. Original music by DJ Tikka Masala with additional tracks by Lee Free and Toshi Reagon; Costumes by Claudia Brown; Original Lighting Design by Alison May; Choreography and performance by LAVA members Molly Chanoff, Lollo Romanski, Sarah Dey Hirshan, Hilary Melcher Chapman, Efe Alibo, and Caral Wiest.
Tiffany Mills Company presents excerpts from Blue Room and Endless Shapes
Tiffany Mills Company will perform excerpts from two works: (1) “Blue Room” (2018 Premiere, The Flea) is inhabited by six distinct personalities who edge up against physical and emotional boundaries. Blue tape delineates a room laid out like an architect’s floor plan. The dancers’ interactions bring dimensionality and dynamic interplay to this room as they explore how we connect, if we connect, the inner world that isolates, the outer world that is full of contradictions, and the consequences of our actions. (2) In “Endless Shapes” (excerpts-in-progress), Tiffany Mills Company joins forces for the first time with Puerto Rican composer/musician Angélica Negrón and French vocalist/composer Muriel Louveau to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. This music-dance collaboration weaves together movement, pre-recorded electronic music, and voice to create a world inspired by Shelley and themes of liminality found in her seminal novel.
Elisa Monte Dance presents Best Self Project
The Best Self Project an interactive, collaborative theatrical experience engaged the audience with thought, humor and empathy.
Artistic Director Tiffany Rea-Fisher’s The Best Self Project creates a unique interactive synergy with the audience. Guided by an emcee, mimicking a civic discussion with elements of live and recorded music and comedy club-like moments, the work explores the significance of being your “best self” and how that evolves during the trajectory of a life.
The Bang Group presents Enough and Slapstuck
The Bang Group will dance a quartet to Rachmaninoff entitled Enough, addressing romantic insatiability. They will also present their notorious Velcro duet called Slapstuck, danced by guest artists from Ten Hairy Legs.
Tiffany Mills founded the NYC-based Tiffany Mills Company in 2000 and has created over 20 works performed with a “fearless sense of freedom and exhilaration” (Washington Post). Mills’ process of creation is collaborative, ensemble-based, and multidisciplinary. She collaborates to blur lines between mediums and to discover layered methods of constructing dances (drawn from partnering, improvisation, and somatic modalities). Mills’ work focuses on the vulnerability of being human through investigating themes of communication, connection, relationship, exposure, breakdown, and transformation. Mills celebrates differences amongst the performers. She challenges the audience to be in an active role — to participate, experience, absorb and respond. NYC company performance highlights: The Flea, La MaMa, BAM Fisher, Guggenheim Museum, Duke on 42nd, Danspace Project, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Symphony Space, Bryant Park Contemporary Dance Series, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Dancing in the Streets, Joyce SoHo, and Movement Research. National highlights: PICA/TBA Festival (OR), Wexner Center (OH), Contemporary Dance Theater (OH), Jacob’s Pillow (MA), Dance Place (DC), Austin Dance Festival (TX). International highlights: Russia, Italy, Mexico, Canada. Teaching highlights: Trisha Brown Studios, Gibney, Peridance, ACDA, universities and festivals nationally/internationally, plus the Company’s annual Summer Partnering Intensive. Residencies: Tisch Summer Dance Festival, CUNY Dance Initiative, BAM/PDP, Joyce Mellon Anchor Tenant, Baryshnikov Arts Center, LMCC Swing Space. Funding highlights: Asian Cultural Council, Mertz Gilmore (via La MaMa), Evelyn Sharp, Harkness (via HERE), NYC/DCA, Bossak/Heilbron, Sorin Trust, Puffin, Meet the Composer, American Music Center, New Music USA. www.tiffanymillscompany.org
The Bang Group is a rhythm-driven, New York-based dance company which spans contemporary and percussive forms. The company, founded and directed by Jeffrey Kazin and David Parker celebrates its 24th anniversary this season. TBG has toured and performed widely throughout North America and Europe appearing in The Netherlands, The Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, France, Switzerland and numerous cities in Italy. It is presented regularly in New York City, NYLA (Formerly DTW), Danaspace Project, Dance Now NYC, Symphony Space 92Y to name but a few. The Bang Group has made its second home in Boston through sustained partnerships with Summer Stages Dance (13 seasons), The ICA, and The Dance Complex. The company is also in residence annually at The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard and at The West End Theater on Manhattan’s upper west side. It supports and presents the work of a wide range of artists through its thrice-yearly series called Soaking WET at the West End Theater and its Dance Now Boston initiative which commissions new work created for cabaret spaces and enters its fifth annual season in June 2018. Next week, TBG will reprise its much-praised program of dances by Parker, James Waring and Aileen Passloff reflecting on Parker’s artistic forebears at the 92nd Street Y, and is creating a new music/dance work composed by Pauline Kim Harris to premiere at The Stone in NYC in July. www.thebanggroup.com or follow us on FaceBook.
Elisa Monte Dance bridges cultural barriers through the universal language of dance. The company’s work emphasizes three main objectives: train and maintain a corps of professional dancers of multi-ethnic origin, capable of meeting the artistic and physical demands of the choreography; educate individuals in the art of movement and in appreciation of live dance performance; and collaborate with distinguished artists across other disciplines. www.elisamontedance.org
Founded by Sarah East Johnson in 2000, LAVA has become known for an explosive choreographic language that pushes the accepted boundaries of dance and gender expectations by incorporating postmodern movement and various forms of dance with acrobatics, live music, theater, and visual art. The OBIE and Bessie award winning LAVA has performed in NYC venues including The Kitchen, PS 122, BAM, The Flea Theater, Dixon Place, DTW, Symphony Space, BRIC Studio, Central Park Summerstage, the Brooklyn Lyceum, and Celebrate Brooklyn. The company has also performed across the U.S. and internationally in Australia and Argentina. In A Goddessey, LAVA presents a ground-up reworking – literally – of the classic “hero’s journey,” traveling from a bleak and blurry patriarchal present into a rainbow-colored feminist future. Using their signature hybrid of acrobatic feats, contemporary dance, humor, and playful athleticism, they mazonian strength, spirit, and resilience as they dive through hoops, hang from trapezes, ropes, and nets, build teetering human pyramids, wrestle, spar, and fly through the air onto each other to deliver a message of hope and vision for all. www.lavabrooklyn.org