Catherine Tharin Dance Performs a Series of Solos, Duets and Film in November

On November 3 and 4, choreographer Catherine Tharin will premiere a new work alongside three recent dances and two films. Performances will take place at 7:30pm at the Douglas Dunn Studio, 541 Broadway, Third floor, in Manhattan. Tickets are $25 (general), $15 (artists, seniors, and attendees under 30), and are available HERE. A Q&A with the artists moderated by Douglas Dunn will be held on November 3, following the performance.

Tharin explores the intimacy and emotional content of relationships, and the heightened beauty of the natural environment. Her movement vocabulary is a sensuous centering of the pelvis and spine, tasseling of the arms and legs, tossing the body in patterns of undercurves and overcurves and fleet changes of direction.

The premiere, currently untitled, with an original score by choreographer and sound designer Jon Kinzel, features dancers Amelia Attleberry and Hannah Kearney costumed by fashion designer Colleen Howland. The dance explores quick rhythms, close partnering, and floor work that imparts a sense of immediacy.

The solo When you open this letter, created in 2021, will be danced by a longtime friend of Tharin, choreographer, dancer, and collaborator David Parker. Set to music by J.S. Bach (Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, Prelude), Parker brings his distinctive performative clarity and emotional depth to the reductive phrase work.

Of You From Here (2020), a duet loosely based on the poetry of Karen Enns, is inspired by the delicacy of a bird taking flight and the poignancy of time fleeting. It is danced by Amelia Attleberry and Dylan Baker to Enns’s text that is both spoken live by the dancers and recorded by the originators of the dance, Esmé Julien Boyce and Jenny Levy. The original music composed by Sam Crawford weaves text and melody; the shimmering silver dresses are designed by painter Sue Julien. 

Created in Central Park during the pandemic, Animal Rights explores ideas of predator and prey, of falling and recuperating, and attentive, watchful silences. Danced by Amelia Attleberry, who embodies an exquisite feral quality, the work features music by Sam Crawford and costume design by Colleen Howland.

Esmé Julien Boyce, a longtime dancer with Catherine Tharin Dance, will perform a new solo she is creating during her current residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center.

The program also includes The Bells of St. Genevieve, a film by Liz Schneider-Cohen shot in an open Spanish Harlem warehouse elevator and on a New York City roof in the snow. Choreography is by Tharin and features the lush movement of dancer Sarah Bauer and music, “The Bells of St. Genevieve,” by the Baroque composer Marin Marais.

Lora Robertson’s film A Natural History, concept and choreography by Tharin, moves between frozen scenes of winter and the watery lassitude of summer by situating the dancers—Esmé Julien Boyce, Susan Rainey, and Racy Brand—in the mirrored River Club of New York ballroom with hand-painted tropical scenes from the 1920s, to the brilliant blue water of the River Club pool, to Hudson Valley meadows, a waterfall, and a fast-moving stream that carries the sky-facing dancers.