Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre To Be Featured In American Dance Guild Performance Festival: RETURN, RENEW, REJOICE!

Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre will be featured in the American Dance Guild Performance Festival: Return, Renew, Rejoice!, on Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 8 pm at Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th St., NYC. The ADG Festival's participating artists represent a wide variety or aesthetic and cultural voices, reflecting the broad spectrum of American dance life and the diverse character of dance today. Tickets are $30 general admission and $25 for students and seniors, and a festival pass for all four performances is $75. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit americandanceguild.org/2022-festival-1.

ADG Honors this year will go to choreographers Phyllis Lamhut and the late H.T. Chen, winners of ADG's Lifetime Achievement Award. An Award for Distinguished Service to the Field will be presented to Christine Jowers, founder of The Dance Enthusiast. Opening night, December 1, will feature all three ADG honorees, and will include an awards ceremony. Each honoree will show their work again over the Festival weekend.

The Festival will include a presentation of three historic modern dances. "Shuvi Nafshi" (Return O My Soul Unto Thee - 1947) by Hadassah, reconstructed by Steven Vendola will be performed by Mary Ford Sussman on December 2. "Pizzicati" (1916), a rarely seen work by Michio Ito, restaged by Bonnie Oda Homsey courtesy of Los Angeles Dance Foundation and licensed with the Michio Ito Foundation, Inc., will be performed by Kaoru Ikeda on December 3 and December 4. In addition, "Concertino" (1955), with choreography by the late Pauline Koner, will be presented by Gwendolyn Bye's Dancefusion Company from Philadelphia and shown on December 2.

The full, four-day Festival will feature the work of 33 contemporary choreographers. The lineup includes:

Thursday, December 1 at 7:30pm

2022 Honoree Award Presentation with Reception to Follow Performance

Larry Keigwin, Janis Brenner, Seyong Kim, Tina Croll, Christine Jowers, Phyllis Lamhut, H.T. Chen

Friday, December 2 at 8pm

Becky Brown, Greg Hurley, Briele Melahn, Peggy Choy, Douglas Dunn, Dancefusion/Pauline Koner, Connie Procopio, Mary Ford Sussman/Hadassah, Lori Belilove, H.T. Chen

Saturday, December 3 at 8pm

5/2 Dance Company, Damir Tasmagambetov, Mary Seidman, Kaoru Ikeda/Michio Ito, Catherine Gallant, Christina Eltvedt, Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre, Phyllis Lamhut

Sunday, December 4 at 7pm

Adriana Ogle and Toru Sakuragi, Dana Tai Soon Burgess, Sandra Rivera, Nancy Zendora, Eloy Barragan, Mitzi Adams, Kaoru Ikeda/Michio Ito, Diane Sharp Nachsin, Ellen Robbins, Steven Hill, Christine Jowers

Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre will perform an excerpt from Threads.

"Threads explores what holds us together in isolation and the practice of letting go," said Amanda Selwyn, Artistic Director. "This pandemic has brought into focus where priorities are, the value of our human connections, and the very fleeting nature of it all. We are just a moment away from change. The threads can be fixed, torn, mended, or woven. The music and the movement in this innovative evening-length work will embody these ties that hold us together and their fragility to pull us apart. This is a story of heartbreak, forgiveness, loss, new beginnings, agency, and powerlessness. Threads build bridges, celebrate differences, and connect us. We are only as alone as the next knot - accidental or purposeful. We are meant to be tangled in this dance of our lives. Threads is a tribute to the grit and resilience of this moment - a willingness to do the work and to inquire, to sit in uncertainty and ponder what is on the other side. It starts as a thread of an idea and, from that thread, a fabric of meaning emerges. One thread at a time. By listening, pulling, teasing, tearing at each piece. Showing up in it. We can only see when our minds, eyes, and hearts are open. We can only see when we are ready. When we aren't looking. In this pause, we step forward and balance on a thread to discover divine beauty. We measure risk, we acknowledge what is gone, we let go."

Featuring Scenic and Costume design by Anna-Alisa Belous, Lighting Design by Dan Ozminkowski, and Sound Design by Joel Wilhelmi.

Dancers: Torrey Harada, Manon Hallay, Misaki Hayama, David Hochberg, Isaac Kerr, Minseon Kim, Ashley McQueen, Michael Miles, Oscar Antonio Rodriguez, Lauren Russo, and John Trunfio.

The American Dance Guild has served the dance field in many capacities for more than 60 years, including sponsoring conferences, festivals & publications. The yearly Performance Festival continues the Guild tradition of bringing together artists from across the nation and internationally for performances and master classes. ADG offers performance opportunities that range from gala productions to bare-bones choreography showcases. In June 2014, ADG participated in Jacob's Pillow's Inside/Out program. In addition, ADG provides scholarly resources through its New Dance Group Gala Video and its publications such as Branching Out: Oral Histories of Six National Dance Organizations and Dance Scope.

The American Dance Guild offers an annual summer scholarship to Jacob's Pillow in Becket, MA. ADG supports one-half of the tuition for a gifted young dancer to attend this renowned summer festival.

Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre creates dynamic dance theatre that activates emotional expression in a rich and abstract collage. Through an interplay between athletic and articulate motion, we present theatrical and immediate works that engage audiences from start to finish and beckon a response of thought, feeling, and soul.

Founded in 2000, Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre has presented over 95 productions at NYC venues including Baruch Performing Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, New York Live Arts, Dance Theatre Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, Danspace Project, Ailey Citigroup Theater, The Kumble Theater, John Jay College, and Mark Morris Dance Center. The company has been presented twice at Jacob's Pillow, at Westfest, DUMBO Dance Festival, Dixon Place, Dance Teacher Summit, COOL NY, Movement Research, Wassaic Project, and Pushing Progress Series. Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre has toured to festivals, presented open rehearsals, interactive performance events and workshops, and offers arts education programming through Notes in Motion to students and families in the NYC public schools. For more information, visit www.amandaselwyndance.org.

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