DNA PRESENTS Season Spotlights 11 World Premieres

Dance New Amsterdam (DNA), NYC's most progressive dance education center, creative laboratory and performance space, announces its upcoming 2011-2012 performance season. DNA PRESENTS takes on the vital charge of presenting compelling dance artists from NYC and around the world. The upcoming season celebrates DNA's deep-rooted ties to the dance community with prior presented artists, professional teaching artists and long-term International Artists. The season also highlights the organization's commitment to support and launch artists from studio to stage through learning opportunities, residencies and workshops and through local, national and international creative interaction and exchanges.

The season kicks-off with a lush dance, music and poetic vocal explosion in Monstah Black and Major Scurlock's highly anticipated operetta, Black Moon (La Lune Noir) Act I, which fuses a score of Afrobeat and house music for an eclectic African-American theatrical adventure. Isabel Gotzkowsky, a passionate and fluid New York modern choreographer, presents two inventive world premieres in her four-night run. Compagnie Julie Bour takes to the DNA stage for a third time in October to finalize her explorations in the final chapter of Why Now? In an ongoing collaborative program, DNA and CAVE co-present a unique new work created by the celebrated butoh master Akira Kasai.

In January 2012, Dan Safer's Witness Relocation rings in the New Year with two extraordinary weekends of dance theater in a revived version of I'm Going To Make A Small Incision Behind Your Ear To Check And See If You're Actually Human REDUX. Audiences will also see the highly anticipated Always Known, Never Met, the culmination of a multi-year, cross-continental residency exchange with Giulia Mureddu from The Netherlands.

The DNA PRESENTS 2011-2012 Season calendar:

September 15-16 Monstah Black and Major Scurlock
September 29-October 2 Isabel Gotzkowsky & Friends
October 6-7 RAW Material
October 13-16 SPLICE: Joanna Kotze and Benn Rasmussen
October 20-23 Compagnie Julie Bour
November 18 CAVE: NY Butoh-Kan Masters*
December 2-3 LATE NITE: Jack Ferver
December 10 LATE NITE: GRRRlesque
January 5-6, 12-15 Witness Relocation
January 7-9 APAP Conference Showcases
January 23-29 Giulia Mureddu
February 4 LATE NITE
February 9-11 RAW Directions
February 12 FRAMEWORKS

*DNA CO-PRESENTS

In addition to a curated presenting season, DNA opens its stage, studios and galleries to provide opportunities for choreographic discovery as well as in-depth discussion and performance experiences for students and emerging artists. Works In Progress (WIP), the Salon Series, Performance Project, Choreolab and the New York Summer Dance Intensive culminate with exhilarating performances that showcase choreographic explorations, new works, discovery and demonstrations of technical expertise. These performances take place monthly as follows:

September 10 WIP
October 22 WIP
October 29 Salon Series and Open House
November 4-6 Performance Project
November 26 WIP
December 6 Salon Series
December 10 WIP
January 27 Choreolab
January 28 WIP
February 21 Salon Series
February 25 WIP
June 1 Choreolab
June 1-3 Performance Project
June 12 Salon Series
July 21-22 New York Summer Dance Intensive

TICKETS and PERFORMANCE TIMES
Season performances take place Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m., unless otherwise noted. Tickets may be purchased in person at DNA's box office during regular business hours or by visiting www.dnadance.org. Ticket prices for performances are $17 for general audiences, $12 for DNA members and $14 for students/seniors unless stated otherwise. $12 advance sales are also available. To arrange discounted tickets for groups of 6 or more, contact mingle@dnadance.org. All sales are final.

BLACK MOON (La Lune Noir) Act 1 - World Premiere
Choreographer: Monstah Black
Music: Major Andres Scurlock
Video: Holly Daggers
September 15-16, 8:00 p.m.

Black Moon is an interdisciplinary/multimedia cabaret operetta based on Arnold Schoenberg's melodrama "Pierrot Lunaire," rewritten from an African-American male perspective and musically re-imagined through popular genres such as Afrobeat and house. The work is an electric experience both visually and sonically.

B-SIDES - World Premiere; BOUND - Restaging; I WANT...THERFORE I AM - World Premiere
Choreographer: Isabel Gotzkowsky, in collaboration with the dancers
Music: Various Artists
September 29-October 1, 8:00 p.m.; October 2, 7:00 p.m.

B-Sides, a piece about dreams and dreaming, was developed in collaboration with Composer Brian Aumueller and visual artist Lindsey Boise.

Bound is a pure exploration of the costuming for the piece; a work in four parts that features a male/female duet, female quartet, male trio and solos.

I want...therefore I am is an exploration into the beauty of the absurd...life larger than life.

RAW MATERIAL
Choreographers: Lauren Grace Bakst, Lauren Hale Biniaris, Marjani Forté, Gabrielle Martin, Aaron McGloin and Jumatatu Poe
Artistic Advisor: Gus Solomons jr
October 6-7, 8:00 p.m.

DNA's RAW Material series has been supporting new and emerging artists since 2000. The program supports the work of up to six budding choreographers who have shown promise to affect the field of dance. Chosen through a panel process each year, DNA provides them an opportunity to be mentored by a seasoned choreographer over a six-month workshop-intensive period.

The 2011 RAW Material features world premieres Lessons on Falling (asleep) by Biniaris, :To Co-Exist by Forté, Raze by Martin, I Shatter by McGloin and an as of yet untitled work by Poe. Bakst will present the New York premiere of Trespass Trespass.

SPLICE: DUETspaceQUARTET
BETWEEN YOU AND ME - World Premiere; BLACK GROUND - World Premiere
Choreographer: Joanna Kotze (Between You and Me)
Music: Mike Koenig
Choreographer: Benn Rasmussen (Black Ground)
Music: TBD
October 13-15, 8:00 p.m.; October 16, 3:00 p.m.

DNA's SPLICE series brings together unique artists that share a common thread, however subtle, into a performance setting that offers insightful perspectives into the breadth of contemporary dance.

Two dancers, a contained space, a stationary audience-Kotze's Between You and Me asks questions about what it means to be alone versus what it means to be together.

With the gentle caress of a woman's clavicle or the crash of a mysterious black book hurling towards the floor, Rasmussen's Black Ground unravels through a series of tense events, revealing simmering layers of emotions residing underneath the performer's taught actions.

WHY NOW? - World Premiere
Choreographer: Julie Bour
Music: DeVotchKa, Kyle Olson
October 20-22, 8:00 p.m.; October 23, 3:00 p.m.

Why Now? is a piece about optimism and strength in the face of change. It explores the principles of evolution and its ability to induce fear as well as passion.

DNA CO-PRESENTS CAVE: NY BUTOH-KAN MASTERS
Choreographer: Akira Kasai
November 18, 8:00 p.m.

Akira Kasai will present a new piece, which will be developed during his residency at CAVE during the fall of 2011. Kasai, originally from Tokyo, Japan, is now 68 years old and has been a pioneer of the butoh art form since the1960s. Trained in modern dance, pantomime and classical ballet, Kasai brings fierce horizontal and vertical movements, as well as humorous and clown-like elements to his butoh style.

LATE NITE: With or Without Me; GRRRlesque
DNA's LATE NITE series is a triannual event that gives a voIce To artists working within the mediums of performance art, burlesque and experimental theater. Presented in a late evening, the theater's wilder-than-average transformation is contemporary cabaret at its finest.

With or Without Me
Curator: Jack Ferver
Host: Joshua Lubin-Levy as Jack Ferver
December 2-3, 9:30 p.m.

Jack Ferver assembles a coterie of queer choreographers and performance artists for wild evenings of new works at DNA. Host Joshua Lubin-Levy transforms into dramaturg Jack Ferver vis-à-vis note cards, providing a hilarious and prescient layer to the event. The evening illustrates how choreographers and artists are often spread so thin with their own work that perhaps the best solution is to start making clones of themselves.

GRRRlesque
Host and curator: Victoria Libertore
December 10, 9:30 p.m.

GRRRlesque is an artful striptease done with audacity, celebration, roars, purrs, sausage wieners, old-Hollywood glamour and no-business-like-showbiz entertainment. Victoria Libertore returns for the third year in a row to curate and host the evening as her loveable, faux Liza Minnelli impresario. GRRRlesque dives into the realms of performance art, dance and music. Lineup includes Bougie, dapperQ, Jazabel Jade, Stella Wolf, Tallulah Luv, Tender Loin and world-famous drummer Allison Miller.

I'M GOING TO MAKE A SMALL INCISION BEHIND YOUR EAR TO CHECK AND SEE IF YOU'RE ACTUALLY HUMAN REDUX - Revival
Director and Choreographer: Dan Safer of Witness Relocation
Music: Various Artists
January 5-6, 2012 8:00 p.m.; January 12-14, 2012 8:00 p.m.

I'm Going To Make A Small Incision Behind Your Ear To Check And See If You're Actually Human REDUX is comprised of 30 segments, presented in a random order every night based on audience participation. The mayhem and panic-filled plot includes high-energy dance numbers, scenes from the TV show "V," blindfolded wrestling and a lizard costume.

ALWAYS KNOWN, NEVER MET - US Premiere
Choreographer: Giulia Mureddu
Music: Giulia Mureddu
January 26-28, 8:00 p.m.; January 29, 3:00 p.m.

Inspired by the book "Lettere a un bambino mai nato (Letter to a child never born)," Always Known, Never Met departs from the dialogue between a mother and her unborn child and is a search for the assertion of the individual.

RAW Directions
Choreographers: TBD
Artistic Consultant: Lawrence Goldhuber
February 9-11, 8:00 p.m.

DNA's RAW Directions program supports the work of five emerging and mid-career choreographers with more than ten years of professional choreographic experience. These artists work with an artistic consultant to experiment with new ways of crafting their work and to learn from and share with their peers in a supportive workshop environment.

The 2012 RAW Directions artists are selected in September 2011.

FRAMEWORKS
Producer: Michael Bodel
February 12, 3:00 p.m.

The series is founded and produced by Michael Bodel, out of an interest in challenging the field, cultivating dialogue between disciplines and providing a reliably high quality platform for the presentation of new dance films from around the world and right here in New York.