Chen Dance Center presents newsteps, its semi-annual emerging choreographer's series. Since 1994, its theater has supported and presented artists developing innovative and risk-taking works through space and production grants. The series has received acclaim in The New York Times, Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, Downtown Express and The Villager.
These choreographers were selected through an open audition by a panel of dance leaders including H.T. Chen, Walter Rutledge, and Lance Westergard: Jenny Boissiere, Keith Comley, Nikki Theroux, Shannon Yu, Esme Boyce, and Alexandra Lockhart, Chelsea Hecht & Emily McDaniel.
Esme Boyce's "Portrait in Charcoal" explores the idea of negative and positive space, volume, emptiness, lightness, and darkness. "This work seeks to externalize abstract imagery that wanders in my subconscious, emerging only as my mind begins to drift to sleep."In her solo, Shannon Yu is inspired by the rhythm of the subway of New York, and the riders' both intentional and unintentional behavior.
A group work by Jenny Boissiere uses bees and their hive behavior as a metaphor for human interaction, this piece examines isolation, intimacy and the failure of intimacy, confrontation, finding home and what it means to be of service to a community that elects and gives power to one.
Nikki Theroux's solo piece is an exploration of innate physicality, of awakening the body's capacity.
A trio for Emily McDaniel, Chelsea Hech and Alexandra Lockhart delves into themes of instinct, habit and familiarity.
"Baggage: What is it we are really carrying?" by Keith Comley is a mime/movement piece that personifies these feelings of unrest through movement with a literal suitcase. The piece will explore how movement is effected by the added baggage and the difference between feeling the bags literal weight versus how movement changes when one ignores the burden of past trauma.
Videos