Tom Gold Dance Announces Fall Programs

New York City-based Tom Gold Dance will give the first complete in-person performance of Tom Gold Dance Founder and Director Tom Gold's Portraits and more in The Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Family Auditorium at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Wednesday, October 26.

Prior to its engagement at the JCC Manhattan, the Company will return to the Berkshires for a work-in-process showcase at The Duffin Theater at Lenox Memorial Middle and High School in Lenox, MA, Saturday, October 22.

Dancers Lauren Collett, Claire Von Enck, Malorie Lundgren, Jules Mabie, and Andres Zuniga of New York City Ballet, as well as Brian Gephart and Rachel Thalman are scheduled to perform at the JCC Manhattan. Both works on the program will also feature live musical accompaniment. The Company will announce the names of the musicians at a later date.

Lauren Collett, Brian Gephart, Jules Mabie, Rachel Thalman, and Andres Zuniga are scheduled to be in the showcase at The Duffin Theater.

Portraits, for five dancers, is to set to three chamber works of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů: Piano Trio No. 1 (Cinq pièces brèves), Impromptu for violin and piano, and Five Short Pieces for violin and piano. The Company premiered Portraits, which draws its inspiration from the 2020 David Hockney: Drawing from Life retrospective at The Morgan Library & Museum, during a free livestream from the Nave of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan in February 2021. Malorie Lundgren, Jules Mabie, and Andres Zuniga were part of the original Portraits ensemble.

The Company will also premiere a new duet from Gold to selections from Erik Satie's Gnossiennes for solo piano. The work incorporates themes from the Bless: Design for Good exhibition currently on display at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery at the JCC Manhattan.

At the Duffin, Tom Gold Dance will present excerpts from both Portraits and the new work, interspersed with discussion from Gold and the artists. The Company presented a similar work-in-process showcase at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox in March of this year as part of a weeklong residency. More recently, Tom Gold Dance visited the Berkshires in June for performances at TurnPark Art Space in West Stockbridge as well as at Shakespeare & Company.

"For our fall programming, we wanted to expand and enhance two of our historic strengths: collaboration and audience engagement," says Tom Gold. "We are grateful the JCC Manhattan shares our objective to present unique content within a multi-disciplinary context. And we look forward to returning to the Berkshires to give audiences there a chance to experience how we develop our choreography and stage our performances.

"We are also," added Gold, "just excited to perform Portraits in its entirety before an in-person audience."

Between April 2020 and November 2021, Tom Gold Dance cancelled four self-produced seasons due to the coronavirus pandemic. During this time, the Company appeared in the 39th Annual Battery Dance Festival in August 2020 with Gold's Plan & Elevation, as well as in livestreams from the Nave of the Church of the Heavenly Rest with the World Premiere of Gold's Portraits in February 2021 and a revival of his All the Lonely People (2015) in October 2020, and conducted a residency in the Berkshires in January 2021, following the Company's first in-person performance of Plan & Elevation on the grounds of Shakespeare & Company the previous September. The work-in-process showcase at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre this past March represented the Company's first indoor appearance in more than two years. In spring 2021, Tom Gold Dance partnered with the Penguin Random House imprint Riverhead Books to create dance-based promotional videos in connection with the publication of several novels, including Katie Kitamura's Intimacies, on which Gold's work of the same title is based. In April 2022, the Company restored its annual spring season with performances at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. Following engagements in both locations in 2021, Tom Gold Dance returned to TurnPark Art Space and Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, NY this past summer; and made its debut at Little Island in Hudson River Park. Tom Gold Dance will celebrate its 15th anniversary in 2023.

Saturday, October 22, at 6:00PM. The Duffin Theater at Lenox Middle and Memorial High School is located at 197 East Street, Lenox, MA, 01240. Tickets, $20, are available at tomgolddance.org/fall-2022-showcase. Online purchase only.

Wednesday, October 26, at 7:30PM. The Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Family Auditorium at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan is located at 334 Amsterdam Ave at 76th Street, New York, NY 10023. Tickets, $20, are available at mmjccm.org/programs/person-tom-gold-dance-company

Please continue to consult the CDC and local health agencies for the latest safety guidelines related to the coronavirus pandemic. For the Covid-19 policies of the JCC Manhattan, please visit mmjcc.org.

The mission of Tom Gold Dance is to bring the past, present, and future of classical dance to audiences in New York and around the world. Founded in 2008 by former New York City Ballet soloist Tom Gold, Tom Gold Dance aspires to the highest level of artistry expressed through a traditional classical dance vocabulary, including in nearly two dozen original works by Gold, envisioned for and set directly on Company, among the world's most accomplished. In New York, Tom Gold Dance annually self-produces spring and, since 2018, fall seasons; the Company has also visited more than half a dozen countries, including Bulgaria, Cuba, Italy, and Spain. Other artistic highlights include multiple appearances in the Berkshires, as well as programs at the Guggenheim, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and Untermyer Park and Gardens. The Company participated in the 39th Annual Battery Dance Festival in 2020. In 2021, Tom Gold Dance formed a collaboration with Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, to create a series of dance-based promotional videos. Learn more at tomgolddance.org.

Internationally recognized dancer, choreographer, and instructor Tom Gold is the Founder and Artistic Director of Tom Gold Dance. A 2016 National Choreographers Initiative participant, Gold has created original works for his eponymous company, as well as for Vassar College, the Bermuda Arts Festival, Oregon Ballet Theater, the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, St. Louis Ballet, and many other dance academies, companies, festivals, television, and special events, including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Bravo series Odd Mom Out starring Jill Kargman, and the New York City Fringe Festival for which he won the 2016 award for Overall Excellence for his work in The Joey Variations: A Play With Dance. A 21-year member (1987- 2008) of New York City Ballet where he rose to the rank of soloist, Gold is the choreographer and performer of the 2wice Arts Foundation's DOT DOT DOT, an interactive iPad application by Abbott Miller of Pentagram.