REPERTORY:

Duo De Amor
photos 4&5: Steven Schrieber
photos 1,2 &3: Julie Lemberger ©2008:
Duo De Amor, by Chriselle Tidrick, is a tango performed on static trapeze in relationship to a dancer on the ground. The trapeze is used, but the emphasis in placed on how it can be used to communicate the quality of the dance—its rhythms, shapes, movements, and inherent sensuality.

Gallo Ciego
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008:
Gallo Ciego, choreographed by Chriselle Tidrick is a tango for two stilt dancers. It, too, seeks to express the rhythms, shapes and movement of Argentine tango. The choreography is more about the movement than about the spectacle of circus, although the use of the apparatus ultimately adds excitement to the already beautiful and passionate tango.  (Stilt dancer, Mark Mindek appears here with Chriselle Tidrick and the ensemble.)

Entangled
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Entangled, Chriselle’s duet for fabric sling (also called hammock), was created in collaboration with Emily Smyth Vartanian. This piece explores the relationship between two figures—one of whom inhabits an earthly realm, and one of whom discovers she is suspended above it and is unable to descend. The two figures seek to form a connection and find mutual territory, but a permanent connection is ultimately impossible.

And Yet So Far Away
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008:
And Yet So Far Away was choreographed in collaboration with Luis Gabriel Zaragoza to Nuevo Tango music. This more traditional dance piece deals with the disintegrating relationship between a man and a woman. Utilizing inverted shapes and dynamic partnering, it expresses the frustration of failed attempts at connection and the loneliness of being in physical proximity yet emotionally distant from the object of one’s affection

Transformation
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Transformation, by Tomomi Imai, is choreographed for a solo dancer to a piano score by Bob Sardo. It runs 7 minutes and is an exploration of the space between Life and Spirit, with a theme of Life that awakens under moonlight. Transformation has recently been presented in New York City at the 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Center, University Settlement-Speyer Hall, and at the Hole in the Wall Theater in Connecticut.

Dark Tide
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Dark Tide, by Tomomi Imai, is a duet for a male and a female dancer to original music by Bob Sardo. The two dancers struggle with failed communication and an inability to connect. The male figure reaches out to the woman, but he does not know what she wants. Meanwhile, the female dancer knows she wants to create a relationship with the man, but she cannot allow herself to give in to her feelings. This piece has been shown at Dance New Amsterdam.  (Luis Gabriel Zaragoza is pictured here with Tomomi Imai.)

Friends in High Places, the stilt dancing duo of Coralie Romanyshyn and Mark Mindek, is constantly exploring the role that stilts can play in dance performance. The company offers a waltz to Seeking.
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
The Waltz explores the dance form from the perspective of romance. The music we have chosen has roots in the early 20th century. Movements are taken from the waltz vocabulary from the 1890s and early 1900s. The result is the capture of the romantic and wistful quality of music of that time. (Sharon Livardo du Maine is pictured here with Mark Mindek.)

Samota
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Samota was created by Martin Løfsnes/ 360° Dance.  The piece explores the isolation of a solo dancer as he gradually turns increasingly inward.

Hover
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Hover is an aerial solo in which the performer is suspended from a rope by a harness. The theme of the piece lies directly in line with the performer’s relationship to the apparatus. It is very easy to simply hang straight down from the ceiling, in compliance with gravity. But, things get interesting when the dancer pushes away from this central point, a motion which will bring her back to the center, but only momentarily, as she will swing past it and continue in the opposite direction. The piece focuses on the internal struggle of allowing ourselves to do that to which we are naturally inclined, but still resist because of our own stubbornness, distraction, or momentum in another direction. The work was originally debuted in 2004 at the Morgan-Wixon Theater in Los Angeles.

Getting High
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Getting High is set to Led Zeppelin’s Four Sticks and performed on a double-bungee apparatus, where the dancer is attached on both hips. It is an aggressive dance, working with the stretch-and-rebound nature of the bungees, in many ways similar to the notion of fall-and-recovery in modern dance, but with added consequences. In this case, the greater the stretch, the more forceful the nature of the resulting rebounding energy. This is also in direct correlation to the idea of the piece—the dancer is suspended quite literally in the middle of nowhere, reaching out in an attempt to connect to anything, be it the floor, walls, ceiling, or audience, but is halted and thrust in the opposite direction with force equal to her initial effort. So, the more she tries to get somewhere, the more sharply she is pulled away from it. She is left alone in the middle, twisting and flipping and exhausted but still reaching for something solid enough to keep her from flying backwards again.

Libertango
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Pictured here in their Libertango, Anabella Lenzu (of Anabella Lenzu/Dance Drama) and her partner, Todd Carroll, choreographed and perform in the tango milonga sections of Seeking. They also served as advisors to the artistic director in the process of interweaving the evening’s choreography in the tango milonga scene.

Enamorado
photos: Julie Lemberger ©2008
Additional tango choreography was contributed by Pawel Cheda who created Enamorado, a tango performed with Emily Smyth Vartanian to Henry Mancini's Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet.