The Guggenheim to Host Swing Dancing with Caleb Teicher, Chris Celiz, Ben Folds, Conrad Tao and Eyal Vilner Big Band

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, presents Swing Dancing with Caleb Teicher, Chris Celiz, Ben Folds, Conrad Tao and Eyal Vilner Big Band on Monday, December 9 at 6:30pm and 7:30pm.

Choreographer and dancer Caleb Teicher, musician Ben Folds, and such friends as Macy Sullivan, LaTasha Barnes, Xin Ying, and Kenny Karen come together for a special performance set in the Guggenheim rotunda. Accompanied by Eyal Vilner Big Band, Teicher will teach an introduction to swing dancing, followed by a party to put the moves in motion.

TICKETS & VENUE

6:30-11 pm: VIP Cocktail Reception, Performance, and Dancing
VIP rotunda floor table for six: $5,000
Rotunda floor table for six: $3,000
VIP rotunda floor table seated ticket: $500
Rotunda floor high top cocktail seated ticket: $250
7:30-11 pm: Performance, Dancing, and Drinks
Ramp standing ticket: $75
Limited rotunda floor tables of 6 available, to buy a table call (212) 758-0024 or email friends@worksandprocess.org.
Box Office (212) 423-3575 or worksandprocess.org
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York

Lead funding for Works & Process is provided by The Christian Humann Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Evelyn Sharp Foundation, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Caleb Teicher is a NYC-based dancer and choreographer specializing in American dance traditions and musical collaboration. Teicher began his career as a founding member of Michelle Dorrance's critically acclaimed tap dance company, Dorrance Dance, while also freelancing in contemporary dance (The Chase Brock Experience, The Bang Group), swing dance (Syncopated City Dance Company), and musical theater (West Side Story International Tour and London). Since founding Caleb Teicher & Company (CT&Co) in 2015, Teicher's creative work has expanded to engagements and commissions across the US and abroad including The Joyce Theater, New York City Center, the Guggenheim Museum (NYC and Bilbao), Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and Lincoln Center Out of Doors. Over the next year, Caleb's work will be presented in over a dozen cities across the United States. Teicher is known for his choreographic collaborations with diverse musical talents: he's created full collaborations for CT&Co with world-champion beatboxer Chris Celiz and composer/pianist Conrad Tao; performed as a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center; recorded percussion and sang duets for television with Ben Folds; and most recently choreographed Regina Spektor's residency on Broadway. Caleb is the recipient of a 2019 New York City Center Choreographic Fellowship, two Bessie Awards, a 2019 Harkness Promise Award, and a 2019 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant. His work has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, Forbes, Vogue, Interview Magazine, and most recently, as the cover of Dance Magazine's September 2019 issue. Caleb continues to engage with dance communities as a teacher for international tap and swing dance festivals. IG: @CalebTeicher

Ben Folds is widely regarded as one of the major music influencers of our generation. He's created an enormous body of genre-bending music that includes pop albums with Ben Folds Five, multiple solo albums, and numerous collaborative records. His last album was a blend of pop songs and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra that soared to #1 on both the Billboard classical and classical crossover charts. For over a decade he's performed with some of the world's greatest symphony orchestras, and currently serves as the first ever Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. In addition to solo rock and orchestral touring, Folds has recently written a critically acclaimed memoir "A Dream About Lightning Bugs," which debuted as a New York Times Best Seller, and is described as a collection of interrelated essays, anecdotes and lessons about art, life, and music. He is also no stranger to television, having been featured for five seasons as a judge on NBC's critically-acclaimed a capella show "The Sing Off." He continues to appear in cameo roles on cable and network TV shows and composes for film and TV. An avid photographer, Folds is a member of the prestigious Sony Artisans of Imagery, has worked as an assignment photo editor for National Geographic, and was featured in a mini-documentary by the Kennedy Center's Digital Project on his photographic work. An outspoken champion for arts education and music therapy funding in our nation's public schools, in 2016 Ben held the distinction as the only artist to appear at both national political conventions advocating for arts education, has served for over five years as an active member of the distinguished Artist Committee of Americans For The Arts (AFTA), and serves on the Board of AFTA's Arts Action Fund. He is also Chairman of the Arts Action Fund's ArtsVote2020 national initiative to advocate for a greater commitment to the nation's creative economy through improved public policies for the arts and arts education and hosts a podcast series of interviews on arts policies with current 2020 presidential candidates.

Born in Tel Aviv, saxophonist/clarinetist/flutist-arranger/composer/conductor Eyal Vilner moved to New York in 2007 and graduated from the prestigious New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in 2009. Since its inception in 2008, The Eyal Vilner Big Band has been performing widely at some of New York's landmarks such as Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club, Iridium, Smalls Jazz Club, Fat Cat, The Garage and Central Park SummerStage. The big band's first two albums, Introducing the Eyal Vilner Big Band (2012) and Almost Sunrise (2015), received rave reviews and stand strong at the Top Jazz Radio Charts of the US and Canada. The Eyal Vilner Big Band has collaborated with some of the top jazz legends of our time including NEA Jazz Masters Frank Wess, Jimmy Heath and Jimmy Owens, and pianist Junior Mance. The big band performs Vilner's new arrangements of jazz standards as well as his original compositions.

Hailing from New York City, Chris Celiz is a musician, educator and performer. Playing music since the age of 10, Chris has an incredibly diverse skill set and professional music experience. He has worked with such luminaries as Harry Belafonte, Bryonn Bain, Dana Leong and can be seen performing along side some of New York Cities greatest talents. He has been competing both nationally and internationally as one of the top ranked beatboxers in North America. His most notable accomplishment is the formation of "The Beatbox House", a conglomerate of the most talented beatboxers in the United States who look to rebrand the art form.

Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer and has been dubbed a musician of "probing intellect and open-hearted vision" by The New York Times, who also cited him "one of five classical music faces to watch" in the 2018-19 season. Tao is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was named a Gilmore Young Artist-an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation. In the 2019-20 season, Tao will be presented in recital by Carnegie Hall, performing works by David Lang, Bach, Julia Wolfe, Jason Eckhardt, Carter, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann. He will also make his debut in recital at Walt Disney Hall, where the LA Phil will present him in works by Copland and Frederic Rzewski. Following his debut at Blossom, The Cleveland Orchestra will present Tao in Severance Hall in a special program featuring music by Mary Lou Williams and Ligeti, and improvisation alongside pianist Aaron Diehl. Concerto highlights in the upcoming season include performances of his own work for piano & orchestra, The Oneiroi in New York, with the Seattle Symphony, as well as performances with the Baltimore, Charlotte, and Pacific Symphonies. He will also perform The Oneiroi alongside Galina Ustvolskaya's Piano Concerto with the Phoenix Symphony. In addition to concert halls, he will also tour to college campuses, including the University of Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, Humboldt State University, Oregon State University, and Princeton University. Tao's acclaimed evening-length collaboration with choreographer Caleb Teicher, More Forever, will be presented by Celebrity Series of Boston, and will make its west coast premiere at Segerstrom Hall in Orange County, CA. His ongoing electroacoustic collaboration with improviser and vocalist Charmaine Lee continues with an opening-night performance at the 2019 Resonant Bodies Festival in New York. In the spring, Tao will tour with the JCT Trio - his ensemble with violinist Stefan Jackiw and cellist Jay Campbell - to Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Ohio, Texas, and New Mexico. He will also celebrate Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday at the 92Y with Anthony de Mare, premiering a new two-piano take on "Move On," from Sunday in the Park with George.

LaTasha "Tasha" Barnes is an internationally acclaimed and awarded dancer, educator, coach and ambassador of culture from Richmond, VA. Globally celebrated for her musicality, athleticism, and joyful presence throughout the cultural traditions she bears, which include: House, Hip-Hop, Waacking, Vernacular Jazz, and Lindy Hop. Her expansive artistic, competitive and performative skills have made her a frequent collaborator to Dorrance Dance, Singapore based Timbre Arts Group, Caleb Teicher & Company, Ephrat Asherie Dance and many international Urban Arts and Jazz/ Lindy Hop festivals like Summer Dance Forever and Paris Jazz Roots Festival. Accolades and accomplishments aside, Tasha's forever purpose is to inspire fellow artists and art enthusiasts to cultivate an authentic sense of self in their creative expressions and daily lives.

Kenny Karen, born Chaim Teicher, raised in Montreal as the son of an orthodox rabbi, has lived a rather "unorthodox" life. A choir boy and trained cantor, he was signed to Columbia Records as a teenager. He eventually found notoriety in the recording studios of New York City as a "jingle singer." He is the recipient of six National Arts & Sciences awards, including a Lifetime Achievement award. As a retired studio singer, he has made his mark on the world in writing and performing his own compositions, some like "Jerusalem Is Mine" and "If The World Had Cried," now considered Judaic classics.

Outside of Caleb Teicher & Company, Macy Sullivan (Camas, WA) dances for Dance Heginbotham and has enjoyed projects with the Merce Cunningham Trust, The Chase Brock Experience, and The Bang Group. She has performed annually as Peter in Works & Process' Peter & the Wolf with Isaac Mizrahi since 2013 and prior premiered the role of Marie in Chase Brock's The Nutcracker. Sullivan appeared in the recent off-Broadway production of Oklahoma! (Dir. Daniel Fish) as well as The Poor of New York (Dir. Tyne Rafaeli). Her own work has been performed at the Center for Innovation in the Arts, Judson Memorial Church, and The 92nd Street Y. As a teaching artist, she works for Together in Dance, Dance for PD®, and Juilliard Global Ventures. Sullivan holds a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School (Martha Hill Prize, John Erskine Prize, Choreographic Honors) and recently began exploring Lindy Hop.

Xin Ying is a choreographer, educator, and principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. She graduated from Nanjing University of the Arts with a choreography major in 2004. Her work received a China Lotus Award in 2008. As a choreographer, she toured with Sichuan University of the Arts to Hong Kong, Hungary, and Germany, and as 3rd Section Director for the National Sports Opening she worked with more than 7,000 performers. Ying made her own version of "Lamentation Variations", which she made into a dance film. Her work a?? ("The Nest"), which uses Google 3D paint brushes and VR technology, was presented at Graham at Google. Her work Almost Ritual, commissioned by Co*lab, was featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times's Watch List. She joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 2011 to presume her professional dance career. Ying has worked with Nacho Duato, Marie Chouinard, Pontus Lidberg, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Annie-B Parson, Maxine Doyle, Bobbi Jene Smith, Andonis Foniadakis, MATS EK, Lucinda Childs, Liz Gerring, Kyle Abraham, and Gwen Welliver. She has collaborated with Kate Spade, Barney NY, Norma Kamali, Black Berry, Tracy Reese, NYC Dance Project, Ballerina Project, and started her own dance company, XY Dance.