Featuring Contemporary Dance Artists, Nicole Wolcott and Larry Keigwin along with Students of the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts
“Nicole and Larry’s differences – their artistic tension – makes them the perfect fit. When their individual energies came together in a final celebratory pas de deux, the energy shook the entire room into a frenzy.” Broadway Dance, May 2017
Celebrate the season with Places Please! – a modern day version of a Chorus Line, as DANCE NOW SteelStacks, a partnership between DANCENOW and ArtsQuest, presents its 7th annual holiday show Friday, December 15, 8 p.m., in the Musikfest Café of the ArtsQuest Center, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem.
A DANCE NOW Commission for Joe’s Pub at The Public in New York City, PLACES PLEASE! reunites the choreographic collaborative team of Nicole Wolcott and Larry Keigwin of Keigwin + Company in a full evening duet. PLACES PLEASE! is a zany trip with Keigwin and Wolcott during the final moments before the curtain goes up. The audience witnesses the anxiety and playfulness of life behind the scenes as if observing from backstage. The new work celebrates and extends the creative relationship that served as KEIGWIN + COMPANY’s foundation during its burgeoning years. Presented as dreamscape and sonic collage, the evening explores the parallel and intersecting paths of the creative process, relationship and aging of two very dynamic and vibrant artists. Students from the Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Arts will be featured in PLACES PLEASE!, created specifically for them by Wolcott and Keigwin this fall.
“Addressing the audience in an open and honest monologue, Wolcott expressed her fears about aging in front of the dance community: what happens when a dancer gets older? What becomes of the mind, body, and spirit when no one tells you it’s time to stop?” Broadway Dance
“The anxious “Chorus Line” song about ‘getting that part’ opens the door to reflection and remembrance, as Keigwin recalls the pressure and opportunity Broadway presented, the money it meant for the first Keigwin/Wolcott show and the lasting disappointment of not becoming a Lloyd-Weber cat.” Off.Off.Off.com
Founded in 2003 by Artistic Director Larry Keigwin and Associate Director Nicole Wolcott, KEIGWIN + COMPANY creates and presents Keigwin’s electrifying brand of contemporary dance. Since the company’s premiere performance at Joyce Soho in 2003, Keigwin has created 35 dances, including the acclaimed large-scale community project Bolero, which has been commissioned in eleven communities across the country, Runaway (2008), a fashion-inspired choreographic ride, proclaimed a “thrilling coup d’theater” by James Wolcott of Vanity Fair, and Canvas (2013), heralded as “intricate, neat, rapturous” by the New York Times. Over the past decade, the company has presented performances around the world at venues including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Summerdance Santa Barbara, New York City Center, the Joyce Theater, American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and more. This year, KEIGWIN + COMPANY will embark on a tour to Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Tunisia as part of the sixth season of DanceMotion USA, a program sponsored by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the U.S. Department of State. Larry Keigwin is a native New Yorker and choreographer who has danced his way from the Metropolitan Opera to downtown clubs to Broadway and back. He founded KEIGWIN + COMPANY in 2003, and as artistic director, he has led the company as it has performed at theaters and dance festivals around the world. KEIGWIN + COMPANY has performed at The Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, and New York City Center, among many others venues. Keigwin has created dozens of dances for himself and his dancers, as well as for Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, Royal New Zealand Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Juilliard School, Vail International Dance Festival, and many others. His work in musical theater includes choreography for the 2011 production of the musical. Tales of the City at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and the off-Broadway production of Rent, for which he received the 2011 Joe A. Callaway Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. In 2013, Keigwin choreographed the Broadway musical If/Then, starring Idina Menzel. Keigwin has designed and choreographed special events including Fashion’s Night Out: The Show in New York, produced by Vogue magazine. He has also mounted several versions of Bolero, his acclaimed largescale community project commissioned by communities across the country. He created Keigwin Kabaret, a fusion of modern dance, vaudeville, and burlesque presented by the Public Theater at Joe’s Pub and by Symphony Space. As a dancer, Keigwin has danced at the Metropolitan Opera in Doug Varone’s Le Sacre du Printemps and Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute, in addition to his work with Mark Dendy (receiving a Bessie Award in 1998 for his performance in Dream Analysis), Jane Comfort, John Jasperse, Doug Elkins, Zvi Gotheiner, and David Rousseve. He appeared in the Broadway show Dance of the Vampires, the Off- Broadway show The Wild Party, and the Oscar-nominated film Across the Universe, directed by Julie Taymor.
Nicole Wolcott is a choreographer, teacher, and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. Called “one of today’s finest dance comedians and a knockout dancer,” by the New York Times, Wolcott has enjoyed a long career with dance companies, rock bands, and video artists around the country and been the subject of a feature article in Dance Teacher magazine. After creating their signature work, Straight Duet, together in 2002, Keigwin and Wolcott co-founded KEIGWIN + COMPANY the following year. She was the associate artistic director and a featured dancer until 2013. Wolcott’s own choreography has been performed in New York City at a range of venues from the Joyce Theater to CBGB. Currently she is touring her evening-length solo titled PaperPieces. Other highlights of her career include performing at the Metropolitan Opera House, working with site-specific choreographer Noemie Lafrance, being a featured dancer in Doug Elkins’ original Fräulein Maria, appearing in music videos and concerts with FischerSpooner, and being a core dancer in the film Across the Universe, directed by Julie Taymor.
About DANCE NOW DANCE NOW is produced by directors Robin Staff, Sydney Skybetter, and Tamara Greenfield. For 22 years DANCE NOW has bent the rules to offer all-inclusive destination events that reveal the bustling energy and innovation of New York City dance makers. Created in 1995 as a program of the Downtown Arts Festival, DANCE NOW launched in 1996 as an independent festival. Without a performance venue, DANCE NOW learned to embrace limitation as a powerful source for creativity. Seeking creative ways to bring dance and community together, DANCE NOW developed partnerships to connect new audiences to innovative dance makers. Presenting dance in venues both traditional and not, DANCE NOW designed all-inclusive destination events for drained swimming pools, firehouses, galleries, and Joe’s Pub, where, in 2003 DANCE NOW introduced the Dancemopolitan series. In 2005, DANCE NOW furthered its “less is more” mantra, creating a “challenge initiative” to encourage work marked by brevity, clarity, and effect. This inspired the commissioning of full-evening works specifically for the Pub, and the merging of all DANCE NOW programs to the Pub in 2011. DANCE NOW’s programming at Joe’s Pub has defied the standard and encouraged artists to think outside the box and utilize the unique space, creating an inspiring new platform for dance. In the last decade, DANCE NOW has produced numerous critically acclaimed works at Joe’s Pub including Doug Elkins’ Fräulein Maria, David Parker’s ShowDown, Misters and Sisters, and Head Over Heels, Nicholas Leichter’s The Whiz and 20/20, Kyle Abraham’s Heartbreaks and Homies, Nicole Wolcott and Vanessa Walters’ Alley of the Dolls, Camille Brown’s One Second Past the Future, Monica Bill Barnes’ Snow Globes, Takehiro Ueyama’s Somewhere Familiar Melodies, Claire Porter’s Sent-ence, Mark Dendy’s NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place and, most recently, Ellis Wood’s The Juggler of Our Ladies. From a small festival series to four distinct programs, from NYC to Pennsylvania, DANCE NOW presents young innovators and emerging and maturing artists side by side, building relationships at varying stages of development and providing comprehensive assistance to advance creativity and new career paths. DANCE NOW Joe’s Pub challenges artists to investigate new directions. DANCE NOW Raw funnels new artists into its programs. DANCE NOW Silo and DANCE NOW SteelStacks provide paid teaching, residencies, and commissioning and performing opportunities through partnerships with DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, Lehigh Valley Charter School, and ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA. DANCE NOW is supported, in part, with funds from the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information, visit dancenownyc.org and silokirklandfarm.dancenownyc.org.
OPEN REHEASAL at The Charter School TBA
Information and image provided to TVL by:
Mark Demko, ArtsQuest
http://www.artsquest.org/
