Dance Celebration
Presented by Dance Affiliates and Penn Presents
The Magic of Movement
2009-2010 Season
Dance Celebration has announced their line up for the 2009-2010 season!

Thank You Gregory :   A Tribute to the Legends of Tap
October 6-10, 2009
Produced by Dance Affiliates, under the artistic direction of Randy Swartz, written by Tony Waag and directed by Ann Marie De Angelo,Thank You Gregory starring Maurice Hinessalutes American tap legends – Fred Astaire, Ginger Rodgers, Honi Coles, the Nicholas Brothers, Gene Kelly, Bojangles Robinson, the Copasetics, and Jimmy Slyde. This all new production, based on the 2005 original show which premiered on the Dance Celebration Series, honors the American Ambassador of Tap, Gregory Hines.

Maurice Hines, a Broadway veteran and Gregory’s partner and brother, is praised as “…a crowd-pleasing showmanship that ignites the show… As a song and dance man, Hines is quite irresistible.” (Seattle Times) Gregory and Maurice’s careers began performing on Broadway and touring as the opening acts for Lionel Hampton and Gypsy Rose Lee. Soon their father joined the act “Hines, Hines, and Dad” which led to international touring and television appearances on “The Pearl Bailey Show,” ” Hollywood Palace,” and 35 appearances on “The Tonight Show.” Maurice Hines created a sensation during the 1978-79 season with his singing and dancing in the hit musical Eubie!. He followed this performance with celebrated roles co-starring in Bring Back Birdie with Chita Rivera and Donald O’Connor and starring in Sophisticated Ladies.

Joining Mr. Hines is an all-star cast of eight hoofers (and a live band) including the inestimable Jason Samuels Smith, Emmy Award winner, film and TV star and choreographer-director. Mr. Smith was a special guest on Fox’s hit series So You Think You Can Dance, and an associate choreographer for Dancing with the Stars. A wunderkind, Smith joined the Broadway cast of Bring in Da’Noise, Bring in Da’Funk at the age of 15. New York Times calls him “smashingly inventive.”

BodyVox
October 22-24, 2009
BodyVox debuts Water Bodies, an imaginative multimedia production choreographed by artistic directors Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland of ISO, MOMIX and Pilobolus fame. This full-length premiere promises to make a splash in the theater with its high theatrics, outlandish costumes and belly laughing visual humor. Hampton/Roland use water as a starting point. Water is a medium, a force and a harbinger of disaster and hope. Dance Magazine refers to BodyVox’s work as “brilliantly conceived.”

Water Bodies consists of 12 sections including two films and live video feed for eight dancers. Dance Celebration audiences who enjoyed BodyVox’s hilarious Deere John film starring the love forlorn Jamey Hampton performing a duet with an excavator, will enjoy their latest dance film adventure, Metamorfishes. Created in collaboration with award-winning filmmaker (and longtime collaborator) Mitchell Rose, Metamorfishes examines contemporary relationships culminating in a breathtaking underwater duet by Ashley Roland and company member Ron Hunter.

Kaleidoscope opens the show with live video feed projected onto the dancers. Set to the somber moodiness of S.O.S., this section evokes the ocean waters of The Titanic. Fishers are Men is a playful romp highlighting BodyVox’s devilish charm and Blue Room shows BodyVox’s timeless fascination with beauty and elegance.

Colorado Concert News and Reviews exclaims “The evening was full of action, the dance was captivating and even athletically-inspiring; the music was very effective and the use of film brilliant.”

Based in Portland, Oregon, BodyVox was founded in 1997 by innovative dancer-choreographers  Ashley Roland and Jamey Hampton to fulfill a commission from Portland Opera. The company has since choreographed three operas, created seven original shows, and toured across the U.S. to critical acclaim. Adding to its full-evening shows and repertory pieces, BodyVox’s films have won numerous awards in national and international festivals. “Modern Daydreams” – composed of “Treadmill Softly,” “Islands in the Sky,” “ Unleashed,” and “Deere John” – won the prestigious American Choreography Award for Outstanding Achievement in Short Film in 2002.

Doug Elkins and Friends, Fraulein Maria
November 12-14, 2009
Heralded as “one of the Ten Best Dance Performances in 2008” by The New Yorker, Doug Elkins’ giddy, gender-bending, parody Fraulein Maria took the dance theater world by storm when it premiered at Joe’s Pub in NYC in December 2006 as part of the DanceNow Series. Set to Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s classic 1965 movie score The Sound of Music, Fraulein Maria was conceived by B-Boy choreographer extraordinaire Elkins and is co-directed by Barbara Karger and Michael Preston. This full-length urban musical, performed by a bevy of all-star New York downtown dancers, makes its Philadelphia debut. Dance Magazine notes, “Many vignettes had the audiences chuckling, laughing, and guffawing.”

Imagine not one but three Marias who stomp, leap, twirl, and partner. The “Do Re Me Dance,” a delicious blend of modernism and urban street smarts, highlights each note with a movement phrase accumulating in a free-for-all club dance. “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” performed by two men in drag suggests a ridiculous yet demure coming-of-age vignette. In “Climb Every Mountain,” Elkins performs a body-clutching gesture-driven hip-hop solo bringing new meaning to the song. “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria” features performers in nun costumes somberly slinking across the stage.

Blending hip-hop, street dance, and contemporary movement, Elkins twisted imaginative choreography (created in collaboration with the cast) honors and at times trashes modern dance icons. NYTheatre.com exclaims, “Fraulein Maria is nothing short of a miracle.”

In 2008, Doug Elkins was honored with a New York Dance and Performance Award, his second Bessie.  The citation reads:

“For creating a tender, rollicking excursion at Joe’s Pub called Fraulein Maria, which took us from the snow-capped peaks of Hollywood through the worlds of “downtown” dance, Martha Graham, Willi Ninja, Balanchine, hip-hop, vogue-ing, stepping, stomping, whirling, and flying like wild geese with the moon on their wings, a NEW YORK DANCE AND PERFORMANCE AWARD is presented to DOUG ELKINS.”

Doug Elkin’s career began touring the world with break dance groups New York Dance Express and Magnificent Force. He founded Doug Elkins Dance Company in 1988, toured nationally and internationally, but disbanded in 2003. Mr. Elkins has taught worldwide and has created works for Batsheva Dance Company, Flying Karamazov Brothers, MaggioDanza, Pennsylvania Ballet, Union Dance, and CanDoCo of London.

River North Chicago Dance Company
JANUARY 14-16, 2010
The Denver Post calls River North Chicago Dance Company (RNCDC) “a high-powered ensemble that seems to have everything going for it”  Under the artistic director of Frank Chaves, RNCDC celebrates its 20th Anniversary by commissioning five new works, all premiering in Philadelphia. Known for its eclectic and sensationally performed repertoire that blends contemporary, ballroom, jazz and Broadway dance, RNCDC’s 20th Anniversary program features  new works by  choreographers Robert Battles, Lauri Stallings and Chaves.  In addition, former Co-Artistic Director Sherry Zunker will re-envision the company’s signature work, “Reality of a Dreamer,” a performance documentary that garnered two Emmy Awards and was aired nationally on PBS.

The program will also include Chaves’ breathtakingly beautiful Habaneras, the Music of Cuba (2005), a six-section, full company work honoring the music and dance of Cuba. As a child Frank Chaves grew up listening to Cuba’s most popular composers Ernesto Lecuona, Carlos Puebla, and Silvio Rodríguez. Their music became the score and inspiration for Habaneras. Chicago Sun Times notes “…it was the finale, Habaneras, the Music of Cuba, that left the audience in a state of high exaltation, and is bound to become River North Chicago’s signature piece.”

Additional Philadelphia premieres include Battles’ (Artistic Director of Battleworks) commanding and ritualistic Train (2008) set to a percussive score for six dancers, and Kevin Iega Jeff’s sensual and vibrant Sky (2006). Sky, a full-company work, explores connection and compassion, ending in a sense of peace.  River North Chicago dancers…brought to it the same fierce commitment and superb technique they demonstrated throughout (their) exceedingly taxing program.” Chicago Sun-Times

Streb
February 4-6, 2010
Daredevil, MacArthur genius award recipient and Guggenheim Fellow Elizabeth Streb has been creating works since 1975.   Fondly called the Evil Knievel of Dance,  Streb’s heart-pumping extreme choreography, which she calls “Pop Action,” intertwines dance, athletics, circus, boxing, rodeo and Hollywood stunt work. Streb premieres her latest tour-de-force Brave. Performed by Olympian conditioned dancer-athletes, Brave features several collaborators – composer David Van Tiegham, the MIT Media Lab and trapeze virtuosos Noe and Ivan Espana.
In Brave, Streb questions who is braver: the audience or the dancers?

Audiences may recall Streb’s mind-blowing and bone-crushing moments from previous performances such as a dancer smashing though a glass door or fearlessly falling 50 feet into a mat miked for sound or hurling themselves against padded surfaces.  The New York Times states, “The air if filled with the sounds of grinding crashes, grunts and yells from performers and gasps from the audience … it is all in great fun.”

Custom-made trapezes, trusses, trampolines, and a flying machine provides STREB a way to discover new ways for the body to move in space while being subjected to gravity and other indistinguishable forces. For Brave, she returns to the circle. This apparatus looks like a ferris wheel. However, the structure is always in motion creating invisible forces and unoccupied spaces for dancers to navigate. Brave incorporates a rotating floor that will always be turning so there will be no front but multiple views and angles of perception. “By exploring the frontiers of performance space, and creating works that reflect the spirit of our technological age,  Ms. Streb is carrying dance into a new dimension.” The New York Times

Bad Boys of Dance
April 15-17, 2010
Ballet superstar, gold medalist, and Broadway star of Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp’s Movin Out, Rasta Thomas founded the Bad Boys of Dance (BBD) in 2007 as a vehicle to push the boundaries of male dancing. BBD is a virtuoso troupe of some of the world’s best male dancers, hand-picked for their extraordinary physical talents and artistry.  Taking the world by storm, touring Europe, Asia, and the U.S., BBD makes its Dance Celebration debut with a program fusing ballet, broadway, hip hop, contemporary, and tap.  The Boston Globe exclaims, “These Bad Boys are really very, very good.”

BBD charms older audiences and attracts young audiences by its jaw-dropping pyrotechnics featuring multiple pirouettes, soaring leaps, 180 degree extensions, capoeira kicks, one-handed inversions, flamboyant acrobatic flips, and flares. Each performer has a style, attitude, and aura similar to a punk rock band member or MTV star.  From Mohawks to shaved heads to top hats to jeans, BBD aims to bring concert dance into the 21st century. Music ranges from Astor Piazzolla to Benny Goodman, Maria Callas to Michael Jackson, and choreography by Rasta Thomas, Adrienne Canterna-Thomas (his wife and ballet gold medalist), invited guests and company members.

Rasta Thomas confides, “I was a bad boy early on for not sticking to the traditional path and working my way up from apprentice to corps to soloist and principal.” Born in San Francisco, raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Rasta trained as a youngster in Martial Arts and studied at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, DC.  He has appeared as a guest artist for American Ballet Theater, Victor Ullate Ballet of Spain, National Ballet of China, Joffrey Ballet, Lines Contemporary Ballet, Complexions, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and the Pacific Northwest Ballet. In 2001, (at the age of 20) he was the first American to become a member of the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg Russia. Entertainment Tonight sums up this dance phenomena by stating “What would you get if you took the best of Baryshnikov, Bruce Lee and Michael Jackson?   It would be Rasta Thomas.”

Momix
May 20-22, 2010
You will be wowed and dazzled by MOMIX, an extraordinary troupe of dancer illusionists, under the direction of Moses Pendleton!  Pendleton’s newest full-length creation Botanica is inspired by the wonders and magic of nature. Known for creating highly-imaginative works of exceptional beauty using props, light, shadow, projections, and gorgeous bodies, Botanica will transport you to a new lush and verdant world.

The Wall Street Journal notes, “Few theater artists today can achieve the level of visual splendor and theatrical magic that Mr. Pendleton can conjure.”

Set to an exotic sound score that ranges from birdsongs to Vivaldi, Pendleton’s source for inspiration came from his own backyard inhabited by sunflowers, bees, and birds. Pendleton claims, “birds are the sounds of flowers. Birds are the link between heaven and earth.” (Seattle Post-Intelligence) Michael Curry, designer for Walt Disney’s The Lion King (and longtime collaborator), has created colorful and ingeniously constructed costumes that match Pendleton’s brilliant and uncanny vision featuring dancers morphing into exotic flowers, floating through a dreamscape, and being devoured or seduced by a sea of feathers. In this surreal mythical world where humans, animals, and plants reproduce, anything can and will happen.

Dance Celebration audiences may recall MOMIX’s stunning  Opus Cactus, a visual spectacle inspired by the flora, fauna, and simple magic of the American Southwest or Baseball, a wildly whimsical and spirited celebration based on America’s national pastime. These full-length productions as well as Passion, Orbit, and Lunar Sea draw audiences into the magical world of Pendleton’s imagination where we suspend our disbelief and become enthralled.

TICKETS & INFORMATION

Performances are held at the Zellerbach Theatre
Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts
3680 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Annenberg Center Box Office
215-898-3900
boxoffice@ac.upenn.edu

DANCE AFFILIATES
http://www.danceaffiliates.org