WOMEN / CREATE! - A Festival of Dance
2018 Season at New York Live Arts

Newly Named Festival Celebrates the Innovation of Women in Choreography

Featuring Works from Armitage Gone! Dance,
Buglisi Dance Theatre,  Carolyn Dorfman Dance,
and Jennifer Muller/The Works

June 12- 16, 2018 
7:30 pm

For the past 6 years, Jennifer Muller/The Works (JMTW) has curated this newly named festival, bringing together prominent female choreographers to present an annual New York City season in a shared program  format. The festival format is popular and wide-spread; however, six years ago it was still unusual for established companies to agree to share a series of performances, presenting work on the same program. With the overarching success of the festival, this year, JMTW is proud to announce the formal designation of the series as WOMEN / CREATE! – A Festival of Dance.

Women choreographers have been pioneers of contemporary dance since its inception, and WOMEN / CREATE! - A Festival of Dance reconnects with those roots to present a season of strong works by four visionary female choreographers. During this 7th season, Armitage Gone! Dance, Buglisi Dance Theatre, Carolyn Dorfman Dance, and Jennifer Muller/The Works come together with a distinguished program that celebrates women creators and their unapologetic voices in the dance world.

4 Choreographers – 2 Premieres – 27 Dancers

“WOMEN / CREATE! is an opportunity to witness companies of expertise and impact. These choreographers, each have a powerful, original voice and create work from unique points of view, yet share a sensibility that combines virtuosic movement with an expressive edge that moves minds and hearts. These are works that dance full out yet speak of both individual experiences and shared humanity. These works are knowledgeable, long-lasting and current at their cores.” – Jennifer Muller

The Program includes:
**Note: In order of appearance**

DONKEY JAW BONE (Excerpt/Preview)
Armitage Gone! Dance
Choreographer: Karole Armitage
Composer: Traditional pre-Columbian Mexican music played live on Teponatzli and Quijada
Lighting Design: Clifton Taylor
Performers: Ahmaud Culver, Megumi Eda, Sierra French, Alonso Guzman, Yusaku Komori, Cristian Laverde Koenig

Donkey Jaw Bone, an excerpt from a new work commissioned by National Sawdust and the Mexico Now Festival, is loosely based on Mexico’s theatrical sport, Lucha Libre. It sits at the border of sport, dance and ritual, invoking connections between sometimes contradictory domains: rural and urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle. Performed on pre-Columbian instruments, the teponaztli (a pitched slit-log drum) and the quijada, (a donkey jawbone), the dance draws on Balanchine’s Agon, ancient and contemporary minimalism, drag queen style and re-enacts documentary Lucha wrestling matches. The full production premieres on October 20, 2018 at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust.

SHOCK WAVE (2018 World Premiere, New York Live Arts, NY)
Jennifer Muller/The Works
Choreographer: Jennifer Muller
Composer: Gordon Withers
Lighting Design: Jeff Croiter
Performers: Alexandre Balmain, Sonja Chung, Seiko Fujita, Gen Hashimoto, Elise King, Bo Pressly, Michelle Tara Lynch, Shiho Tanaka, Michael Tomlinson
(supported by an O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation (live music grant)

In physics, a shock wave is a cataclysmic disturbance, characterized by destructive interference and abrupt, discontinuous change. The piece Shock Wave treats this explosive impact as a symbolic event, interpreting it as a widespread, deeply felt feeling of shock caused by unexpected events.  From sudden, inconceivable changes that destroy normality, the sequence of the piece proposes that “the life we expect”, when disrupted by tumultuous events can lead to emotional devastation, followed by an urgent attempt at healing and finally arrive at the need to battle back in order to create a regained sense of community. 

THRESHOLD (1991, Kaufman Theater, 92nd St., NY)
Buglisi Dance Theatre
Choreographer: Jacqulyn Buglisi
Composer: Arvo Pärt
Lighting Design: Clifton Taylor
Performers: Virginie Mécène and Kevin Predmore

Performed by renowned dancers Virginie Mécène and Kevin Predmore, the “bewildering beautiful” Threshold is a primal, expressionistic work about life and death set to a haunting score by Arvo Pärt. “Who if I cried out would hear me among the Angels’ hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart, I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.” – Rainier Maria Rilke

WAVES (2015, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, NJ)
Carolyn Dorfman Dance
Choreographer: Carolyn Dorfman
Composer and Performance by: Pete List (beatboxing, Shahi Baaja, vocals),
Jessie Reagen Mann (cello/vocals) and Daphna Mor (recorders, vocals)
Lighting Design: Marika Kent
Performers: Caroline Dietz, Justin Dominic, Lara Friedman-Kats, Jenny
Gillan-Powell, Quinton Guthier, Brandon Jones, Elise Pacicco, Eric Parra, Marie Lloyd Paspe, and Katlyn Waldo

WAVES was made possible, in part, by grants from New Music USA, The O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation with generous support from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.

In WAVES, Dorfman uses an eclectic and unusual grouping of instruments, sounds, vocals, and artists to create new and visceral movement connections between her dancers, the musicians, their sounds, and the dance. The extraordinary composer/musicians of the work include cellist Jessie Reagen Mann, beat boxer, Pete List, and recorder player, Daphna Mor. In exploring the multi-faceted meanings and metaphors of 'waves'; Dorfman and the dancers created reactions to the sound waves and vibrations and the musicians responded to the movement in tone and sound. This creates a rich dialogue; a sensation based exploration of sound and motion.

Pictured: Armitage Gone! Dance.