Camerata New York to Kick Off Inaugural HOLIDAY DANCE FESTIVAL

The Camerata New York orchestra, under the direction of conductor Richard Owen, will kick off its annual dance festival this January 5 at New York's Theatre at St. Jean's at 76th Street off Lexington Avenue.

The program, which represents a collaboration among some of the preeminent professional and pre-professional dancers and choreographers in the world, will feature both modern and classical ballet.

"The Camerata New York dance festival is a showcase for visionary choreographers and gifted dancers, both established and up and coming," said Richard Owen, conductor and music director of Camerata NY. "Our orchestra is privileged to provide musical accompaniment for these inspired artists."

The program headliner is Christopher Caines' original ballet, Glimpsed Through Birches. The work is set to two sublime but seldom-heard scores for strings by Edvard Grieg: His Two Nordic Melodies, op. 63 (1895); and Two Elegiac Melodies, op. 34 (1880).

Caines Dance Company dancers Elisa Toro Franky, Mayu Oguri, Jacob Taylor and Michelle Vargo will join choreographer Christopher Caines on stage. Two-time Tony Award nominee costume designer Gregory Gale created the costumes.

"I am thrilled to take part in this exciting new venture, and to have the chance to collaborate with Richard Owen and his exceptional musicians, said Caines. "I am likewise thrilled to create a ballet for the first time to the music of Grieg, which I have long loved for the vast wintry landscapes it evokes, its poignancy, and its vivid energy."

The program will also feature a work by choreographer Pedro Ruiz's - Aria, set to Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileira n. 5, and danced by Morgan Hasson and Glauco Araujo, as well as, choreographer Leyland Simmons' version of Guilty Pleasures, set to composer Karl Jenkins' Palladio: III. Presto, with six members of his dance company - Randy Castillo, Yun Tzu Chang, Maxfield Haynes, Holly Laroche, Brena Thomas and Kar Williams.

Harlem School will offer a variety of works by its resident choreographers and artistic director, Aubrey Lynch, with its young dancers in music of Bach, Chopin, Debussy and Elgar.

Performances are scheduled for Friday, January 5, 7:30 pm; Saturday, January 6, at 7:30 pm; and Sunday, January 7, at 2 pm.

Tickets cost $20 and $25 and can be purchased at EventBrite or by calling (212) 288-5082, OR EMAIL SJBRCC@YAHOO.COM

All proceeds donated to church

For information about other upcoming Camerata programs, call (845) 729-4986 or visit cameratany.org.

About Camerata New York

Camerata New York, which is resident orchestra of St. Jean Baptiste, promotes the finest young musicians. Under the baton of music director Richard Owen, Camerata has successfully performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Paul's Chapel, Merkin Hall and St. Patrick's Cathedral, among others. Critics have hailed Camerata New York's "lustrous tone-quality" and "near-definitive" performances and they have been featured in the New York Times, Newsday, Huffington Post, Opera News and Forbes. With a current release on Albany Records, Camerata New York's acclaimed recordings have been aired on three continents including on New York's WQXR (classical radio station of The New York Times), WMNR and SiriusXM. This season, Camerata NY returns to Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, and presented Amahl at St. Jean's Theater.

Conductor Richard Owen combines a career as a conductor, pianist and organist. Owen is currently music director of Camerata NY Orchestra, St. Jean Baptiste and principal conductor of Adelphi Orchestra. He was formerly on the staff of the NY Philharmonic (cover conductor) as well as the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. This season, Mr. Owen conducts Nutcracker with the Donetsk State Ballet, Scheherezade with the Adelphi Orchestra and Carmina Burana with Camerata NY. In recent seasons, Mr. Owen conducted the Little Opera Theater of New York, Rioult Dance, the Center for Contemporary Opera and Carmina Burana with the Montreal Symphony, conducting alongside Kent Nagano. Owen has conducted symphony orchestras in Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Rzeszow, Jacksonville, Monterrey, Belgrade as well as the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Europa Symphony, the Silesian Philharmonic, the Baltic Opera and the Pacific Symphony. Owen is married to a singer/cellist and they have three sons, all of whom are musical. For more information, visit, RichardOwenJr.com.

About Christopher Caines Dance

Christopher Caines founded Christopher Caines Dance in 2000, for which he has since created some 35 works. The company's seasons and projects are distinguished by an exclusive devotion to live music. Highlights of the company's repertory include Tenebrae (2005), set to music by Thomas Tallis, including his motet Spem in alium, with a 40-voice choir at New York's Danspace Project; The Farewell to Music (2007), an all-Mozart program; and Worklight, featuring Ernst Toch's complete music for speaking choir, including his famed Geographical Fugue together with the two movements that originally complemented the Fugue, which Caines edited from the composer's manuscripts-music unheard since the work's 1936 Berlin premiere. Caines' edition, together with an introductory essay, has just been published in Columbia University's journal Current Musicology, and has been performed all over the world.

About Pedro Ruiz

Pedro Ruiz is a celebrated choreographer and dancer; He was just appointed Associate Artistic Director of Ballet Contemporaneo de Camagüey Cuba. Ruiz is the recipient of The Bessie Award, the Choo-San Goh Award, The Cuban Artist's Fund, and The Joyce Foundation Award and, last year, the FBI honored him for his Public Service. In 2010, Ruiz founded The Windows Project-a groundbreaking cultural exchange program celebrating the art of dance between the U.S. and Cuba. Ruiz has been the subject of two PBS documentaries: Pas de Deux (part of the "In The Life" series), and Coming Home, a PBS documentary nominated for a NY Emmy Award. Ruiz's highly successful ballet, Club Havana was featured in Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance. And Ruiz's celebrated poetic duet, Lasting Embrace, premiered in the US in July 2016 at the Dancers Responding to AIDS Dance Festival on Fire Island and at Marymount Manhattan College. For more information, visit thewindowsproject.org.

About Harlem School of the Arts and ensemble

For 50 years, Harlem School of the Arts has stood apart from the premier arts institutions in New York City as the sole provider of quality arts education in four different disciplines: Music, Dance, Theatre and Visual Arts. The shining star of HSA Dance is the HSA Dance Ensemble, a performance group featuring students ages 8-17 from the HSA Dance College Preparatory Program and HSA Dance Academy. For more information, please visit HSAnyc.org. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, @HSAnyc and @HSADance

Works from HSA Dance faculty

Carmela Gallace is a former principal dancer with The Moiseyev Dance Company and former soloist with Riverdance-The Show; performing across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceana. Additionally, she has danced at The Radio City Music Hall in Riverdance's 10-year anniversary celebration, and at the Bolshoi Theatre in productions of La Fille Mal Gardee, Les Sylphides/Chopiniana and The Nutcracker. She has also performed as a guest with The Miami City Ballet in The Nutcracker and the 100th Anniversary Celebration of The Nutcracker with the Kirov Ballet. Her training began in St. Petersburg, FL at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts and The Academy of Ballet Arts under Suzanne Pomerantzeff, Reginald Yates and Lester Jacobsen. She was later invited to study at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow (Russia) where she graduated under the training of Galina Solovyova, Alexander Bondarenko, Marina Leonova and Sofia N. Golovkina. After returning back to America, Carmela received her BA degree in Communication at the University of Tampa while teaching dance at The Pinellas County Center for the Arts and Academy of Ballet arts. Many of her students went on to join schools, companies or shows such as; ABT, Dance Theatre of Harlem, BalletMet, Momix, Juilliard, The Lion King and Rent. She also worked for five years at The American Samoa Community College where she helped establish the first dance and musical theatre programs at the only US accredited institution of higher learning south of the equator. Carmela is a graduate of the NYU-Masters program in Dance Education/ABT Pedagogy. She is ABT certified (Primary-Level 7) in the National Training Curriculum and is currently teaching various forms of dance at the JKO School of the American Ballet Theatre, New York University/Steinhardt, City Center and other schools and institutions throughout the city.

Aubrey Lynch II "To touch, to move, to inspire, this is the true gift of dance." ~Aubrey Lynch II. Quoted many years ago, this is a quote Aubrey Lynch II lives by. From Woodhaven, Michigan, he was one of the last dancers chosen by Alvin Ailey before his death for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and then was an original cast member of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Disney's The Lion King acting as the production's associate choreographer and then associate producer. As such he mounted fourteen productions of Lion King casting actors, singers, dancers and children from over twenty countries. Mr. Lynch works with artists all over the world coaching, teaching, and leading workshops including Steps on Broadway and The Ailey School. He studied creative arts therapies with master, Emily Nash, Director of Therapeutic Arts Alliance of Manhattan and became certified as a life coach with Coaches Training Institute. He has co-designed and co-led workshops and programs for the NYC Department of Education, Theater Development Fund, and has mentored for Young Arts Week. Aubrey collaborates with Harlem Children's Zone regularly and has partnered with Jazz at Lincoln Center. Aubrey has personally coached students with professional ambitions eleven of which have gone on to play lead roles on Broadway, film and television including Caleb McLaughlin of Netflix's Stranger Things and Aubrey Joseph of ABC's Cloak and Dagger. Aubrey is Founder and Artistic Director of Aubrey Lynch Extra Essential Arts AL-EEArts born out of the belief that "The arts aren't extracurricular; they're extra-essential." Now as Director of HSA Dance at the prestigious Harlem School of the Arts, a program serving 350 plus kids ages 2-17, Aubrey is diversifying the arts providing opportunities for children and adults to attain their highest level of excellence through artistic expression and commitment.

Briana Reed (St. Petersburg, FL.) began her dance training at The Academy of Ballet Arts under the direction of Suzanne Pomerantzeff, studying ballet and Russian Character. Ms. Reed continued her studies at The Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School under the direction of Reginald Yates and spent her summers studying at The Ailey School as a scholarship student. These summers studying at The Ailey School broadened her view of dance as a vehicle for expression far beyond making beautiful shapes. Ms. Reed received scholarship to study at The Juilliard School and upon graduation she was accepted into Ailey II. A year later Ms. Reed auditioned and was accepted into The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater where she performed as a Principal Dancer. Ms. Reed was honored to perform at The White House in tribute of Judith Jamison and to be a speaker for First Lady Michelle Obama's mentees of the White House Leadership and Mentoring Initiative at the Kennedy Center. Ms. Reed is a recipient of the Key to the City of St. Petersburg, FL. Ms. Reed is an ABT Affiliate Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 3 of the ABT National Training Curriculum and has successfully presented students for examinations. Ms. Reed is a licensed Gyrotonic instructor and Yoga enthusiast.

About Leyland Simmons and Company

Leyland Simmons and Company was established with the mission of presenting avant-garde and innovative work reflecting the human experience. Founded by choreographer Leyland Simmons the company has performed at such notable venues like the Frederick Lowe Theater, the 2017 E-moves 18 showcase and the 2017 White Wave Festival. Leyland is very excited for this journey and hopes to inspire people everywhere.