LaTasha Barnes Presents: The Jazz Continuum at the Joyce Next Month

The Joyce Theater Foundation celebrates the music and dances from across the Black diaspora with LaTasha Barnes Presents: The Jazz Continuum. This intergenerational and intercommunal arts experience, marking Ms. Barnes's choreographic Joyce debut, will play The Joyce Theater from October 11-16. Tickets, ranging in price from $10-$55, can be purchased at www.Joyce.org, or by calling JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street. For more information and to read about The Joyce Theater's detailed health and safety protocols, including required face-coverings and proof of vaccination policies, please visit www.Joyce.org.

LaTasha Barnes Presents: The Jazz Continuum centers the prolific artistry of Jazz music and dance as a cornerstone of Black American culture and community. Featuring a powerhouse cast of Black dancers and musicians - a company of artists affectionately titled "Explorers" in this work - who span generations and disciplines. With Musical Direction by Charles Turner, this "offering to the continuum" celebrates the sacred power of the Black experience inherent to each artist and the creative prowess of their collaborative negotiation through rhythm, space, and movement. With deeply evocative, and improvographical direction, the cast, as well as the audience, are guided to and through Jazz, and its progenies showcasing the mind-bending musicality, spectacular athleticism, and boundless joy, that tethers each form to all others. The Jazz Continuum conjures the spirits of Black dance elders, and transports audiences from Harlem to Cuba, from New Orleans to Brazil, and beyond in its ever-evolving celebration of being, dance, and music.

LaTasha Barnes is a 2021 Bessie Outstanding Performer Award winning and critically-acclaimed dance artist, choreographer, educator, and tradition-bearer of Black American Social Dance from Richmond, VA. Her expansive artistic, competitive, and performative skills have made her a frequent collaborator to Dorrance Dance, Singapore-based Timbre Arts Group, Ephrat Asherie Dance, and many more. Barnes has served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for Ladies of Hip-Hop Festival, Vice President of Marketing & Outreach for the International Lindy Hop Championship, co-director of HellaBlackLindyHop, board member of the Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, and as a contributing member to the NEFER Global Movement Collective. Expanding the scope of impact for the communities she serves, Barnes completed her self-designed Masters in Ethnochoreology, Black Studies and Performance Studies, a continuation of her perpetual work to bridge the gap between communities of practice and academic cultural dance research, performance, preservation, and pedagogy. In concert with these efforts, she is part of the brain trust that developed the groundbreaking stage production Swing Out. Barnes is also a contributing author to the forthcoming text Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century. Across all her efforts, Barnes' eternal purpose is to inspire fellow artists and arts enthusiasts to champion artivism through cultivating an authentic sense of self and intention in their creative expressions and daily lives.

The Joyce Theater Foundation ("The Joyce," Executive Director, Linda Shelton), a non-profit organization, has proudly served the dance community for almost four decades. Under the direction of founders Cora Cahan and Eliot Feld, Ballet Tech Foundation acquired and renovated the Elgin Theater in Chelsea. Opening as The Joyce Theater in 1982, it was named in honor of Joyce Mertz, beloved daughter of LuEsther T. Mertz. It was LuEsther's clear, undaunted vision and abundant generosity that made it imaginable and ultimately possible to build the theater. Ownership was secured by The Joyce in 2015. The theater is one of the only theaters built by dancers for dance and has provided an intimate and elegant home for over 400 U.S.-based and international companies. The Joyce has also expanded its reach beyond its Chelsea home through off-site presentations at venues ranging in scope from Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater, to Brooklyn's Invisible Dog Art Center, and to outdoor programming in spaces such as Hudson River Park. To further support the creation of new work, The Joyce maintains longstanding commissioning and residency programs. Local students and teachers (K-12th grade) benefit from its school program, and family and adult audiences get closer to dance with access to artists. The Joyce's annual season of about 48 weeks of dance now includes over 340 performances - both digital and in-person - for audiences in excess of 150,000.

The Joyce Theater presents the Joyce choreographic debut of LaTasha Barnes with her evening-length work LaTasha Barnes Presents: The Jazz Continuum from October 11-16. The performance schedule is as follows: Tue-Wed 7:30pm; Thu-Fri 8pm; Sat 2pm & 8pm; Sun 2pm. Tickets, ranging in price from $10-$55, can be purchased at www.Joyce.org, or by calling JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street. For more information and to read about The Joyce Theater's detailed health and safety protocols, including required face-coverings and proof of vaccination policies, please visit www.Joyce.org.