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5th Annual Evening of Duets features International Line Up, Feb 10-12

photo credit: Bill Hebert

After having continuous sold out shows and overwhelming community support, Evening of Duets will take place again at the Community Education Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 10 & 11, 2017 at 7:30pm and February 12, 2017 at 3:00pm. Philadelphia residents can expect an enriching weekend of noteworthy dance from Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, and Congo.

Created as a pre-Valentines performance, this event showcases duets from the romantic to the volatile, highlighting innovative and nationally acclaimed professional choreographers. Curated and produced by Melissa Chisena of Chisena Danza, this year’s presentation will feature ten diverse companies.

The performing companies and artists are allendance, Atelier Babingui Dance (Congo), Blythe E. Smith, ColemanCollective (NY), Evalina “Wally” Carbonell, JDY Dance, Julia Mayo, Melissa Chisena & Marie Brown, Meredith Stapleton, OcampoWang Dance (NJ).

This year, Ms. Chisena is proud to present a Congo and California based company, Atelier Babingui Dance. Chris Many Babingui, founder and performer, was born in Envelle, Congo. He will be premiering, for the first time in Philadelphia, an original traditional dance from Congo. Iboga-Odzanga is the original name for Ekongo, which means warrior rites and is carried out before each battle to galvanize the fighters and awaken the spirits of the ancestors. It expresses the warlike idea of bravery, sacrifice and sense of honor.
ColemanCollective, based in New York City, will be presenting a duet choreographed by Matthew Perez and Cain A Coleman, to be performed by two of their female dancers, Charisma Glasper and Marcella Lewis. The duet is entitled “Bodies in a glass jar” and is based on ending a relationship with someone who you still need close to your heart. How
does it feel to be in solitude after being partners, roommates and lovers for an extended period of time?

OcampoWang Dance duet partners Chien-Ying Wang, from Taiwan and Paul C. Ocampo, from the Philippines have been known for creating ” a gentle, feel-good evening, and they create a magic when they’re onstage together.” Linda C. Smith, Artistic Director of Repertory Dance Theater “The all-embracing sensory approach fits their material, which is about a world-embracing approach to culture.” Karen Anne Webb, Herald Correspondent

Assistant professor of dance at DeSales University and Julliard Graduate, Julia Mayo will be presenting Fissure, a duet that investigates the fracturing of a relationship. Through intimate, yet fragmented, embraces, the closeness between the dancers dissolves; leaving but a shadow of what was. And on a completely different note, with it’s swinging ragtime feel, JDY Dance will be presenting the lightheartedly zany Nothin’s Gonna Bring Me Down.

Choreographer and dancer with KYL/Dancers, Evalina “Wally” Carbonell will be premiering an energetic romp of a dance to be performed by herself and fellow dancer, Asya Zlatina. In, “I’m Your Man,” the duo will move with the Leonard Cohen song of the same name, through a fast-paced series of playfully animalistic images, inspired by the singer’s words and the dancers’ own boldly eccentric compulsions.

Lora Allen, artistic director of allendance, will be premiering bloom (an excerpt). Inspired by the kinetic-driven, “movement as plot” writings of David Ohle’s 1972 cultclassic, Motorman, bloom is a rapid unfolding of dancers, colliding softly and recklessly with one another, in an unadorned space.

Set to national public radio, Meredith Stapleton’s Duet, “Head, Shoulders, Knees” frames our understanding of spoon fed, auditory media through a live pairing of bodies. A variation of one duet will be performed each evening with a rotating cast featuring Marisa Illingworth, Harlee Trautman, and Jennifer Yackel.

Recipient of the Temple University Project Completion Grant for her MFA thesis concert and the Rose Veronica Choreography Award, Blythe E. Smith will be presenting Pales in Comparison, a contemporary duet set to music by Yann Tiersen in which the dancers represent opposing struggles of choosing a person over their own beliefs or desires.

Duet partners Melissa Chisena, the host of Evening of Duets, and Marie Brown will be premiering a new duet, titled Axis, in collaboration with Philadelphia Musician Jonathan Cannon. Created to an original Drum and Bass score, the dancers are tethered to the ground, exploring fast rigorous floor-work movement while continuously revolving around one axis point.

The mission of Evening of Duets is to enrich, unite, inspire and give an outlet for choreographers, dancers, musicians and poets to collaborate and present innovative works for the Philadelphia community.

An Evening of Duets
February 10 & 11, 2017 @ 7:30pm
February 12, 2017 @ 3:00pm
Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tickets: $18 General Admission, $15 Students/Senior, $12 PhiladelphiaDance.org Members
Available online at http://www.danceboxoffice.com/?page_id=961

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