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| 92Y Harkness Dance Festival: Out of Israel (3.5-9.08) |
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| Tickets/Registration: 212.415.5500 |
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| Media Contact: Sarah Morton, 212.415.5435, email |
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| 92nd STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL: OUT OF ISRAEL |
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Two World Premieres
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GEISHA
by LeeSaar/The Company
BILOCALE—COME CLOSER PLEASE
by Netta Yerushalmy |
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GEISHA
Choreography: Lee Sher, Saar Harari
Music: Chole, Vitamin String Quartet, Wabi Sabi, Peter Scherer, Sharon Lifshits, Hanoch Levin with Rami Kleinstein
Costume Design: Rafeket Levi, Keren Milo
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur
BILOCALE—COME CLOSER PLEASE
Choreography: Netta Yerushalmy
Music: Julia Wolfe, John Cage, Gyorgy Ligeti, Guy Klucevsek, Louis Andriessen, Toshio Hosokawa
Costume Design: Mindy Nelson
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur
Wednesday, March 5; Thursday, March 6, and Saturday, March 8, 8pm,
Sunday, March 9, 2pm
PERFORMANCE LOCATION: Ailey® Citigroup Theater at the Joan Weill Center for Dance
(405 West 55th Street at 9th Avenue)
The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival and Center receives major funding from the Harkness Foundation for Dance; Jody and John Arnhold; the Mertz Gilmore Foundation; the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development; the New York City Council; the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation; public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and Capezio/Ballet Makers Dance Foundation, Inc., among others.
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New York, NY, February, 4, 2008—The 92ND STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL, which is committed to presenting Israeli choreographers, this year features three edgy, intense New York-based performers in Out of Israel. LeeSaar/The Company, formed by Saar Harari and Lee Sher, offers the world premiere of Geisha, and Netta Yerushalmy shows the world premiere of her Bilocale—Come Closer Please.
In Geisha, Sher and Harari play with ideas of femininity, beauty, silence, fear, loneliness and control. "Geisha is full of associations," explains Sher, referring both to the word and the dance. Geishas are Japanese girls and women who provide traditional entertainment and sometimes act as male companions. To some, the geisha is beautiful and beloved, to others lonely and vulnerable. The tension between these images is expressed by the three performers, Sher, Harari and Jye-Hwei Lin. Lin, the first to appear onstage, sometimes appears strong, some times quite frail. When Lin and Harari dance together, they appear similar—lean, curving bodies, dark hair and blue jeans—but embody different visions of femininity and its corollary, masculinity; at times, Harari, the male dancer, takes on the "feminine" role. Sher, acting with her voice and body, sometimes accompanied by Israeli pop songs, suggests both a powerful performer (like a geisha) and a woman yearning for love and connection.
Yerushalmy's choreography is known for its asymmetry and occasionally awkward movement; she describes her work as "fierce," and Bilocale—Come Closer Please is no exception. The dance shows two women (Yerushalmy and Toni Melaas) who find themselves in a narrow, confined space, and portrays the aggressive, bizarre behavior that results. In a characteristic moment, Melaas sits on Yerushalmy's face, and makeup smears onto Melaas's body; Yerushalmy then slams Melaas onto a sheet of paper, leaving an imprint of the makeup. The dance grew out of the oddly-shaped rehearsal space Yerushalmy worked in when she made the piece; to recreate the sense of confinement, the audience will be seated on the stage, although the dancers will not interact with the viewers. The title of the dance reflects the fact that the dancers create two centers in the room ("bilocal") and vacillate between being competitive and intimate ("come closer please"). For her score, Yerushalmy assembled a variety of short keyboard pieces—for toy piano, for harpsichord, for prepared piano, organ and synthesizer. |
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| COMING UP IN THE 92nd STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL: |
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WEEK 5
Brian Brooks Moving Company: Spectrum |
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Wednesday, March 12; Thursday, March 13; Saturday, March 15, 8pm |
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Sunday, March 16, 2pm |
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| ABOUT THE CHOREOGRAPHERS |
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| Lee Sher began her acting training as a child, appearing on Israeli TV when she was 9. After her Army service, she studied acting for three years at the Tel Aviv Nissan Nativ Acting Studio. She won several of the American-Israeli Foundation for the Arts highest level scholarships and wrote and directed her own plays. With Harari, she formed LeeSaar/The Company in 2000. During the company's residency in Sydney, Australia, she wrote, directed and performed in the company's first work, Ester. She and Hariri came to New York in 2004; here they've created Herd of Bulls, Moopim and Part II. In addition to work with the company, Sher has presented her one-act play "Testimony" at SoHo's Ignite Festival, and participated in a week of readings at the NY Theater workshop in June, 2007. |
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| Saar Harari began studying dance at age 7. After serving as a commanding officer of the Israeli army's counterterrorism and hostage rescue team, he returned to dance, performing and touring with Liat Dor and Nir Ben Gal and later with the Noa Dar dance group. He started choreographing in 1998, while he was working at Tel Aviv's Suzanne Dellal Center, and, along with Sher, has created the works performed by LeeSaar/The Company. The company received a Six Points Fellowship for 2007-2008 and was nominated for the 2008 Alpert Award in Dance. |
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| Netta Yerushalmy was born in South Carolina and moved with her parents to Israel when she was 5. She began studying dance at 3 years old; at 14 trained at the school of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, and at 18, she won a scholarship to study dance at New York University. In Israel, she has been invited to show her work at International Exposure, Curtain Up, Intimadance Festival and Different Dances. She has presented work at Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Movement Research @ Judson Church, Jacob's Pillow, The Yard and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, among other U.S. venues. Yerushalmy is a member of Doug Varone and Dancers; she has also worked with Mark Jarecke, Karinne Keithley, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Noemie LaFrance, Nancy Bannon, Ronit Ziv and Zoltan Nagy. |
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE CENTER |
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Renata Celichowska, Director
In 1935, what is now the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center provided a home to the fledgling modern dance movement and its leader, Martha Graham. Among the great artists who have created, performed and taught at the Y are Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Erick Hawkins, Robert Joffrey, Pearl Lang, and Donald McKayle, building the foundation for contemporary dance as we know it. In recent years, they have been joined by today's dance stars, like David Parsons, Zvi Gotheiner, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Bill T. Young, Maia Claire Garrison, David Dorfman and Sean Curran. With the generous support of the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Center continues to nurture the teaching, creation and performance of modern dance, serving adults, children and dance professionals through classes, professional development programs like the 92nd Street Y Dance Education Laboratory and performance programs like the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, the Y's annual showcase for contemporary dance. The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center is part of the Y's arts-education division, the 92nd Street Y School of the Arts. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org/dance. |
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y SCHOOL OF THE ARTS |
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| The 92nd Street Y's arts-education division, the 92nd Street Y School of the Arts, comprises the Harkness Dance Center (estab. 1935), the School of Music (estab. 1917) and the Art Center (estab. 1930). Together they offer instruction to adults, teenagers and children of all ages and interests, as well as master classes and, in the case of dance, performance opportunities and professional performances. The School of the Arts's Educational Outreach initiative provides in-school dance, music and art education to 7,000 economically disadvantaged New York City elementary-school children. The Y's Scholarship Program enables all New Yorkers to enjoy the School of the Arts's programs regardless of income level. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org/arts. |
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| ABOUT THE 92ND STREET Y |
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Sol Adler, Executive Director
Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural, educational and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y's mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit in person each year as well as those who visit virtually, through the Y's satellite, television, radio and Internet broadcasts. The organization offers comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, the arts, personal development and Jewish culture; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, the 92nd Street Y awards nearly $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches out to 7,000 public school children through subsidized arts education programs. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org.
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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