Summation Dance Comes to BAM, Now thru 4/5

Sumi Clements and Taryn Vander Hoop, Co-Founders of Summation Dance, announced today, April 2 - 5, 2013 as dates of for its annual season of performances at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Richard B. Fishman Space. The performances will feature two world premieres by Summation Dance Artistic Director Clements.

Known for fierce dancing and polished dance making, the all-women troupe makes another major stride with the debut of two dances that show the breadth of their artistic range and the performing versatility of their dancers. Now entering it's fourth year and with a history including appearances at BAC (Baryshnikov Arts Center), City Center, 92nd St. Y, Brooklyn's FLICfest, the Tisch Alumni Concert at Skirball Center, and Dancing Literate Festival - an outreach initiative of their own invention - at Judson Church, Summation Dance proudly continues it's development as an energetic presence on the New York dance scene.

Summation Dance company members for the April 2014 performances will include: Sumi Clements, Angela Curotto, Allie Lochary, Dani McIntosh, Julie McMillan, Devin Oshiro, Taryn Vander Hoop, Meg Weeks and Megan Wubbenhorst.

Updating Route, Please Standby

Choreographed by Summation Dance Artistic Director Sumi Clements and partially previewed during the company's popular Dancing Literate festival at Judson Memorial Church in November 2013, Updating Route, Please Standby reflects on the relationship between expectation and reality and the necessity for an ever-present honesty to recalculate our positions in life. Updating Route, Please Standby considers how society, the media, literature, and visual culture have molded our understanding of who, and what, we are and reasons that we contemplate dismissing these preconceptions in favor of simple re-evaluation and advancement. Clements asserts, "our lives rarely materialize in the way we envision; and even though the outcome might not be so different from the intended goal, the route there winds dramatically through life."

Updating Route, Please Standby is set to a mash-up score by DJ and electronic musician, Lorn. A Midwesterner born in Normal, Illinois, Lorn released his debut album, Nothing Else, in 2010 and his second album, Ask The Dust, in 2012. His sound is characterized by swelling melodies of surprising powerfulness, lending Lorn's music an emotional sharpness. Brigitte Vosse designed costumes for the dance.

HUNT

A work for eight dancers, Hunt takes a look at the storied persecution of witches through a feminist lens. The work reimagines these women and delves into a time in women's history that has become symbolic of female strength and independence, envisaging how they lived and why they died. Avoiding mythic retellings and scholarly interpretations, Hunt asks questions about human nature in times of unrest while transporting the audience to a time and place where the peculiarities of these "witches" are brought to life.

Hunt is set to an original composition by frequent Summation Dance collaborator Kyle Olson. A product of Minneapolis, Minnesota's tightly knit experimental music scene Olson's exploration and mix of jazz, improvised, electronic, and minimalist music form the basis for his current compositional aesthetic. Costumes are by Brigitte Vosse.

SUMMATION DANCE: Summation Dance Company is a New York City based modern dance company with a mission to find the beauty in struggle and the humor in the mundane by creating exciting, innovative, and highly physical work.

In 2010, Summation Dance founders Clements and Vander Hoop graduated with their MFAs in Dance Performance and Choreography from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Since the spring of 2010, Summation Dance has self-produced and premiered evening length works annually at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Baryshnikov Arts Center, as well as produced a Dance Education Outreach Festival, Dancing Literate Project, at Judson Memorial Church. Through the Dancing Literate Project, Summation has commissioned Suzanne Beahrs (Suzanne Beahrs Dance), Sidra Bell (Sidra Bell Dance New York), Claudia Anata Hubiak (The Anata Project), Peter Kyle (Peter Kyle Dance), and Kendra Portier (BandPortier) to perform, as well as Andrea Miller (Gallim Dance) and Sydney Skybetter (skybetter & associates) and Taryn Vander Hoop (Summation Dance) to set or create works on Summation's dancers.

The company has also performed in the La MaMa Moves Festival, World Dance Alliance Conference, FAB Festival, FlicFest at the Irondale Center, DUMBO Dance Festival, and the Fridays at Noon Series at the 92nd St Y, at Baruch Performing Arts Center, City Center, Judson Memorial Church, St. Mark's Church and the Skirball Center. Summation has received numerous commissions from and residencies from venues and colleges across the country.

Summation Dance strives to bridge the gap between the choreographer and the viewer, so the art form is no longer esoteric and understood only by the dance elite, but can be more universally appreciated. Summation Dance offers dance and arts education programs for children and young adults with educational outreach programs bringing dance into the schools, offering performances, as well as movement and composition classes, to children who may not otherwise have exposure to the arts.

Performances will take place on Wednesday, April 2, Thursday, April 3, Friday, April 4, and Saturday April 5. All performances 8pm at the BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Tickets: General Admission $25/Students $15 available at www.summationdance.org/tickets. For further information, visit www.summationdance.org.