Harkness Dance Festival

Jonah Bokaer Choreography – World Premieres

Jonah Bokaer Choreography – World Premiere

Celebrating its 25th season, the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival honors the Centenary of Merce Cunningham.

Jonah Bokaer, a member of MCDC from 2000-2007, two world premieres: For Yemen, a solo for Bokaer, and Mirror with Memory, danced by the company and featuring music composed and performed live by Alexander Turnquist.

Bokaer cultivates a multi-disciplinary approach to choreography that merges with art and design by enlarging the role of contemporary performance to enhance its contribution to society. “Conceptual, precise, breathtaking”, Bokaer is the author of 60 choreographic works.

Join us for the rest of the festival celebrating the Centenary of Merce Cunningham, March 1-30, 2019. Our opening weekend features choreography by Merce performed by New York Theatre Ballet, New World School of the Arts and Melissa Toogood with Calvin Royal III. The following four weekends feature four world premieres from four generations of Cunningham dancers who have established their own companies. In addition to Jonah Bokaer Choreography we feature Douglas Dunn + Dancers, Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e, and Ellen Cornfied of Cornfield Dance.

Program is subject to change.

Photo Credit: © Liza Voll Courtesy c/o Jacobs Pillow Dance
CURTAIN at the Jacobs Pillow Dance festival, 2012
Choreography Jonah Bokaer
Co-Produced with Festival d'Avignon, and Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès

Tickets from $35
Buttenwieser Hall

Jonah Bokaer

Jonah Bokaer, born to Tunisian and American parents, has been active as choreographer and exhibiting artist since 2002 …

Jonah Bokaer

Jonah Bokaer, born to Tunisian and American parents, has been active as choreographer and exhibiting artist since 2002.

The author of 60 works in a wide variety of media including dances, videos, motion capture works, three interactive installations, four mobile applications and one film, shown in 31 nations, 24 of the United States and 292 cities, Bokaer is the most widely acclaimed choreographer to have emerged since the post-modern era, and the first to pioneer Dance Apps.

His work has been produced regularly throughout venues in Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cuba, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, the United Kingdom and the United States. With the support of the Ford Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Unit, he has also partnered to bring choreography to areas of the developing world, which traditionally have not enjoyed dance-touring opportunities, enlarging the reach and access of contemporary dance internationally.

Recent engagements include two seasons at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Festival d’Avignon in France, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in Paris with the Hermès Foundation, the Festival di Spoleto, Italy and the BAM Next Wave Festival, for which he was commissioned for the inauguration of BAM Fisher. Upcoming engagements include the inauguration of Toyo Ito’s architecture in the Western Hemisphere (Puebla, Mexico), the Brisbane Festival (Australia), La Biennale de Lyon (France), Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris, France) and an independent production along the sinai Red Sea, exploring the meeting point of African, Arabian and Mesopotamian cultures. He also appears yearly in NYC and Brooklyn.

Creating choreography for museum spaces since 2002, Bokaer has been commissioned by at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, P.S.1 MoMA, The New Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. He has worked closely with performing arts curators for programs at The Asia Society (2011, 2014), Le Carré d’Art à Nîmes, IVAM Valencia, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, MUDAM Luxembourg and La Triennale di Milano. Currently, the National Museum of Serbia is commissioning Bokaer to respond to Middle Danube Prehistoric Cultures, with ten partners: National Museum of Serbia, Vukovar Municipal Museum, Museum Lepenski Vir, the newly opened Museum of Vucedol Culture, Archaeological Museum Zagreb, Museum of Banat in Timisoara, University of Zagreb, University of Babe-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca.

In 2008-2009 Bokaer became the first dance artist to be appointed a Young Leader of the French American Foundation, in acknowledgment of his efforts to develop Chez Bushwick, and CPR, two independent arts centers which nurture young artists in New York City and internationally, which impact 1,100 and 342 Artist / Members respectively, each year.

Bokaer has collaborated with other artists including Daniel Arsham (2007-present), Anne Carson, Merce Cunningham, Robert Gober, Anthony McCall, Tino Sehgal, Lee Ufan (Guggenheim Retrospective 2011), Robert Wilson (2007-present). As choreographer for Robert Wilson, opera works include Faust (Polish National Opera), Aïda (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma), KOOL (Japan/USA Guggenheim), Fronteras (IVAM Valenica), On The Beach (Baryshnikov Arts Center).

Recent Prizes include the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Choreography; USArtists Fellow in Choreography (Ford Foundation); NYU CBA Fellowship (for Royal Ballet of Flanders); Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Visual Arts, Italy), and the National Theatre of Serbia Prize (for Rules Of The Game, 2017).