Sokolow Company Presents I'M NOT HERE TO BE POLITE
By: Julie Musbach Feb. 15, 2019
The SOKOLOW THEATRE/DANCE ENSEMBLE will return to the Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center in Brooklyn with 'I'm not here to be polite," a program of works by Anna Sokolow, Valerie Bettis, Jim May, and guest choreographer Robert Cleary, March 21-24. The presentation will feature the new generation of Sokolow dancers, taught and coached by masters in the Sokolow style and intent.
By Anna Sokolow is her Three Poems, music by Joel Thule in a new reconstruction. The three part work, including a women's quartet of Greek sirens, was created for, and premiered in 1973 by, the Juilliard dancers. The Company will also perform Sokolow's celebrated 1968 Steps of Silence, described by Brian Schaefer as "a searing portrait of people lost and alone. With earnest, dramatic gestures, Ms. Sokolow conveys their isolation and desperation." (The New York Times, 2016)
Jim May, former longtime artistic director of the Company and a protegee of Anna Sokolow, will be represented by hisSleeping Bouquet, danced by Francesca Todesco and guest Daniel Fetecua. The lush, romantic duet is set to the Adagio from Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2.
Longtime company member Eleanor Bunker will dance Valerie Bettis' famed The Desperate Heart, created in 1943 and inspired by John Malcolm Brinnin's poem of the same name. A major figure in the early modern dance scene, Louis Horst described The Desperate Heart as "the finest solo work in the entire modern dance repertory of this decade."
The Company has invited guest choreographer Robert Cleary to set his This is Not America. The provocative work is a statement about the inequalities in life here in our country, as relevant now as it was when Cleary choreographed it in 2000. Currently co-director with Lisa Thurrell of Milwaukee's Kanopy Dance, Cleary was formerly a member of the companies of Bill T. Jones, Bebe Miller, and Danny Ezralow, to name a few.
THE SOKOLOW THEATRE/DANCE ENSEMBLE was founded by Jim May and is presently under the artistic directorship of Samantha Geracht. Their aim is to recreate works choreographed by Anna Sokolow, continue her teachings, and develop her artistic vision for the purpose of passing on for posterity Anna Sokolow's lifetime efforts to combine the arts of theater, dance, music and painting.
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