Claire Porter's Dance Piece Plays 92nd St. Y, 2/21-2/25

The second week of the 13th annual 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival will feature Claire Porter, from February 21st through 25th at the Ailey Citigroup Theater at the Joan Weill Center for Dance (405 West 55th Street at 9th Avenue).

"Portables" are Porter's "trademark danced-and-spoken character sketches and reflections on the frustrations of modern life," state press materials.  "Porter's work is as much about language and the techniques of dramatic theater as it is about dance. She is interested in the interaction of words and movement, and her pieces are not so much a pairing as a collaboration of the two; sometimes she choreographs to the rhythms of spoken language and other times she finds words that amplify the gesture she's already created."

"Her program for the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival is entitled 'Words Away From Home,' and the seven dances in it form an arc – setting out into the world, the uncertainty of the journey, the difficulty of not fitting into new environments, trying to cope, and then coming home again."  The program will feature music by Richard Lloyd, lighting and set design by Julie Dobo and costumes by Porter.

Porter will open the evening with her solo "Green Dress Circle" (1989). The program will also feature "Couple Walking," "Connecting Flights," "Lost in the Modern," "Interview," "Too Much on My Plate," and "Homestretch."

The show will also feature Jessica Nicoll, Barry Oreck, Irving Burton, Susan Thomasson, Nick Kepley and Trey Gillen.

Porter created her first "Portables" and began adding spoken text when she created "The Lecture" (1980), about a college professor's performance in a classroom. She has performed in Germany, Holland, England and Korea and, in New York, at the Joyce Theater, Town Hall, DTW, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Bottom Line, the New York Horticultural Society and at the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport. She has won several NEA and New Jersey Choreography Fellowships and received commissions from DTW's First Light Project, Art Matters, University Dance Companies and a Domino's Pizza Company. She also works as a teacher and choreographer.

The performance schedule is: Wednesday, February 21; Thursday, February 22, and Saturday, February 24 — 8 pm Sunday, February 25 — 2 pm and 7 pm.

Tickets at $20 ($10 for students/seniors, $16 for groups of 10+); they can be purchased at www.92Y.org/HarknessFestival or 212.415.5500.