THE DANCE NOW STORY Chapter Six to Be Released May 6

DANCE NOW's 25th anniversary celebration continues with the DANCE NOW Story featuring on-demand performances of new and archival digital works by more than 40 innovative dance makers as well as live events with DN artists via Zoom. All events are available through June 2021 on DANCE NOW's digital platform, dancenow.online.

DANCE NOW has reimagined its signature festival, normally held at Joe's Pub, creating an alternative digital space at dancenow.online to celebrate its artists and this landmark anniversary. The series brings new, emerging, and longtime veterans of the Festival together to honor DANCE NOW's past, embrace the present, and explore future possibilities for artists and audiences alike. The digital series is accompanied by an interactive timeline featuring photos, videos, interviews, and additional facets of the DANCE NOW Story.

Chapter 6 (Release: Thursday, May 6 / Watch Party on Zoom at 6pm) will feature commissioned works by Sarah Chien, Kayla Farrish, and Joshua L. Peugh and archival works by John Heginbotham and Paula Josa-Jones. The Artist-to-Audience Celebration on Thursday, May 27, at 7pm, will honor The Bang Group. The celebratory evening, hosted by Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott, will feature special performances and audience interaction recreating the intimate atmosphere of Joe's Pub.

Sarah Chien's A Year Without Studios aims to showcase one dancer's persistent solo art-making practice throughout the pandemic. Telling a story of embodied grief, frustration, and resistance, the film unearths gems from Chien's prolific archive of a year of performing solo improvisation for her iPhone. Chien writes, "I want to address the feeling of grief artists confront even as we keep creating. It's not the same, but we keep making. What have you gone without this year? And how have you kept going in ways that have gone unseen?" Created and performed by Sarah Chien. Edited by Cinthia Chen. Score and sound by Kirin McElwain.

Kayla Farrish's Rinsing comes from a space of being here in this moment, and in your body, and "gathering your oars to paddle with progression to the shifting waves of growth and feeling." It breathes through writings from Farrish's journal, rooms and spaces she has made for herself, memory, declaration, and opening back up to vulnerability. The short film, with cinematography by Kerime Konur, captures and documents the passing of time, family/communal memories into personal memory, and meanings and culture within Blackness and our lives. Farrish writes, "I let these words spill out visually, in words, movement, music, and video to release and flood! Color, sound, improvisation, and joy return."

Joshua L. Peugh's Backcountry Basin is inspired by the tropes of the western genre in film and literature. Taking place in the otherworldly, barren, white gypsum sand dunes, near Peugh's hometown of Las Cruces, NM, it plays with ideas of openness and claustrophobia blurring the lines between interior and exterior. Peugh writes, "I wanted to choose a place with personal poetic resonance. What better place than my hometown, which is small but situated inside a seemingly endless desert landscape. The light is magical, the mountains are spectacular and the world seems quieter." The work is danced by Erin Vonder Haar and Chadi El-Khoury. Commissioned music is by Peugh's longtime collaborator Brandon Carson. Videographer and Director of Photography: Orlando Agawin.

Aptly called "a dance battle in miniature" John Heginbotham's throwaway is a witty duet set to music by French electronic duo Daft Punk. The work features dancers Brian Lawson and Maile Okamura. throwaway was presented at Dance Theater Workshop as part of the 2010 DANCE NOW Festival.

Paula Josa-Jones's SPEAK, presented at the 2016 DANCE NOW Festival at Joe's Pub, springs from questions about language and the absence of language in its usual form. It is about obsession and excavating meaning from the body when words cannot be shaped. The work is inspired by Josa-Jones's 18 years of working with her profoundly autistic godson and physical research into aphasia, apraxia, and synesthesia.

Single tickets are $10 for each monthly digital performance program and $20 for the digital monthly performance program and Artist-to-Audience Celebration. Tickets can be purchased at www.dancenow.online.

Proceeds from ticket sales support future artist commissions. Artists creating, performing, collaborating, and teaching in the 25th anniversary season programming have access to all events for free.