Loretta Thomas' Moving Visions Presents EVERYMAN'S REROOF

Loretta Thomas' Moving Visions will join forces with the Ensemble 212 Chamber Orchestra, Yoon Jae Lee, conductor, for Everyman's Reroof, a concert rich in live music and dances by Thomas and Catherine Gallant, as well as historical dances by Isadora Duncan, all accompanied live by the Chamber Orchestra playing Vivaldi, Stephen Barber, Schubert, and more. Guest pianist is Nathaniel Lanasa. Performances are April 4, 5, 6 at 8 PM at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, entrance on 25th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues.

Thomas's program reflects her extensive training in different styles. A performer and teacher in New York City since 1977 she studied with Merce Cunningham (on scholarship), ballet with Maggie Black, creative dance with Ellen Robbins, Chinese Movement forms with Master Cheng Hsing Yu, and Isadora Duncan's work with Julia Levien, Hortense Kooluris, Lori Belilove, and Catherine Gallant.

The evening will open with a suite of dances by Isadora Duncan, set to music by Schubert and Chopin. A longtime interpreter of the Duncan dances, Ms. Thomas appeared in Duncan works in a recent concert presented by Francesca Todesco, where she "danced with distinctive authority," (Philip Gardner, oberonsgrove, Nov. 2018).
Receiving its premiere performance is an excerpt from Catherine Gallant's Escape from the House of Mercy, a dance that embodies the ongoing struggle for equity and stares in the face of deceptive and impassive authority. Music is by contemporary composer Lisa Belawa, a 2007 Rome Prize Winner in Musical Composition, and former composer at the American Academy in Rome.

Loretta Thomas will present two works to music by contemporary composer Stephen Barber: Les Mots, a short solo about how words, good and bad, can make us feel, and Homage, set to an excerpt from the composer's String Quartet No. 1. Composer/arranger Barber is known for his range of musical associates, from David Byrne, Keith Richards and John Legend, to the London Symphony.

Thomas will also present the premiere of Everyman's Reroof, a dance that addresses the mistreatment of women and the inequality in our culture. The ballet is set to Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in C minor.
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