La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival

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May 10 - June 03, 2018

Curated by Nicky Paraiso
Assistant Curator of La MaMa Moves: Gian Marco Lo Forte

Now in its 13th season, La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival is presented at The Ellen Stewart Theatre and the Downstairs Theatre & Lounge. This season's programming continues to support La MaMa's commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience's perception of dance, and will feature performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists' engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.
"The choreographers participating in La MaMa Moves! 2018 are all strong, powerful individuals, beholden to no one, answering to nobody but themselves, adhering to no one style or genre, holding on to not one physical practice, dance technique, or philosophy."
Read a message from Curator Nicky Paraiso.

Press for La MaMa Moves! 2018

10 Dance Performances to See in NYC This Weekend

"This festival, now in its 13th season, shines its spotlight on choreographers exploring issues around race, gender, religion and exclusion."

 

La MaMa Moves at 13

Maura Donohue talks to curator Nicky Paraiso and artists Ellen Fisher, Jonathan Gonzalez, Adham Hafez and Ni’Ja Whitson

Les Choses Dernières

May 10 & May 11 in The Ellen Stewart Theatre

New York Premiere
Choreographed by Lucie Gregoire
Inspired by Paul Auster's novel
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In this solo, freely inspired by Paul Auster’s novel, In the Country of Last Things, a woman struggles for survival as she confronts disintegrating worlds. Based on an uncompromising approach to movement, the dance here is necessary, lucid, and immensely generous. The raw quality of Lucie Grégoire’s work carries a fierce emotional impact that leaves a haunting imprint.

To Catch A Terrorist

May 12 & May 13 in The Ellen Stewart Theatre

A Production of Adham Hafez Company and HaRaKa Platform
Choreography and Music by: Adham Hafez
Performed in English, Arabic, French, Latin
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​To Catch A Terrorist is a cryptic work that looks at the formation of disciplined bodies, borders and the instrumentalist usage of fear as a sovereign act. Through data analysis, exorcist dances, demographic research, court hearing documents, visa applications, and disappearing traditional choreographies -- this new work enmeshes science, history, performance and law.

THIS DANCERIE | New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter

May 11 - May 13 in The Downstairs

A performance/installation by Tony Whitfield and Whitfield Colabs (USA/France)
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Dancerie is a multi-event, multi-site, multi-media cycle of works exploring Paris as the site of a queer century in which men have created public expressions of same sex desire despite prohibitions against the manifestation of their existence. In this performance, Tony Whitfield collaborates with composers, musicians, live performers, and videographers/editors in an evening length response to Adrien Barrere’s 1910 film, Tom Pouce Suit Une Femme, a work about an unlikely romance and the persistence, courage and discomfort of pursuing one’s desires.

THIS DANCERIE | Paris, 1938 Video Installation

May 11 - May 13 in The Downstairs Lobby

A performance/installation by Tony Whitfield and Whitfield Colabs (USA/France)
More Information | FREE Event
Dancerie is a multi-event, multi-site, multi-media cycle of works exploring Paris as the site of a queer century in which men have created public expressions of same sex desire despite prohibitions against the manifestation of their existence. In this video installation, Whitfield proposes versions of what many believe was a same sex relationship that resulted in an assassination, foreshadowing current acts of self-radicalized terror and launching Kristallnacht, an explosion of Nazi persecution of Jews that constitutes a critical pre-WW2 staging of the Holocaust.

Shared Evening of Dance

May 17 & May 18 in The Downstairs

A Shared Evening of Dance:
O.O.F. (studies in the opposite of fear) by Parijat Desai
Station II Station by Paz Tanjuaquio
Leaning On by Angie Pittman
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This shared evening of dance highlights three unique award winning choreographers and performers including Parijat Desai, Paz Tanjuaquio and Angie Pittman. O.O.F. by Parijat Desai cultivates alternative emotional states to the pervasive anxiety spawned by xenophobia. Station II Station by Paz Tanjuaquio explores movement inspired within changing landscapes. Leaning On by Angie Pittman explores the relationship to her vast interior impulses and her connection with the above. 

Obeah

May 19 & May 20 in The Downstairs

Concept by Jonathan González
Design by Jonathan González
Performed by Katrina Reid
Sound Design by Rena Anakwe
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Obeah initiates from the residue of a work by a similar title, A Black Ritual (Obeah), conceived in 1940 by Agnes De Mille. In this capstone work to González’s research on grief, sound artist Rena Anakwe and performer Katrina Reid facilitate an unfolding speculative fiction set within a cosmic body of water. The duet forms as an allegiance, a sisterhood, and cypher between sound and body conjuring transformations in associations to one another and the audience.

Time Don’t Stop For Nobody

May 25 - May 27 in The Downstairs

By Ellen Fisher
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Time Don't Stop for Nobody is a movement-based performance related to the perception of age. A small ensemble of four performers, each 25-30 years apart, collaborate to highlight their shared experiences on the progression of growing up. 

No More Beautiful Dances

May 30 & May 31 in The Downstairs

By Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama
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No More Beautiful Dances wrestles with the ideas of being an immigrant and the exploration, introspection and re-framing of a woman after becoming a mother. This dance theater piece uses drawing, spoken word and video projections to tell a personal vision of femininity, and what it means to be a woman today.

The Unarrival Experiments #4

June 1 & 2 in The Downstairs

By Ni’Ja Whitson
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The Unarrival Experiments #4 is a ritual digging into the “vaporous body” via relationships between astronomy, cosmology, time, Blackness, and premature death.  As a solo iteration of the evening-length installation performance in process, Whitson engages the work of Heidegger’s On Time and Being with their forthcoming manuscript These Walking Glories.

AUNTS @ La MaMa Moves!

June 3 in The Downstairs

A Dance and Performance Platform Curated by AUNTS
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An underground platform for dance guided by core principles of collectivity, cooperation, and sharing, AUNTS utilizes choreographic strategies to organize individual performances in a shared space while simultaneously promoting community building and artistic autonomy.

Free Festival Events

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Secret Journey: Stop Calling Them Dangerous Panel

May 19 & May 20 in room G05 at Abrons Arts Center

FREE EVENT
La MaMa in partnership with Movement Research  
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This Panel Symposium includes conversations between Adham Hafez, Yoshiko Chuma, Danny Yung, Yin Mei, and dance artists from Egypt, Romania, Syria, Turkey and the United States. Hosted by Movement Research, discussions will examine stories about oppression, marginalization, prejudice and profiling. La MaMa’s Panel Symposium will enable artists to explore their ideas and translate them into a theatrical language that can communicate to diverse artists and members of the dance community.

Dance and Film 1960-80 Film Screenings

May 26 & May 27 at 541 Broadway, Third Floor

FREE EVENT
Films by Elaine Summers, Joan Jonas & Yoshiko Chuma
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This evening is dedicated to the film-choreographic experiments of the New York dance and film scene and follows the traces of the avantgarde movements from the early 60s to 80s. Films by Elaine Summers, Joan Jonas as well as by choreographer Yoshiko Chuma will be presented to audience. Films will include Two Girls Downtown Iowa, Wind, Song Delay, Five Car Pile Up, Commercial Erruption, Splish Splash and The Girl Can't Help It.

The 13th Season of La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival has been made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, with special thanks to City Council Speaker, Corey Johnson, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.