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Dance Now Presents Final Chapter Of Their Digital Festival ‘The Dance Now Story’

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Dance Now, an interdependent network of performance, creative development and educational opportunities, continues its 25th Anniversary celebration with Dance Now Story. This alternative to their regular programming will feature digital events available on their platform through June 18th 2021. The festival has been reimagined during the pandemic from a live event usually held at Joe’s Pub in New York City, to a digital platform that aims to recreate the intimacy and warmth it’s had when held in person. The festival has been held in six monthly chapters since September 2020 and concludes its final Chapter on May 6th, with a Zoom watch party at 6 pm ET.

"The artists selected for Chapter 6 show the breadth of our programming by pulling from artists who have been in our Dance Now artist community for decades as well as new artists who represent creative voices in the field we want to see amplified,” said Lauren Parrish, General and Production Manager of Dance Now. “In mashing up Larry + Nicole as hosts with The Bang Group as honorees we are hoping to see an explosion of theatricality. We are also excited to say that we will be bringing an Encore! presentation of our digital season to the Arts On Site outdoor stage in June of 2021, featuring both live performances and digital dances on the streets of NYC. Tickets will go on sale in early May."

The event will feature on-demand performances of over 40 innovative dance makers. It will also feature live events with Dance Now artists via Zoom. Tickets for Dance Now Story can be purchased for $10 for each monthly digital performance program and $20 for the digital monthly performance program and Artist-to-Audience Celebration. Proceeds from the ticket sales support future artist commissions.

Chapter 6 will feature commissioned works by Sarah Chien, Kayla Farrish, and Joshua L. Peugh and archival works by John Heginbotham and Paula Josa-Jones. The Artist-to-Audience Celebration on Thursday, May 27, at 7 pm, will honor The Bang Group. The celebratory evening, hosted by Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott.

The Chapter 6 Program is listed below:

Sarah Chien’s A Year Without Studios aims to showcase one dancer’s persistent solo art-making practice throughout the pandemic. Telling a story of embodied grief, frustration, and resistance, the film unearths gems from Chien’s prolific archive of a year of performing solo improvisation for her iPhone. Chien writes, “I want to address the feeling of grief artists confront even as we keep creating. It’s not the same, but we keep making. What have you gone without this year? And how have you kept going in ways that have gone unseen?” Created and performed by Sarah Chien and edited by Cinthia Chen. Score and sound by Kirin McElwain.

Kayla Farrish’s Rinsing comes from a space of being here in this moment and in your body and “gathering your oars to paddle with progression to the shifting waves of growth and feeling.” It breathes through writings from Farrish’s journal, rooms and spaces she has made for herself, memory, declaration, and opening back up to vulnerability. The short film, with cinematography by Kerime Konur, captures and documents the passing of time, family/communal memories into personal memory, and meanings and culture within Blackness and our lives. Farrish writes, “I let these words spill out visually, in words, movement, music, and video to release and flood! Color, sound, improvisation, and joy return.”

 Joshua L. Peugh’s Backcountry Basin is inspired by the tropes of the western genre in film and literature. Taking place in the otherworldly, barren, white gypsum sand dunes near Peugh’s hometown of Las Cruces, NM, it plays with ideas of openness and claustrophobia blurring the lines between interior and exterior. Peugh writes, “I wanted to choose a place with personal poetic resonance. What better place than my hometown, which is small but situated inside a seemingly endless desert landscape. The light is magical, the mountains are spectacular and the world seems quieter.” The work is danced by Erin Vonder Haar and Chadi El-Khoury. Commissioned music is by Peugh’s longtime collaborator Brandon Carson. Videographer and Director of Photography Orlando Agawin.

 Aptly called “a dance battle in miniature,” John Heginbotham’s throwaway is a witty duet set to music by French electronic duo Daft Punk. The work features dancers Brian Lawson and Maile Okamura. Throwaway was presented at Dance Theater Workshop as part of the 2010 DANCE NOW Festival.

 Paula Josa-Jones’ SPEAK, presented at the 2016 DANCE NOW Festival at Joe’s Pub, springs from questions about language and the absence of language in its usual form. It is about obsession and excavating meaning from the body when words cannot be shaped. The work is inspired by Josa-Jones’s 18 years of working with her profoundly autistic godson and physical research into aphasia, apraxia, and synesthesia.

 


Tickets can be purchased at www.dancenow.online.

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