TAKE Dance Premieres Distance of The Moon at Judson

Led by Artistic Director/Founder Takehiro "Take" Ueyama, the TAKE Dance company premieres The Distance of The Moon, a full-evening work featuring six different musical selections choreographed by Ueyama, Jill Echo, Kile Hotchkiss and Julie Tice. Known for its penchant for musicality, TAKE Dance has commissioned PULSE, a federation of six award-winning composers, to create multi-genre works for this debut collaboration.

"TAKE Dance thrives on collaborating with contemporary artists in other genres," says Ueyama. "It's one of the major motivating factors in our creative process." The choreographers have been working day-in and day-out with PULSE's group of composers. TAKE Dance and its members' organic and evocative movements have helped shape and execute the music of each piece. Music will be performed on-stage "live" by some of today's top jazz and classical artists (line-up TBA).
The program is inspired by the short story The Distance of the Moon from Italo Calvino's phantasmagorical 1965 book Cosmicomics. The story depicts a time before history when the Earth was so close to the Moon that people could climb ladders and jump onto the Moon's lunar surface.
Ueyama pairs his "forceful, fluid movement" (Bloomberg News) with Joseph C. Phillips Jr.'s classical/jazz compositional style in a pas de deux depicting the love story between the Moon and the Earth. Set to The Distance of the Moon - music that conjures up wonder, mystery, and beauty - the work is a metaphor for two lovers, like the Moon and the Earth, slowly moving apart and never feeling closeness again. Ueyama's second piece is a men's quartet portraying quasi-human creatures who discover the Moon set to And Dance By the Light of the Moon by composer/saxophonist Joshua Shneider.

Jill Echo, a former Paul Taylor dancer and founding member of TAKE Dance, brings two works that illustrate the various effects that the Moon has on us. In Moonshine, theatrical choreography and funk-laced music by composer/guitarist Jamie Begian together portray the enigmatic influences the Moon has on a group of seven people. Add a bar scene with the effects of alcohol and you get a comedy of mayhem and uninhibited behavior. In contrast, Echo's second piece depicts the Moon's luminous beauty and its ability to ignite one's unconscious. Set to TBA composed by Japanese artist Yumiko Sunami, Echo applies the Moon's ethereal powers to a quintet of women through four phases - New Moon, Ascending Moon, Full Moon, and Descending Moon.

Similarly, choreographer/dancer Julie Tice, a fellow Paul Taylor alumnus, is also captivated by the changing phases of the Moon. In a new piece set to Lunar Cycles by composer/trombonist JC Sanford, Tice explores the Moon's transformations and how they affect people's characters.
Rounding out the program is the choreographic debut of TAKE Dance member Kile Hotchkiss. Featuring a quintet outlining the alignment and dissolution of a lunar eclipse, this piece explores the measures of shadowed darkness from astral projections, all to the music of Imperfect Syzygy by composer Darcy James Argue, Topping the "Composer Rising Star" and "Arranger Rising Star" categories in the 2010 DownBeat Critics Poll, Darcy James Argue sets the tone with his much talked about "wickedly intelligent dispatch from the fading border between orchestral jazz and post-rock and classical minimalism" (New York Times).

About TAKE Dance
TAKE Dance is a New York City based contemporary dance company that explores the integration of expressive and physical movement. Artistic Director Takehiro "Take" Ueyama, a native of Japan, graduated from the Juilliard School before joining the Paul Taylor Dance Company. After eight years touring with the Taylor Company, Take founded TAKE Dance.

TAKE Dance has performed in New York at Central Park SummerStage, Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, Columbia University's Miller Theater, and the Thalia Theater at Symphony Space. The Company has also performed for four consecutive seasons PS/21 in Chatham, NY and at various summer dance festivals including Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, SaratogaArtsFest, Downtown Dance Festival and DanceNOW [NYC]. Additional venues include New Noises Festival at Perry Mansfield in Colorado, Kaatsbaan International Dance Festival, and Nort Maar Fete de Danse. TAKE Dance is also the subject of an award-winning documentary film entitled A YEAR WITH TAKE DANCE which was chosen by the New York International Independent Film Festival as the winner in the category of Best Dance Documentary for 2009.

Ueyama's work has been staged for the Tallahassee Ballet, PHILADANCO for the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, the Alvin Ailey/Fordham University Dance Program and for the Dance Departments at the Juilliard School, Purchase College, Vassar College, Princeton University, The New School, Marymount and Randolph College among others. www.takedance.org
About PULSE

Joseph C. Phillips Jr. founded the composer federation Pulse in 2004 with Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider, and Yumiko Sunami, composers who shared a desire to create and perform music that has no rigid divisions or categories. Music that is more plastic and fluid in its combination of jazz, contemporary ‘classical', and ‘popular' genres creating a highly expressive, engaging, and refreshing group not bound or defined by any one musical style. Through regular concert performances and collaborative projects, Pulse continually seeks to challenge and inspire each other and listeners.