Fourth Annual Choreographer’s Showcase Offers
Choreographers and Dancers a Place to Shine

Emerging choreographers from all styles of dance will have their work performed at the Post Concert Dance Company’s 4th Annual Choreographer’s Showcase, sponsored by the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. The showcase, which was created in 2002, offers rising choreographers that have a proven record of successful productions to create works for the Post Concert Dance Company. The choreographers selected this year are Stacey Carlson, Yvonne Curry, Kim Dooley, Cheryl Halliburton, Kanji Segawa, John-Mario Sevilla, and Davyd H. Suber, Jr.

Event Details:
May 6 and 7, 2005 at 8 pm.
The Theatre of the Riverside Church. The theatre is located at 120th Street and Riverside Drive. (Entrance is at 91 Claremont Ave.) Tickets: $12 Adult admission and $7 for students and seniors.
Reservations: please call (212) 870-6784.

Attitude Magazine called the 2004 showcase “rich in complementary formations and variety in style and music,” showing “polish and style,” and cited several performances as “stellar”, “heartfelt”, and “touching and notable for the believability of character”, saying that the dancers understood “the importance of feeling the emotion underlying a work in order to DANCE it.”

This year’s Showcase features JUMPING AND JIVING WITH SWING, a tap piece by Yvonne Curry, comprising a mixture of Tap styles, Broadway, Jazz and Funk, coupled with music that epitomizes the beauty of fast-paced syncopation, and GOING, GOING HOME, a piece by Cheryl Halliburton that began as a tribute to Ray Charles and evolved into a celebration not only of his life, struggles, and ultimate success but also of the journey we all embark on in order to find our way. Davyd H. Suber Jr. offers SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, a humorous solo that stages a young woman desperately waiting for that all-important telephone call, and former Pilobolus dancer John-Mario Sevilla presents THAT PERCH UPON A, created in collaboration with the dancers, using exciting shapes and intriguing spatial relationships.

Kanji Segawa’s DARK NIGHTS, is a piece in the modern idiom that deals with the themes of anxiety, restlessness and the inevitable sleepless nights we all experience.  The movement is highly athletic and intense, a complement to the fast paced contemporary music of Giovanni Sollima.  First presented by the company last year as a work in progress, we see the complete work this season for the first time. Dark Nights will also be performed at the “Days of Diversity” Choreographer’s Showcase at the Joyce SoHo on April 24 and 25, a showcase for prominent emerging choreographers in New York.

Returning for a second year as a Showcase participant, Stacey Carlson offers REMEMBER/REVISIT/RESTART, dealing with resignation and realization of past event(s). The piece has the dreamlike quality of reliving a memory and uses a visceral and emotive vocabulary. The dancer experiences the emotional ups and downs of a somnolent and the need to rest after acceptance and release. Also returning is Kim Dooley, with a two-part work, TONES and AFTERTONES, not only showing her range as a choreographer, but also showing us two faces of idealized love and the underlying issues of power and dependence that often affect our relationships.

The Post Concert Dance Company also acquires a Legacy dance piece every year; this year, in an on-going relationship with the José Limón Institute, the company was fortunate enough to obtain permission to perform Choreographic Offering. Originally performed by the José Limón Dance Company on August 15, 1964 at the American Dance Festival, this work is in memory of Doris Humphrey. It is based on movements from her dances, and contains variations, paraphrases, and motifs from Gigue, Sarabande, Water Study, Dionysiaques, The Pleasures of Counterpoint, Circular Descent, Handel Variations, Air on a Ground Bass, Rudepoema, New Dance, With My Red Fires, Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, Ruins and Visions, and New Dance. The work was staged by Raphaël Boumaïla, a principal dancer with the José Limón Company.

For more information, contact Cara Gargano in the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance at 516-299-2353.