Performances - Dance

Presented with The Dance Centre

ASZURE BARTON & ARTISTS from New York

A Chutzpah! favourite...Canadian born Aszure Barton returns this time with her full company of nine dancers in a dazzling repertoire show. Dance at its best! Thrillingly unpredictable! From her wildly eclectic musical choices (ranging from French Canadian folk, to Vivaldi, to Klezmer) to the casual and conversational tone of her original, funky dance vocabulary. Barton's choreography is hard to categorize.

Baryshnikov has compared it to the work of a young Mark Morris. Yet, it's completely her own - a luscious mix of movement, a riveting way with uninhibited gesture, and a generous vein of humour. Barton has received commissions from the American Ballet Theatre, the Martha Graham Company, Sydney Dance Company, the National Ballet of Canada, among others and her company will have just finished a European tour as well as performances at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv and across the US.

The company will be presenting two works. BUSK (2009) retains Aszure Barton's signature style of precise whole-body expression inflected with an intense and intimate awareness of the thin line between humour and sadness. Original, evocative music by Russian violist and composer Lev Ljova Zhurbin along with a powerful selection of world sound (including choir music from Sweden's Orphei Drangar). BLUE SOUP (2009) is a bubbling mosaic drawn from Aszure Barton's notable past creations. This choreography has been hailed internationally by critics and audiences alike.

"I thought that the audience was going to explode from its seats... Aszure Barton, where have you been? Where are you going? The art of choreography needs you." - Dance View Times

"breathtaking, explosive and exhilarating" - Santa Barbara News Press

"...full of surprise and humor, emotion and pain, expressed through a dance vocabulary that takes ballet technique and dismantles it to near-invisibility." - The New York Times

www.aszurebarton.com

GALLIM DANCE from New York
With special guest Sidra Bell Dance New York

Choreographer and Artistic Director Andrea Miller's works are simultaneously kinetic and intimate expressions of the self and its inner mosaic of weakness, desires, and struggles. Her use of extreme physicality - movement that shifts between explosive power and contained tension - creates an experience where the dancers appear to exist at the edge of their limits.

Gallim Dance burst onto the New York dance scene in its debut performance at Joyce SoHo Presents, and caught the attention of the New York City dance community bringing momentum to the burgeoning group of artists. The company has gone on to perform in many premiere dance venues including Jacob's Pillow, Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater, The Juilliard Theater, Battery Park, WHITE WAVE, and The Flea Theater. Gallim has also been invited to conduct residencies at The College at Brockport, Hubbard Street, Peridance Center, and in Holland and Spain.

"The impact of this piece is so powerful - and the dancers perform so urgently, so intently about things that, while hard to verbalise, are so essential to our being - that it's hard to leave the show without feeling changed." - Tim Martin, Dance Europe

"...This is one to see." - Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, Dance Listing

Opening for Gallim Dance is Sidra Bell Dance New York (SBDNY) - a New York City based contemporary dance troupe presenting innovative, provocative and kinetic dance works. Sidra Bell is an emerging and sought after voice in contemporary dance with a strong female vision creating work that ignites the imagination, is sensual, articulate and highly physical. Pushing past dance's traditional vocabulary Sidra Bell has become known for unconventional, forward-looking works.

www.gallimdance.com
www.sidrabelldanceny.org

MOVE: the company

Chutzpah! is proud to present the first bi-annual Legacy Repertory Project - the brainchild of Andrea Gunnlaugson, this wonderful new initiative's mandate is to bring BC contemporary dance choreography unseen for at least 10 years to the current generation of dance artists - a space of time that clearly reflects the gap between generations!

Featuring MOVE: the company in works by three of BC's most beloved choreographers of days gone by... Harvey Meller, Cornelius Fischer-Credo and Olivia Thorvaldson. Included in the program is a world premiere by Josh Beamish featuring the male dancers from MOVE: the company.

This full evening presentation features a group of exciting, high energy and technically versatile dancers: Kevin Tookey, Mack Green, Matt Waldie, Josh Beamish, Heather Dotto, Erica Trivett, Jacqui Lopez, Angel Jutzi and Jeannie Vandekerkhove.

The works of Artistic Director Josh Beamish and MOVE: the company have been presented by Judith Marcuse Projects, Dancing On The Edge, The VIDF, Scotiabank Dance Centre, MovEnt's Dances For a Small Stage, Tangente (Montreal), Kinetic Studio (Halifax) and the Joyce SoHo in New York City. The company will return to the Joyce SoHo in Spring 2010 and embark on their first International tour to China in Fall 2010.

Josh Beamish is the 2009 recipient of a City of Vancouver Mayor's Artist Studio Award and a 2008 Globe and Mail Dance Award.. Josh will next participate in a choreographic session with the New York Choreographic Institute and the New York City Ballet and create new works for both Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance and the University of Missouri Kansas City Dance Program.

MOVE: the company and the Legacy Repertory Project has been generously funded and facilitated by a Norman Rothstein Theatre Creative Residency Program where the artists are given the use of the Norman Rothstein Theatre in a four week residency with full technical, administrative, marketing and promotional support. This is the second of what will be an annual NRT Creative Residency Program.

www.movethecompany.com

Special Purim Community Dance Show with Or Chadash, Movement Speaks and Bhangra Festival Dancers

JCCGV Or Chadash performing new and established works from their repertoire will also be joined on stage by dancers from the City of Bhangra Festival Dancers where they will perform a piece together in a multi-cultural fusion of Israeli and Bhangra dance and music. Also performing this afternoon in the Community Dance Show are members of Naomi Goldberg Haas' Movement Speaks dance workshops for Seniors.

Movement Speaks - A Collaborative Performance Residency for Older Adults builds dance from the stories of our lives. Participants will share in the joys of dance for expression, wellness and community led by dance artist Naomi Goldberg Haas, Artistic director of Dances For A Variable Population based in New York City. The week long workshops will culminate in a performance piece performed at the Norman Rothstein Theatre in the Community Dance Show.

Naomi Goldberg Haas choreographs dynamic concert dances with diverse communities and professional dancers. Erasing the border between dancer and non-dancer, her work returns dance to its initial wellspring: joy. Trained at the School of American Ballet and performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet she holds an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of The Arts, and a BA From Barnard College, Columbia University. She has taught at California State University Long Beach and Loyola Marymount University and is currently teaching at University Settlement, the Harkness Dance Center of the 92nd Street Y, New York University, the Rod Rodgers Dance Studio, 440 Studios and Dance New Amsterdam. Artistic residencies include the The Field Artward Bound at the White Oak Plantation and The Yard, where she serves as an Advisory Board member.

JCCGV Or Chadash, our local youth ambassadors of Jewish and Israeli dance, was formed in 2005 as a direct result of the Jewish Community Centre's Festival Ha'Rikud, a youth Israeli folk dance festival founded and directed by Debbie Tabenkin. The company has performed numerous times in Israel and all over the lower mainland in venues such as the River Rock Theatre, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the Centre for the Performing Arts and the Chan Centre to name a few. Artistic Directors Brenley Rosenblatt and Jessica Casiro both originate from Winnipeg, Manitoba. They danced for many years with the world renowned Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble. Both Brenley and Jessica became part of the teaching staff of Chai, and Jessica took on the role as Artistic Director. Brenley has been with Or Chadash since its inception in September 2005. Jessica joined the company in September 2007.