The Joyce Hosts Dance Talks With Martha Clarke & Alfred Uhry

In advance of the highly anticipated New York premiere of Angel Reapers, the new dance/theater/music piece with text by Alfred Uhry and direction and choreography by Martha Clarke, the two creators will sit down with Gideon Lester (Director of Columbia University's Arts Collaboration Lab) to discuss this provocative work on Monday, November 21 from 6pm-8pm at Joyce SoHo (155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince). "Dance Talks," a conversation between artist and audience, illustrated with dance videos and movement demonstrations, is free and open to the public, however reservations are required and can be made by calling (646) 792-8377.

Martha Clarke says that the making of Angel Reapers was a "labor of love." It has taKen Clarke and her collaborator playwright Alfred Uhry seven years to create and produce this dance theater work based on the Shakers. Clarke, a New Englander, felt an affinity to the minimalist Shaker aesthetic, and was fascinated by the repressed community founded by "Mother Ann" Lee. The work is described as "a stirring and dramatic blend of shaker songs, modern dance, and theater about forbidden sex and un-channeled lust in New England's 18th century Shaker community." In a video illustrated evening, Gideon Lester (Director of Columbia University's Arts Collaboration Lab) converses witH Clarke, examining the ideas that make up this new work.

Angel Reapers, a collaboration between Pulitzer, Tony, and Academy Award winning writer Alfred Uhry and MacArthur "Genius" Award recipient director/choreographer Martha Clarke, is a multidisciplinary work suggested by the life of Ann Lee (1736-1784), founder of the Shaker movement. Mother Ann, as she became known, was a visionary, mystic and powerful spiritual leader. Preaching celibacy, she demonstrated that through shaking and trembling movements, sin could be purged from the body. These gesticulating, dancing motions gave the Shaker sect its name. Angel Reapers is not biographical in the usual sense; the staging is more loosely constructed, slipping in and out of reality and embracing Ann's visions and those of her followers. The plot is woven throughout with movement, song and dance to bring to life this extraordinary 18th century woman and the singular world she created. It examines the contradiction between the prim prudery of Shaker tenets and the wild, sexual nature they suppressed.

In Angel Reapers, the dichotomy between the prudish teachings and the hot-as-fire passion of the Shaker community is explored in this uniquecollaboration between Clarke and Uhry, two contrasting artists - one whose work is typically rooted in narrative structure, and one who tells stories throughmovement and image-making.

Dance Talks with Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry, moderated by Gideon Lester will take place on Monday, November 21 from 6:00 - 8:00 PM at Joyce SoHo (155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince). Admission is free, however reservations are required, and can be made by calling (646) 792-8377. For more information, visit www.Joyce.org.

Martha Clarke (Director/Choreographer). A founding member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Crowsnest, Martha Clarke has choreographed for Nederlans Dans Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among others. As a director Ms. Clarke's many original productions include "Garden of Earthly Delights"; "Vienna: Lusthaus"; "Miracolo d'amore"; "Endangered Species"; "An Uncertain Hour"; "The Hunger Artist"; and "Vers La Flame." She directed the premiere of Christopher Hampton's "Alice's Adventures Underground" at the Royal National Theatre in London. In opera, Ms. Clarke has directed "The Magic Flute" for the Glimmerglass Opera and the Canadian Opera Company; "Cosi Fan Tutte" for Glimmerglass; Tan Dun's "Marco Polo" for the Munich Biennale, the Hong Kong Festival, and the New York City Opera; and Gluck's "Orfeo and Eurydice" for the English National Opera and New York City Opera. She directed "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for The American Repertory Theatre and a new music/theatre work, "Belle Epoque," based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec at Lincoln Center Theatre. "Kaos," an evening of Pirandello's short stories presented at New York Theatre Workshop, was granted the first Tony Randall Foundation Award in 2006. Ms. Clarke is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Award in addition to fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation. She has received the Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards and the LA Critics Award. In 2007, she received an NEA grant to re-envision "Garden of Earthly Delights" under a program dedicated to the remounting of American masterworks. It opened at the American Dance Festival and received an extended commercial run in New York. For "Garden" she received the Joe A. Calloway award for choreography in 2009, and in 2010 the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award. This spring she will premier a new full-evening work at La Scala Opera in Milan, Italy.

Alfred Uhry (Playwright) is distinguished as the only American playwright to have won a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and two Tony Awards. A graduate oF Brown University, Uhry began his professional career as a lyric writer under contract to the late Frank Loesser. In that capacity, he made his Broadway debut in 1968 with Here's Where I Belong. His first major success came when he collaborated with Robert Waldman on a musical adaptation of Eudora Welty's The Robber Bridegroom, which opened at the Mark Taper Forum in 1976 and went on to Broadway, winning Mr. Uhry his first Tony nomination. He followed that with five re-created musicals at the Goodspeed Opera House. His first play, Driving Miss Daisy opened at Playwrights Horizons Theatre in New York in 1987. It moved subsequently to the John Houseman Theatre where it ran for three years and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. The film version, starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy, won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1990. The film also won the Best Picture Award. His next play, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, was commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It opened on Broadway the next year where it ran for over 500 performances and won Uhry the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award and the 1997 Tony Award for Best Play. His book for the musical, Parade, directed by Harold Prince with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, won the Tony Award in 1999. A revised production at the Donmar Theatre in London won Mr. Uhry an Olivier Award Nomination and went on to Los Angeles where it opened to rave reviews in October, 2009. His play, Without Walls, starring Laurence Fishburne, opened at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in June of 2006. His next play, Edgardo Mine, played the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 2006 and the book for Lovemusik, a musical about Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya ran on Broadway in 2007. It was directed by Harold Prince. For this, Mr. Uhry won another Drama Desk nomination. He is currently finishing a play commissioned by the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Dance Talks are part of The Joyce's Dance Education Program, which is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Lead corporate support provided by Bloomberg.