Laura Pawel Dance Comes to Chen Dance Company This March

Laura Pawel and her ensemble of dancers and musicians return to the Chen Dance Center with the premiere of Sunset Beach, named after a section of Vancouver's waterside park where locals and tourists gather at sunset to enjoy the beautiful scenery of mountains, sea and sculpture.

All dances are performed to live music by the Company's longtime composer/musicians collaborations: Barebones (harmonica and guitar) for the premiere, and Phil Stone on keyboard and The Cecilia Coleman Quartet for repertory works on the program.

Two performances, March 16 & 17 at 7 PM at the warm and intimate Chen Dance Center, 70 Mulberry Street, in NYC's Chinatown.

The Company will repeat last year's premiere Plain and Fancy, and the 2016 Comfortable Silence, a duet for Stacey and Laura. Both are set to the jazz sounds of The Cecilia Coleman Quartet - piano, bass, trumpet, and saxophone.

The witty group work How are you is a greeting, not a question was created in 2016 to music by keyboard artist/composer Phil Stone.

The program will be completed by Tete-a-Tete, an idiosyncratic, complex conversation in motion for Stacey and Laura, danced to music composed by Gene Caprioglio and performed by the duo Barebones (Caprioglio on guitar and Dr. 88 on harmonica).

LAURA PAWEL began dancing with Betty Jones of the Limon Dance Company and continued with Merce Cunningham, Nancy Meehan, Elaine Summers, and Christine Wright. Pawel founded her company in 1968 after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied dance composition with Bessie Schonberg. Her works are performed by a "family" that has remained constant for years, and combine improvisational structures with sound and text.

In her March 2008 review, Jennifer Dunning remarked that "Ms. Pawel and her charmingly oddball dancers of all ages are not afraid to follow their own drummers, not just into the future but also into a comfortable, friendlier past." (The New York Times).

www.laurapaweldance.org

Dancers: Stacey Berkheimer, Jim Finney, Pamela Finney, Emily Kistler, Maki Kurokawa, Elaine Myrianthopoulos, Laura Pawel Musicians: Barebones (Gene Caprioglio and Dr. 88), The Cecilia Coleman Quartet, Phil Stone

Friday & Saturday, March 16 & 17 at 7 PM

Chen Dance Center, 70 Mulberry Street (corner of Bayard & Mulberry)

Tickets: $20; $10 for students & seniors

Reservations: 212.349.0438