Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance's 2016 Season Begins Today at NYU/Tisch

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance returns this spring with new choreography and repertory for a two-night run at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Jack Crystal Theater, today, June 2 and tomorrow, June 3 at 7:30pm. The production will feature Veiled, a new contemporary ballet for seven women inspired by Martin Bresnick's Prayers Remain Forever. Veiled will be one of three works presented each evening.

Cherylyn Lavagnino's choreographic mission is to create movement that engages an audience by aligning the rigor of ballet with the humanistic performance values of contemporary dance. Her choreography uses pointe work as a platform to delve into the range of human interaction and emotion. The unconventional use of ballet expresses complex and honest portrayals through the choreography and the dancers. Music is paramount to her creative process, and its influence pushes and prods the imagery.

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance Season 2016 Program:

· Veiled (2016), a new work for a female cast of seven, explores the idea of preserving physical and internal grace in the face of oppression of any kind. While Martin Bresnick's Prayers Remain Forever inspired the choreography, Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, and The Art of Grace by Sarah L. Kaufman provided the initial creative research. According to Cherylyn Lavagnino, "our daily process as dancers is centered around a quest for grace of movement and emotion."

· Triptych (2012), offers two distinct movements linking Francois Couperin's Troisième Leçons à deux voix with commissioned music by Scott Killian, inspiring Lavagnino to develop a movement lexicon with a sense of quiet beauty, reverence and sorrow.

· Nadeje (2015), was inspired by the rich cultural and political background of the Czech people. Author/playwright Vaclav Havel 's Letters to Olga, visual artist Alphonse Mucha's Slavic Epic and Leoš Janá?ek's Violin Sonáta for violin and piano provided research materials for this layered play of repression and freedom expressed through movement motifs. A loosely based narrative shaped this dance, grounded in movement and music, referencing the many images and poetic reflections of these exceptional Czech artists and their aspirations for a free Czech society.

"In recent years, Ms. Lavagnino has turned to themes of political oppression in her ballet-based work... "Nadeje," draws inspiration from Czech artists and writers to reflect on freedom of expression..." - New York Times - June, 2015

"As always in Lavagnino's choreography, you get a sense of people on the go-rushing somewhere, charging ahead, finding partners or colleagues, then moving on. Designs materialize and vanish. This is a society in tumult, but full of hope-one in which structures crumble and are rebuilt in new ways." - Deborah Jowitt, Arts Journal - June 2015

"The intimacy with which her works touch the musical compositions set to the dances is like a welcome shade in the midst of a roaring blaze, as the intensity with which the dancers evoke her visions." - Matt Hanson, Broadway World - June, 2015

"Drawn to the rigor of ballet and the humanism of modern dance" - Time Out, June 2015

CHERYLYN LAVAGNINO DANCE AT

NYU/TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Jack Crystal Theater

June 2-3, 2016 at 7:30pm

$20 General | $10 Students

General Admission and Student Tickets: http://cldseason2016.bpt.me/

Tickets by Telephone 646-854-6673

The Jack Crystal Theater

NYU/Tisch School of The Arts

111 2nd Avenue

New York, NY 10003

General information - 646-854-6673

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