Paxton, Bell and More Featured in Ralph Lemon's SOME SWEET DAY at MoMA, Now thru 11/4

The Museum of Modern Art has commissioned artist and choreographer Ralph Lemon to create a three-week program of dance performances by contemporary choreographers, entitled SOME SWEET DAY, to be presented in the Museum's Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium from today, October 15 to November 4, 2012.

Co-organized by Lemon and Jenny Schlenzka, Associate Curator, MoMA PS1, the series showcases three pairings of six internationally renowned choreographers engaged in an aesthetic, generational, and historical dialogue about each other's work and dance in particular. In bringing together choreographers from different backgrounds and eras, Some sweet day demonstrates how the current state of dance can engage with a variety of subjects—such as aesthetics, gender, race, and history—as well the potential of the museum space. The exhibition is part of the ongoing Performance Program organized by MoMA's Department of Media and Performance Art.

The program will begin with Steve Paxton's seminal postmodern works Satisfying Lover (1967) and State (1968), juxtaposed with French conceptual choreographer Jérôme Bel's The Show Must Go On (2001), featuring a cast of New York City dancers. The second and third weeks will feature newly commissioned works created specifically for the Marron Atrium. The second week features the pairing of Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula with the American experimentalist Dean Moss, including a two-day interstitial performance by American artist Kevin Beasley. The final week features the much-anticipated pairing of Deborah Hay and Sarah Michelson, two iconic and rigorous dance artists in a generational conversation on movement, space, and time.

Admission is free with Museum admission; no additional tickets are necessary. A complete schedule of performance dates and times will be available on MoMA.org in September.

Some sweet day is made possible by MoMA's Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.