Dance-mopolitan Series Presents Megan Williams Dance Projects

The 2018 Dance-mopolitan Artist Series, produced by DANCE NOW, presents Megan Williams Dance Projects in ONE WOMAN SHOW, a post-postmodern dance theater follies for the small stage. Megan Williams finds the roots of her aesthetic DNA in the proto-feminist female archetypes of 30s, 40s and 50s Hollywood and uses them as a lens to view the experience of the 21st-century woman-of a-certain-age. Part memoir, part spectacle, ONE WOMAN SHOW aims to grab the moment and hold on tight. The work features celebrated dance artists Esmé Boyce, Robert Mark Burke, Derek Crescenti, Dylan Crossman, John Eirich, Kristen Foote, Chelsea Hecht, Courtney Lopes, and Megan Williams. With costume design by Barbara Erin Delo and sound design by Sam Crawford.

Performances are Thursday-Saturday, April 26-28, at 7pm, at Joe's Pub at The Public, 425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place), in Manhattan. Tickets are $20 in advance/$25 at the door. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 212-967-7555, online at joespub.com, and in person at The Public Theater box office from 2pm to 6pm.

About the Artist

Megan Williams is an independent dance artist, choreographer, teacher, and repetiteur, with a BFA from the Juilliard School and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her choreography has been produced by 10 Hairy Legs, DANCE NOW at Joe's Pub and Dance Theater Workshop, the Rivertown Artists Workshop, Barnspace, MIXT Co., Purchase College, Marymount Manhattan College, Connecticut College, and Interlochen Arts Academy. In addition to performing her own work, she can be seen in two installments of Richard Daniels' Dances for an iPhone and is currently dancing with choreographer Rebecca Stenn and in Netta Yurashalmy's Paramodernities project. She has performed and toured internationally with the companies of Laura Glenn, Ohad Naharin, and Mark Haim, among many others. In 1988, she joined the Mark Morris Dance Group, dancing for 10 years, touring worldwide, teaching, and appearing in several films, including Falling Down Stairs (with YoYo Ma), The Hidden Soul of Harmony, The Hard Nut, and Dido and Aeneas. Williams continues her affiliation with Morris as a guest performer, guest rehearsal director, and guest teacher at the Mark Morris Dance Center. Williams has been Morris' assistant in a variety of settings including ballet, Broadway, and television. From 2000 to 2013 she was on the modern dance faculty of the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College. She was featured in Dance Teacher Magazine in 2010 and 2014. She teaches Dance for Parkinson's Disease in Rye, NY, and is on the renowned Dance for PD flagship teaching team. Williams teaches an ongoing professional-level ballet class at the Gibney Dance Center in New York City and was recently an adjunct professor at Connecticut College. She has served on the board of directors of the Martha Hill Dance Fund since 2011 and is proud to have a producing credit on the documentary film Martha Hill: Making Dance Matter.

About DANCE NOW

DANCE NOW is produced by directors Robin Staff, Sydney Skybetter, and Tamara Greenfield.

For 23 years DANCE NOW has bent the rules to offer all-inclusive destination events that reveal the bustling energy and innovation of New York City dance makers. Created in 1995 as a program of the Downtown Arts Festival, DANCE NOW launched in 1996 as an independent festival. Without a performance venue, DANCE NOW learned to embrace limitation as a powerful source for creativity. Seeking creative ways to bring dance and community together, DANCE NOW developed partnerships to connect new audiences to innovative dance makers. Presenting dance in venues both traditional and not, DANCE NOW designed all-inclusive destination events for drained swimming pools, firehouses, galleries, and Joe's Pub, where, in 2003 DANCE NOW introduced the Dance-mopolitan series. In 2005, DANCE NOW furthered its "less is more" mantra, creating a challenge initiative to encourage work marked by brevity, clarity, and effect. This inspired the commissioning of full-evening works specifically for the Pub, and the merging of all DANCE NOW programs to the Pub in 2011.

DANCE NOW's programming at Joe's Pub has defied the standard and encouraged artists to think outside the box and utilize the unique space, creating an inspiring new platform for dance. In the last decade, DANCE NOW has produced numerous critically acclaimed works at Joe's Pub including Doug Elkins' Fräulein Maria, David Parker's ShowDown, Misters and Sisters, and Head Over Heels, Nicholas Leichter's The Whiz and 20/20, Kyle Abraham's Heartbreaks and Homies, Nicole Wolcott and Vanessa Walters' Alley of the Dolls, Camille Brown's One Second Past the Future, Monica Bill Barnes' Snow Globes, Takehiro Ueyama's Somewhere Familiar Melodies, Claire Porter's Sent-ence, Mark Dendy's NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place, Ellis Wood's The Juggler of Our Ladies and, most recently, Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott's Places Please!

From a small festival series to four distinct programs, from NYC to Pennsylvania, DANCE NOW presents young innovators and emerging and maturing artists side by side, building relationships at varying stages of development and providing comprehensive assistance to advance creativity and new career paths. DANCE NOW Joe's Pub challenges artists to investigate new directions. DANCE NOW Raw funnels new artists into its programs. DANCE NOW Silo and DANCE NOW SteelStacks provide paid teaching, residencies, and commissioning and performing opportunities through partnerships with DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, Lehigh Valley Charter School, and ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA.

DANCE NOW is supported, in part, with funds from the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and The National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information, visit dancenownyc.org and silokirklandfarm.dancenownyc.org.