Program A - Saturday, April 30th

​

Outer courtyard -

Brain Dance and Chinese Dance with 14th Street Y/ Sirovich Senior Dancers  

 

Capoeira Luanda lead by Mestre Jelon Vieira

Title: Capoeira Roda

Lead by: Jelon Vieira

Music: Traditional
Description: Traditional Capoeira Roda

​

Tour - 

1. Virginie Mécène - Graham 2 

Title: Ensō

Music: Arrmand Amar

Choreography: Virginie Mécène

Assistant to choreographer: Cecilia Whalen

Dancers:  Axel Gerard, Avery Glunt, Ghislaine van den Heuvel, Antonio Leone, Lauryn Rickman, Esteban Santamaria, Mathilde Santos, Gion Treichler, Yuchin Tseng, Gabrielle Willis

Description: The cemented structure in the courtyard of Westbeth seemed the perfect place for a site-specific dance. Shaped in an open circle, it reminds me of the zen Ensō. Zen Ensō is often painted in one or two brushstrokes and embraces creativity with the acceptance of imperfection.

​

2. gorno (Glenn Potter-Takata)

Title: Yonsei f*ck f*ck pt. 13

Choreography: Glenn Potter-Takata

Performers: evan ray suzuki, Glenn Potter-Takata

Description: Through butoh and recontextualized Buddhist rituals, Yonsei f*ck f*ck imagines a future where the cultural erasure associated with Japanese internment camps has been overcorrected and distorted into a value system where anime and Japanese junk food have been assimilated into the pantheon of buddhas and bodhisattvas. This new pantheon is used as the source of objects of worship, remixing Buddhist ritual practices and Japanese folk traditions with the consumer culture runoff from the Japanese archipelago.

​

3. The Bang Group

Title: Sparkle Too

Music: Pauline Kim Harris, Sparkle

Choreography: David Parker

Performers:  Dylan Baker, Louise Benkelman, Daniel Morimoto, Tommy Seibold, Amber Sloan

Description: "Sparkle Too" is David Parker's choreographic manifestation of Pauline Kim Harris' musical composition. The work utilizes a score created specifically and solely for pointe and tap shoes.  It's a driving, free-wheeling exploration and exhibition of rhythms, gestures, and the complexities of relationships.

​

4. Carol Nolte/Dance Collective

Title: TIME STOP—PASSING THROUGH THE PANDEMIC WITHIN THE WALLS OF THIS MAGICAL, MEMORY-FILLED BUILDING

Music: John Coltrane, “Naima” with Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers

Performer & Choreography: Carol Nolte

Description: Hope for all of us.

​

5. Company of Collaborative Artist (CoCA)

Title: s t e p in to our house 

Music: “Extra Time on You” by Black Coffee, Portia Monique

Choreography: Camille Moten Rennie

Performers: Anysia Kelly, Kennyth Montes de Oca, Wesley McIntyre

Description: A grand winding staircase that was once adorned with marble and status, and used exclusively by folks in high places, now exists as an unassuming in-between; a common passageway for resident artists as they make their way back home... This work was created to reflect the pulse of this historic environment by juxtaposing the dual energies, aesthetics, and movement pathways exchanged and contained within these walls. Follow three dancing beings down this grand winding staircase as they offer a new experience of this space. Won’t you s t e p in to our house?

​

6. Marla Phelan

Title: A Faint Shift (That Made the World Tremble)

Music: A Soft Throbbing of Time by Frank Bretschneider, Void by Monolake & Robert Henke, Blood Harmony by Bing & Ruth, Getting Lighter by Goldmund   

Choreography: Marla Phelan

Performer: Eloise Deluca

Description: A Faint Shift (That Made Her World Tremble) is a contemplation on states of consciousness and how, as we move through life, it becomes difficult to stay ever present. Even after a major event that shakes us to the core, we are still susceptible to falling back into a state of living listlessly. But oh how beautiful it is when we move through inspiration and wake up to knowing that there is a great purpose to our lives.

 

Program B - Sunday, May 1st

​

Outer Courtyard -

Jamal Jackson Dance Company

Title: 846

Music: The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky 

Vocals: Jamie Lincoln Smith

Choreography: Jamal Jackson

Performers: Dianna Anderson-Guerrero, Jamal Jackson, Herne Jean-Baptiste, Karina Ikezoe, Michele Lee, Emily Pacilio, Dana Thomas, Brion Vann

 

Description: 846 reimagines The Rite of Spring in our current day USA. Stravinsky’s 1913 score depicts rituals celebrating the advent of spring, after which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death. 846 reflects upon our “everyday” filled with love, loss, appropriation, fear, and judgment, and interrogates our nation’s compulsion with sacrificing black bodies in order to thrive.

This story centers the viewpoints of those individuals that have historically been pushed to the margins. 846 is the amplification of voices that have been muffled as well as a driving force for us to question our complicity in a system that simultaneously brings prosperity and pain.

 

Tour - 

1. Matthew Westerby Company 

Title: The Piers Project (Excerpt)

Music: Bryan Senti

Choreography: Matthew Westerby

Performers: Daniel Morimoto & Jack Murphy

 

Description: The Piers Project, conceived by choreographer Matthew Westerby,  was inspired by the history and documentation of the world that existed on Manhattan’s west side piers in the 1970’s & 80’s. In the post-Stonewall era, before the advent of the AIDS crisis, the area became a space of sexual freedom and artistic expression among the crumbling relics of the piers. Through the photos and writings of the Piers at the time, the work imagines the moments and movements that occurred here, creating a dance work that evokes the freedom, the exuberance, the anonymity and the dangers of the Piers.

 

2. ZCO/DANCEPROJECT

Title: Onward

Music: REFLECT-Max Cooper

Choreography: Zazel-Chavah O’Garra

Performers: Zazel-Chavah O'Garra, Nanette De Cillis, Wendy Ann Powell, Colleen Roche, Abigail Dias, Gha'il Rhodes Benjamin, Jessica De LaRosa, Dina Jackson

Costume Designer: Cassandra Bromfield

Description: Onward-Is a performance exploring the different shapes we can make with our bodies as we travel through space. Witness, virtuosity, precision as we demonstrate each movement with a labor of love.

​

3. Sofia Engelman + Em Papineau

Title: Things That Are: WestFest

Description: This work, created just for WestFest, is full on dyke partnering. It is effortful and fleshy. It destabilize the binaries between audience + performer and practice + performance.

​

4. The Echoes of Africa Dance Collective

Title: Rhythmic Vocabularies (A Site-Specific Iteration)

Music: “Umhome”  Composed and performed by Miriam Makeba ; "Canto Tribale" composed and performed by Ecosound

Choreography: Jenise Akilah Anthony

Performers: Owen Edwards, Nia Robertson, Amanda St. Armor, Rose Wake

Costume by: Emma Scholl

Description: Music! Rhythm! Flare! Rhythmic Vocabularies is a contemporary African work that uses live and recorded music to explore the interaction of movement and rhythm within a fusion of genres. Using  traditional African shekere instruments, the piece incorporates an introductory trio that cascades into a full ensemble display of African, Modern and Caribbean influenced movement. The work constantly challenges dancers’ stamina, rigor, rhythm and technique, even in moments of stillness.  An audience favorite because of the high-energy, stimulating transitions between genres and pure enjoyment from start to finish, this piece takes viewers on a journey through African tradition and contemporary adaptations.

 

5. BOiNK! Dance & Film

Title: The Dressing Room
Music: “Blizza” by 311
Performer & Choreography: Dylan Baker

​

6. The DynamitExperience

Title: Love: Recognize/Reflect (excerpt)

Music: jill/jack (feat. Jill Scott) by Moses Sumney, with text generously provided by TDE's Community Pop-Up participants/interviewees, Fall 2021. 

Choreography: Winston Dynamite Brown

Performers: Aby Paulin, Lay'la Rogers, Kristi Ann Schopfer, Hannah Wagner

This is an excerpt of the evening-length work, Love: Recognize/Reflect 

 

Description: This group work is an examination into the physical interpretation of the question “is love hard or are we simply ill- equipped?". Love is the foundation for our very existence; we question how we are to evolve without our personal capacity to understand our own love.  

It is the use of various languages that illustrates to others our intentions, so that they will with their personal individual investigation successfully REFLECT the LOVE they recognize.

 

7. Rachael Lieblein-Jurbala

Title: Knowing Better

Music: "Lola" by Pearson Sound; "La Comparsa" by Frankie Reyes; "Lui E Lei" by Piero Umiliani; "Prelude in D Minor: Oremus" by Francisco Tárrega

Performer & Choreography: Rachael Lieblein-Jurbala

 

Description: Knowing Better is based on the premise of the Dunning-Kruger effect: a phenomenon in which people without competence in a certain discipline tend to significantly overestimate their abilities or knowledge in that area. In other words, we lack the expertise to know what we don't know.

 

Whether in the context of international “development,” environmental “fixes,” or community “improvement,” this piece explores the all-too-common pattern in which we rush to fix or change a perceived “imperfect” ecosystem, only to realize our uninformed solution has caused an irreparable - or at the very least, unnecessary - chain-reaction.