New York Theatre Ballet Debuts At Judson Church Next Month

Paying tribute to the Judson Church choreographers who pushed the boundaries of what dance could be, New York Theatre Ballet (NYTB) will present Legends & Visionaries: Postmodern Dance at Judson Church, Friday, April 25 at 7:00PM and Saturday, April 26 at 3:00PM. New York City's Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village saw the birth of postmodern dance in the early 1960's. Nearly 60 years later, New York Theatre Ballet brings postmodern dance home in two performances.

In its first performances at the historic Judson Church, NYTB will present infrequently performed works by David Gordon, Trisha Brown, and James Waring whose experimental work served as a precursor to Judson Church performances. NYTB's program will feature the Company Premiere of Trisha Brown's Spanish Dance, David Gordon's A Plain Romance Explained/Keith's Solo and Beethoven/1999, and a revival of James Waring's An Eccentric Beauty, Revisited. Douglas Dunn's Roses (1990) and Amanda Treiber's Sideslip complete the program.

Spanish Dance, choreographed by Trisha Brown, will receive its NYTB Company Premiere on April 25. Set to “Early Morning Rain,” written by Gordon Lightfoot and recorded by Bob Dylan, Spanish Dance first appeared as part of Brown's Accumulating Pieces in 1973 at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York City. The work will be staged for NYTB by Iréne Hultman Monti. NYTB's presentation of Spanish Dance is the first time in the company's 46-year history that it has staged a work by Brown.

 

A Plain Romance Explained/Keith's Solo features choreography and text by David Gordon. The work received its world premiere by David Gordon Pick Up Co. in 1984 in New York City. Staged for NYTB by Karen Graham, Gordon's work is performed with permission from the Pick Up Performance Co. A Plain Romance Explained/Keith's Solo received its NYTB Company Premiere in 2023.

Beethoven/1999, choreographed by David Gordon to music by Ludwig von Beethoven, was first performed in 1998 as Beethoven by Gordon's Pick Up Performance Co. A work for four dancers, Beethoven/1999 will be staged for NYTB by Karen Graham. It was last performed by NYTB in 2017.

 

An Eccentric Beauty, Revisited, choreographed by James Waring and set to music by Erik Satie (La Belle Eccentrique), was first performed by the James Waring Dance Company in 1972 at the Cubiculo Theatre in New York City. The work received its NYTB premiere in 1985. Waring was a leader of the dance avant-garde in the 1950's and ‘60's. Many of the dancers who formed the nucleus of the Judson Dance Theater and of the subsequent postmodern movement worked and studied (both technique and composition) with him including Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer, Aileen Passloff, David Gordon, and Valda Setterfield. An Eccentric Beauty, Revisited features costumes by Sylvia Taalsohn Nolan (after Leon Bakst) and will be staged for NYTB by Diana Byer.

 

Roses (1990), choreographed by Douglas Dunn, is set to music by Sergei Rachmaninoff and staged for NYTB by Emily Pope and Timothy Ward. Roses (1990) received its world premiere in 1990 by New Dance Ensemble in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The work received its NYTB premiere in 2023.

Sideslip, set to music by Louis Andriessen and featuring artwork by visual artist Marcy Rosenblat, is choreographed by former NYTB Principal Dancer Amanda Treiber. A work for four dancers, Sideslip received its world premiere on March 24, 2023 as part of Norte Maar's Counterpointe10 in Brooklyn, New York. The work was first performed by NYTB in October 2023 at Florence Gould Theater in New York City.

 

“Revisiting the choreography of the Judson Church legends is not simply an artistic endeavor—it is a nudge to remember a time when choreography was more than a radical shift in dance, it was an act of artistic rebellion that paralleled political and social upheavals of the moment,” said NYTB Artistic Director Steven Melendez. “Our nudge is a small, but necessary call for resistance to today's increasingly perilous political climate. These are important works in the dance canon, and I'm excited to share them with audiences.”

All tickets for NYTB's Legends & Visionaries: Postmodern Dance at Judson Church are $30 (plus fees). A pre-show cocktail party at 1:30pm on Saturday, April 26, hosted by NYTB's Young Professional Committee, benefits New York Theatre Ballet and its programs. Cocktail party tickets, which include the 3pm performance, are available at $60.

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