HAPPY HOUR

In their new weekly dance show, Happy Hour, performers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass trade their signature sequins and feather headdresses for a pair of everyday men’s suits.  Framed by the casual aesthetics of office parties and the inherent failure of karaoke nights, they are two female performers playing the most familiar male characters.  Happy Hour invites audiences to have a drink, laugh at our collective failures, and celebrate our own shortcomings.

Barnes says, “Happy Hour was originally inspired by karaoke—the idea that a person chooses to sing a song that everyone knows the real version of.  It’s a brave act, because it is destined to fail.”  As female performers attempting to play familiar male characters, Barnes and Bass face the same failure.  They seem like guys from movies, a famous comic duo, or your uncles who took it too far dancing at your wedding.  But in their persistent failure to become these icons, we can see something more special—two individuals desperate to wrest new meaning from our most familiar ideas of ourselves.

Happy Hour will begin previews on October 7th and open on October 21st in Gibney Dance Center’s Studio G in downtown Manhattan.  Performer and Associate Artistic Director Anna Bass says, “Dance studios are pretty much our office.  So if we’re going to throw an office party, that’s where we have to do it.”  Audiences will receive drinks, have the chance to win prizes, and sing karaoke.  “This is not a traditional producing model for a dance show,” Creative Producing Director and host Robert Saenz de Viteri says.  “Presenting this show needs to be as innovative as what Monica and Anna create on stage.  We also wanted a weekly job and Saturday Night Live does not take modern dancers.”  

October 7th – December 16th, every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

Studio G at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center. 280 Broadway (Entrance at 53a Chambers Street) NY, NY 10007

Tickets for previews on October 7th and 14th are $20.  Starting October 21st, tickets are $25.  The company is offering five tickets for $5 at every performance.

For more information and to purchase tickets please visit

http://www.monicabillbarnes.com