Juilliard's 'New Dances: Edition 2012' Opens Next Wednesday

Juilliard Dance premieres four newly-choreographed works by choreographers Camille A. Brown (1^st-Year Class), Emery LeCrone (2^nd-Year Class), Susan Shields (3^rd-Year Class), and Jarek Cemerek (4^th-Year Class) in this year's New Dances: Edition 2012, under the direction of Artistic Director Lawrence Rhodes. All Juilliard Dance Division students perform on the program, and they have been working closely with these four innovative choreographers as they create new works on each of the Dance Division's classes.

The five performances take place on Wednesday, December 12; Thursday, December 13; Friday, December 14; and Saturday, December 15, all at 8 PM; and Sunday, December 16 at 3 PM.

FREE tickets are available at the Janet and Leonard Kramer Box office at Juilliard (155 West 65^th Street). Box Office hours are Monday through Friday from 11 AM to 6 PM. For further information, call (212) 769-7406 or go to http://events.juilliard.edu.

Camille A. Brown collaborates with composer Jonathan Melville Pratt, who is writing original music for her Juilliard commission entitled, Stages, for the 1^st-Year Class. The two also worked on City of Rain (2010) and Mr. TOL E. RAncE (2012). The title of Mr. Pratt's score is Bind. Ms. Brown's work is about the emergence of a new generation, and she is using the inspiration of a whirlwind to depict their emergence – the power of the wind. She says: "Whirlwind can also be translated into an idea. When things enter the space might be expected, but how they do might not be."

Emery LeCrone is working with 26 dancers in the 2^nd-Year class, and her work, In Pursuit of Falling, is in three movements. Her music featuresAttack/Transition by Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto; This Window Makes Me Feel by John Supko, and Broken Chords Can Sing a Little by Silver Mt. Zion. Ms. LeCrone, a native of North Carolina, has created a number of works for a long list of institutions in the less than ten years that she has been choreographing. She has been commissioned by Colorado Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, and North Carolina Dance Theater, among others. Ms. LeCrone is resident choreographer at both New Chamber Ballet and the Columbia Ballet Collaborative, both based in New York. Last year, she was invited to the New York City Ballet's New York Choreographic Institute.

Susan Shields, recipient of the 2006 Choo-San Goh Award for her choreography, has created dances for several professional companies and universities. She is a professor in George Mason University's School of Dance in her home state of Virginia, and she enjoys working with college-aged dancers. The inspiration for her work entitled, Visions and Miracles, began with a piece of music by the same title by American composer Christopher Theofanidis, who is on the faculty at Yale University. His Visions and Miracles (1997/2002) is scored for string orchestra and is three movements. Ms. Shields mixes ballet and contemporary dance in her work.

Jarek Cemerek works with electronic music by Ondrej Dedecek and additional music by Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and a Bosnian band, Dubioza Kolektiv. His work, Footholds, is in seven sections and is about the dancers and their experiences in life. Mr. Cemerek's piece showcases floor work, contact improvisation, partnering, and a strong sense of physicality. In residence from the Czech Republic, he also wants his work to reflect what's going on in the streets and around the city, and how one can feel anonymous in a big city like New York.

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