2018 DANCE NOW Festival Comes to Joe's Pub September 5-8

DANCE NOW is pleased to announce the lineup for the 2018 DANCE NOW Festival. Acclaimed for its adventurous short-takes format, the DANCE NOW Festival presents a diverse array of works by some of today's most exciting dance makers. The 23rd season of this lively fall festival will feature 40 emerging and established choreographers, including DANCE NOW veterans and festival newcomers. The festival emcee is TruDee (aka Deborah Lohse). The 2018 festival will take place Wednesday to Saturday, September 5-8, at 7pm, at Joe's Pub at The Public. A special encore performance will be presented on Thursday, September 27, at 7pm.

The annual DANCE NOW Festival offers a unique challenge for artists: to create a clear and complete artistic statement in five minutes or less for the specifics of the stage at Joe's Pub. Each year, the festival producers select ten artists whose work best meets the festival challenge to participate in an encore performance. The overall challenge winner receives a $1,500 development stipend and a weeklong creative residency at DANCE NOW Silo on Kirkland Farm in Bucks County, PA.

DANCE NOW Festival subscription: Purchase a ticket for two or more festival shows for $16 per show. Single tickets are $20 in advance/$25 at the door. Encore tickets are $25 in advance/$30 at the door. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 212-967-7555, online at joespub.com, and in person at The Public Theater box office from 2pm to 6pm.

Joe's Pub at The Public is located at 425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place).

2018 DANCE NOW Festival Lineup and Schedule:

Wednesday, September 5

• The Bang Group
• Jane Comfort and Company
• Dance Heginbotham
• Brendan Drake
• Raja Feather Kelly | the feath3r theory
• The People Movers
• Amber Sloan
• Gus Solomons jr
• Kate Weare Company
• Nicole Wolcott

Thursday, September 6

• Chelsea Ainsworth + Doron Perk
• binbinFactory/Satoshi Haga & Rie Fukuzawa
• Alexander Davis and Michael Figueroa
• Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works
• Loni Landon Dance Project
• Heidi Latsky Dance
• Kyle Marshall Choreography
• Schoen Movement Company
• TAKE Dance
• Zvi Dance

Friday, September 7

• Tsiambwom M. Akuchu
• Christal Brown/INSPIRIT
• dendy/donovan projects
• Jamal Jackson Dance Company
• Cleo Mack/Rock Dance Collective
• LAJAMARTIN
• Claire Porter/PORTABLES
• Marion Spencer
• Subject: Matter
• Riley Watts

Saturday, September 8

• Tricia Brouk
• Catie Cuan x RAD Lab
• Khaleah London/LAYERS
• Passion Fruit Dance Company
• Dmitri Peskov
• Kora Radella
• Shaina + Bryan: BAIRA I MVMNT PHLSPHY
• Megan Williams Dance Projects
• Wallie Wolfgruber
• Yin Yue/YYDC

Programs subject to change.

About DANCE NOW

DANCE NOW is produced by directors Robin Staff, Sydney Skybetter, and Tamara Greenfield.

For 23 years DANCE NOW has bent the rules to offer all-inclusive destination events that reveal the bustling energy and innovation of New York City dance makers. Created in 1995 as a program of the Downtown Arts Festival, DANCE NOW launched in 1996 as an independent festival. Without a performance venue, DANCE NOW learned to embrace limitation as a powerful source for creativity. Seeking creative ways to bring dance and community together, DANCE NOW developed partnerships to connect new audiences to innovative dance makers. Presenting dance in venues both traditional and not, DANCE NOW designed all-inclusive destination events for drained swimming pools, firehouses, galleries, and Joe's Pub, where, in 2003 DANCE NOW introduced the Dance-mopolitan series. In 2005, DANCE NOW furthered its "less is more" mantra, creating a challenge initiative to encourage work marked by brevity, clarity, and effect. This inspired the commissioning of full-evening works specifically for the Pub, and the merging of all DANCE NOW programs to the Pub in 2011.

DANCE NOW's programming at Joe's Pub has defied the standard and encouraged artists to think outside the box and utilize the unique space, creating an inspiring new platform for dance. In the last decade, DANCE NOW has produced numerous critically acclaimed works at Joe's Pub including Doug Elkins' Fräulein Maria, David Parker's ShowDown, Misters and Sisters, and Head Over Heels, Nicholas Leichter's The Whiz and 20/20, Kyle Abraham's Heartbreaks and Homies, Nicole Wolcott and Vanessa Walters' Alley of the Dolls, Camille Brown's One Second Past the Future, Monica Bill Barnes's Snow Globes, Takehiro Ueyama's Somewhere Familiar Melodies, Claire Porter's Sent-ence, Mark Dendy's NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place, Ellis Wood's The Juggler of Our Ladies, Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott's Places Please!, and, most recently, Megan Williams's One Woman Show.

From a small festival series to four distinct programs, from NYC to Pennsylvania, DANCE NOW presents young innovators and emerging and maturing artists side by side, building relationships at varying stages of development and providing comprehensive assistance to advance creativity and new career paths. DANCE NOW Joe's Pub challenges artists to investigate new directions. DANCE NOW Raw funnels new artists into its programs. DANCE NOW Silo and DANCE NOW SteelStacks provide paid teaching, residencies, and commissioning and performing opportunities through partnerships with DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, Lehigh Valley Charter School, and ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA.

DANCE NOW is supported, in part, with funds from the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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