PDG, YDP Team Up for ACROSS CONNECTIONS

The Pennington Dance Group (PDG) teams up with the British Modern Dance Company, Yorke Dance Project (YDP), for a highly anticipated joint venture highlighting the unique and dynamic visions of these young, vivacious dance companies, on Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 3:00 p.m. at PDG’s new space, ARC Pasadena. The performances mark the first time that these two modern dance companies have performed together. The companies will each perform a work from their repertory, PDG will perform Yield of Vision and YDP will perform City Limitless, and the third work will be a premiere joint venture in dance entitled Overlay. This first major collaboration for both companies infuses their different paths of creativity as well as a great cultural exchange of ideas. John Pennington, the artistic director of both the PDG and ARC Pasadena, enjoyed a 14-year career with the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company as a performer and teacher, serves on faculty at Pomona College and Cal State Long Beach, and is co-director of the Lewitzky Dance Gallery. Yolande Yorke-Edgell founded YDP in Los Angeles in 1998 shortly after dancing with Rambert Dance Company in London and Lewitzky Dance Company in Los Angeles.

PDG and YDP join artistic energies to create the premiere of Overlay, a new dance which layers creative energies from both dance groups. Pennington and Yorke have devised a dance choreographed on separate continents employing the immediacy of technology as a means for choreographic invention. Four new scores by three musicians provide the foundation upon which movement investigations overlay to create a kinetically charged border-crossing dance. Themes of dividing, merging, separation and unity weave through the geography of the dance. Overlay is choreographed by both John Pennington and Yolande Yorke-Edgell, with original music by Aaron Chavez, world percussionist; Mary Lou Newmark, an electric violinist, composer and poet; and Edgar Rothermich, composer and music producer.

Yield of Vision performed by PDG and choreographed by Pennington, is a five-part work that uses LED lighting to highlight perception, voyeurism and exhibitionism. The stage is transformed by reflective material into a mirrored alternative reality, and through the use of non-traditional illumination, Pennington choreographs a work of ever-fluctuating light, shadow and movement. Composer Tom Peters, a specialist in creating atmospheric electronic soundscapes, sets the aural landscape with an original score and costume designer Mary Ellen Wright underscores the theme of seeing/being seen with her creative explosion of shimmering material wrapping the dancers' bodies.

City Limitless, choreographed by Yorke-Edgell and performed by YDP, takes the audience on a journey of discovery – the places and the people that inspired the writings of Jack Kerouac. See and hear the sounds of the 50′s through original recordings and get a glimpse of the intimate relationships between his friends and fellow writers, poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. With images of Lowell, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, City Limitless gives a glimpse into the beginnings of what was to become the beat generation. A specially-commissioned film by David McCormick pans through the landscapes and places Kerouac visited. Kerouac was inspired by the music of that time and he recorded a lot of his prose along with jazz musicians.
PDG is a Los Angeles based modern dance company. As a non-profit organization, PDG promotes dance through performances, education, and outreach programs, and has a home base at the striking new venue, ARC Pasadena. Committed to artistic excellence in creating, performing and preserving the work of founding director John Pennington, and of other contemporary and past dance artists, PDG collaborates with visual and performing artists of note, and creates and performs works that contain social, emotional, political, abstract and scientific themes that appeal to a wide audience. PDG aspires to cultivate an understanding and love of dance through education in the schools and in the community, through national and international performances, and other innovative programming.

YDP has earned a reputation for producing distinctive and well-produced programs of dance working with choreographers from both the UK and USA. YDP relocated to the UK in 2009 and continues to produce work in both countries. YDP designs their programming initiatives to promote and foster a vibrant culture of education and participation for professional and community dancers, while creating critically acclaimed and popular productions for national touring. Part of YDP’s programming vision is to reintroduce UK audiences to the work of Bella Lewitzky, a pioneer of modern dance on the West Coast whose company closed in 1997 and whose work has not been seen in the UK for decades. YDP is the first and currently the only professional company in Europe with the rights to perform Lewitzky’s works. And the only company with a commissioning strategy aimed specifically at supporting female choreographers. YDP is based in Cornwall, Somerset, and London.

ARC (A Room to Create) Pasadena is a striking new venue located in one of Southern California's most vibrant cultural centers. The mission of ARC Pasadena is to support and nurture an appreciation of dance by providing a state of the art facility for dancers, choreographers, teachers, lecturers and dance enthusiasts. ARC Pasadena also serves as the headquarters for the Pennington Dance Group, a non-profit organization that promotes dance through performances, education and outreach programs.

Tickets for the Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11 performances are $20 which takes place at ARC Pasadena, located at 1158 East Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91106. For tickets sales please visit www.penningtondancegroup.org.

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