Gotham Arts Exchange Presents A Shared Evening of Dance Works 1/7-8

Gotham Arts Exchange presents a shared evening of dance works by The DASH Ensemble, Helios Dance Theater, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and CorbinDances on Friday, January 7 and Saturday, January 8 at 7:30pm at Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, NYC. Tickets are $15 and are available at www.dtw.org or by phone at (212) 924-0077.

The DASH Ensemble will present excerpts from two pieces. The duet Sundowning (2009) takes audiences through a daring display of deep connections between its characters and the connections they make within themselves through both real and imaginative circumstances. The term "sundowning" refers to a state of confusion at the end of the day and into the night, often leading to a state of increased agitation, activity and even borderline demented behavior. Just Go on with Your Life... is a piece for five dancers created through a series of in-depth interviews of graphic and visual artists about their artistic processes. Mixed with short but memorable musical interludes, the piece reminds audiences what it is like to create, get inspired, and grow from it.

Helios Dance Theater will present excerpts from Beautiful Monsters (2010). Choreographed by Helios founder and artistic director Laura Gorenstein Miller, the work explores the boundaries between the physical body and the imagination in a romance that defies human limitations and examines the deep desires of childhood, romance and magic through movement, music and imagery. Beautiful Monsters' haunting dance dreamscape reveals the furious abandon of a body transformed by magic, bringing the vampire myth to spectacular display live onstage. Principal dancer for the piece is Melissa Sandvig, who gained national dance acclaim in 2009 as the first ballerina to compete on Fox's hit television show "So You Think You Can Dance." Beautiful Monsters features a hand-drawn animated film from animator/director Chris Miller (Shrek the Third) and an original score by composer Paul Canteleon (The Diving Bell and The Butterfly), with vocals from Angela McCluskey (Wild Colonials, Telepopmusik), and David Majzlin. Costume Design is by red-carpet fashion designer Rami Kashou and Scenic Design is by internationally celebrated Los Angeles painter Sharon Ellis.

Camille A. Brown will present excerpts from four dances. City of Rain (2010) features music by Jonathan Melville Pratt. The Evolution of a Secured Feminine, performed by Ms. Brown, is set to music by Nancy Wilson. Ms. Brown also performs Been There, Done That (2010), a duet with Juel D. Lane (formerly of Ronald K. Brown/Evidence). The Groove to Nobody's Business (2007) imagines the meeting of strangers on a subway, revealing glimpses of humanity in pedestrian movements and ordinary interactions.

CorbinDances will present an excerpt from Shady, a celebration of humanity and sexuality that will receive its World Premiere at The Joyce Theater in June 2011. The work is an evening length suite of dances in three acts exploring the impact and affect of the seven states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, glorified state of cosmic consciousness, unified state of cosmic consciousness. The dances are made from multi-layered systems of improvisation, based on a single phrase of movement. The music selections vary from Mahler to Yaz to Brooklyn Indie rock band, Grizzly Bear. Beats, rhythm sections and live percussion weave the eclectic mix. Dancers: Meggie Sweeney, Gregory Dolbashian, Sharon Milanese, Morgan Fogerty, Traci Klein, Orlando Martinez, Christopher Ralph, Ashleigh Gertler.

This shared programming at Dance Theater Workshop is presented by Gotham Arts Exchange, and has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Gotham Arts Exchange's presentation of this shared programming at Dance Theater Workshop is made possible through Dance Theater Workshop's Guest Artist Series. The Guest Artist Series is a comprehensive rental program benefiting a diverse group of dance and theater companies and producing organizations interested in self-producing their work at Dance Theater Workshop.

For more information, visit www.gothamarts.org

Camille A. Brown & Dancers, Helios Dance Theater, The DASH Ensemble, and CorbinDances
Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, NYC
January 7 - 8, 2011 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $15
www.dancetheaterworkshop.org

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Camille A. Brown attended LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, The Ailey School and received her BFA from The University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She was a member of Ronald K. Brown's Evidence (2001-2007). As a guest artist she has performed with Dianne McIntyre, Rennie Harris, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dallas Black Dance Theater, The Princess Grace Awards Gala, and Broadway Cares with the cast of The Color Purple. Camille has been honored with a 2006 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography, The Presidential Scholar of the Arts Award in Dance, and The Project Next Generation Award. Camille has received commissions from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street II, Urban Bush Women, Ailey II, Ballet Memphis, Dallas Black Dance Theater and Philadanco. Her work has been showcased at Sadler's Wells, The Apollo, The Joyce Theater, Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Madison Square Garden, Joyce SoHo, Central Park Summerstage, Fall for Dance Festival, and Aaron Davis Hall. www.camilleabrown.org

CorbinDanceshad its first New York season at Joyce SoHo in June 2006, where the Company premiered the first half of "Bathing Jeff," a full evening work. Since then, CorbinDances has been invited to dance in Austin, TX at the One World Theatre, Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza as part of Dancing in the Streets summer festival, Dancing at the Crossroads in Times Square, La Mama Moves "New Virtuosity" program ("Reach" World Premiere), the Fire Island Dance Festival 13, Jacob's Pillow's Inside/Out, and the Laguna Dance Festival. In May 2008 CorbinDances returned to Joyce SoHo for an unprecedented and acclaimed two-week New York season. The company was honored to return to Inside/Out at Jacob's Pillow in 2008 as well as performances at the Chautauqua Institute, Chautauqua, NY and at Dance Place in Washington D.C. The company is grateful to have received awards from the Greenwall Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Posner-Wallace Foundation and to support our NY seasons, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. CorbinDances was part of the 2009 SummerDanz series at Dance Theatre Workshop, in NY and will make their debut at The Joyce Theatre June 8, 10 and 12 as part of the Gotham Dance Festival in 2011. www.corbindances.org

The DASH Ensemble/Gregory Dolbashian is a diverse company of dance artists with a shared commitment to expanding physical and theatrical boundaries of contemporary dance within a group guided and founded by artistic director Gregory Dolbashian. Gregory received his dance training at the Alvin Ailey School on a fellowship scholarship and then graduated cum laude from SUNY Purchase. Since then he has gone on to dance and choreograph with a variety of artists, performing with Patrick Corbin, Nelly van Bommel, Sylvain Emard, and The Chicago Ballet. He was resident choreographer for both Chicago Ballet's spring season in 2008 and CorbinDances in 2007. He was selected as one of four emerging choreographers in the Springboard Montreal intensive run by Juilliard's Alexandra Wells, where he created and premiered his first international work. Gregory's works have been performed at Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out Dance Festival (MA), Dance Place (DC), Athenaeum Theatre (Chicago), and shows in New York at Joyce SoHo, Ailey Citicorp Theatre, Reverb Festival, Dance Sampler at Symphony Space, NYU/Skirball Center, DTW, The Gershwin Hotel, SummerDanz, Dance Gotham, and NuDances at the Riverside Church Theater. He was recently accepted into The Bessie Schoenberg Residency at The Yard for emerging choreographers. The DASH Ensemble will next be seen at The Joyce Theater, June 4 and 5, 2011 as part of Gotham Dance Festival. www.thedashensemble.org

Helios Dance Theater was founded by Laura Gorenstein Miller in 1996. Though driven by Ms. Miller's unique vision, the company makes extensive use of discussion and improvisation during rehearsal to explore in depth the dance at hand. Much of Ms. Miller's choreography emphasizes nuance and emotional interpretation, so that a common dance step comments upon itself: a dancer in the midst of a fall softens and smiles as though she were floating. Formal phrases of ballet and modern movement are pulled apart by flings and falls as the dancers struggle to resist gravity. To express this "layered" physicality, Helios Dance Theater requires not only skilled movers, but also those with the intelligence and courage necessary to experiment beyond the territory of formal dance training. Helios Dance Theater collaborates regularly with young artists and designers in order to further explore an idea and enrich the audience experience. The work of Helios has premiered in venues such as UCLA's Royce Hall and Schoenberg Hall, REDCAT, the Getty Center, California Institute of the Arts, USC's Bovard auditorium, The Joyce Theater and Lincoln Center in New York, The Royal Opera House in London, the Mid Ocean Amphitheatre in Southampton, Bermuda and Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica in San Jose, Costa Rica. Their most recent work, "The Lotus Eaters", based on a book of Homer's Odyssey, previewed to critical acclaim at the Cerritos Center for the Arts, and premiered at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica in April 2009, and was performed as a lec/dem at the Ford Amphitheater. The LA Times said: "Gorenstein Miller returns to the stage with a dreamlike journey of beauty and exoticism", Dance Magazine: "A cornucopia of gorgeous dancing, divine choreography, dreamy music and sexy costumes. The Lotus Eaters is a 10-part, 75 min journey into sensual abandon and fierce physicality." www.heliosdancetheater.org