Photo Coverage: Take a Look Inside Dance Lab New York's Collaboration With The Joyce Theater

Dance Lab New York (DLNY) is halfway through its Lab Cycle in collaboration with The
Joyce Theater Foundation supporting female choreographers of color in ballet. Over the past two weeks, Amy Hall Garner and Preeti Vasudevan, have been exploring the classical and neoclassical ballet idioms with a company of eight professional dancers, supported by the DLNY Lab Cycle grant in space provided by The Joyce Theater Foundation. DLNY provided each of them with 30 hours of incubation, a stipend, eight paid professional dancers, a rehearsal director, insurances, and administrative support from DLNY staff and Founding Artistic Director, Josh Prince.

"I am a dancer with bare feet and bells, and I'm working with ballet dancers en pointe," said Preeti Vasudevan. "It was an incredible experience, taking what's in my mind and what I could imagine and trying it out for two weeks with dancers who are wonderful collaborators. It opened a massive door."

Amy Hall Garner added, "As a choreographer, you don't have these opportunities unless you're commissioned. It's not easy to get professional dancers in a studio who are so willing to investigate, with the right floor and insurance, but DLNY gave me the opportunity to do this and to explore. This experience gave me time. It may sound simple, but it's not."
The company of dancers, cast by Jason Styres, CSA, include: Anaïs Blake, Ramona Kelley, Yusaku Komori, Kelly Marsh, IV, Nicholas Sipes, Gabriela Soto, Kameron Triche, Allison Walsh, and rehearsal director, Richard Glover. The final two choreographers, Margarita Armas and Courtney Cochran, begin their Lab Cycle on Tuesday, October 29. The DLNY/Joyce Lab will culminate with a showing at Works & Process at the
Guggenheim Museum on Sunday, November 10, 2019. Tickets are available online at:
https://www.guggenheim.org/event/female-choreographers-of-color-in-ballet

The DLNY/Joyce Lab Cycle collaboration is made possible by the generous members of the DLNY Supporter Circle. Leadership Level: Jeff & Susan Campbell, Robert I. Lipp; Collaborator Level: Suzi Dietz, Jonna Mackin; Patron Level: Maria-Cristina Anzola & John Heimann, Margee & John Falk.

AMY HALL GARNER is a graduate of the Juilliard School, and an internationally known choreographer based in New York City. Amy has received the Joffrey Ballet's Choreography of Color Award, served as associate choreographer for the Off-Broadway musical, Invisible Thread, and coached Grammy Award- winner Beyoncé, providing additional choreography for "The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour."

PREETI VASUDEVAN is an award-winning Indian choreographer, performer, and educator. Preeti is an exponent of classical Indian dance (Bharatanatyam) creating new provocative contemporary works from the Indian tradition. She is the recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship; Lincoln Center Award; Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Selected Artist; Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellowship.
Dance Lab New York is the only independent organization exclusively dedicated to promoting and advancing the art form of choreography by gifting vital resources to a diverse range of dance makers. DLNY provides choreographers with a curated company of professional dancers, expansive studio space, and structured rehearsal time in order to incubate ideas in a fully professionalized environment. In addition to
creation grants, DLNY's initiatives in training and mentorship ensure continuous progression within the art form. This revolutionary new model for making dance fosters creativity, ingenuity, risk taking, discovery, and collaboration, which impacts the future of dance in New York and on stages across the world.
Over the past seven six years, DLNY has had the pleasure of providing a company of paid dancers and studio space to more than 45 choreographers, including three-time Tony Award- winner Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton), Camille A. Brown (Once on This Island), Hope Boykin (Alvin Ailey), Lorin Latarro (Waitress), Lauren Lovette (New York City Ballet), Al Blackstone ("So You Think You Can Dance"), Ray Mercer (The Lion King), Brooke Wendle ("America's Got Talent"), Rosie Herrera (Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre), Loni Landon (Loni Landon Dance Project), and more.

For more information on Dance Lab New York, please visit www.dancelabny.org.

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