10HL Dance Company Returns to New Brunswick for 5th Season

10 Hairy Legs returns to New Brunswick for its fifth consecutive season at a new location. Tickets for the weeknight show are $25 General Admission/Students at the Door and $20 for Artists, Students in Advance and Groups of 10 or more. Tickets: 10HL.org. The performance features the New Jersey Premieres of 10HL 2016 Commissions by Doug Varone and Megan Williams, a Preview of a new Commission by New Jersey native Al Blackstone, and a new work choreographed by Artistic Director Randy James.

Blackstone stated, "Working with 10 Hairy Legs is an opportunity to blur the line between dance and theater, comedy and drama, classic and cutting edge. The young men in the company differ from dancers in most other companies in that they themselves transcend labels. They are classically trained yet commercially viable, exquisitely sophisticated and somehow also scrappy and humorous. My work centers on storytelling and is usually inspired by the dancer/actors and the spirit that they bring into the space." Al Blackstone

Commenting on Doug Varone's premiere of mark in June 2016, Deborah Jowitt wrote in Arts Journal - "Varone's 'mark' mates strongly designed movements with cool precision." And about Williams' Quadrivium, "...tricky individual paths come together in elaborate counterpoint."

James' work, entitled Moonlight, features 20 emerging professional NJ dancers who are alumni of 10HL Dance Education Programs. Our guest dancers are currently enrolled in the BFA program in Dance at Mason Gross School of Arts, Rutgers University. They hail from: Ballet Forte Studio (Chester), Morris County School of Technology, Union County Vocational and Technical Schools, Bayonne, New Brunswick, Ocean County, Somerset and Union City High Schools, where our Teaching Artists have taught and mentored them prior to their admission to Mason Gross. James noted, "I am thrilled to provide an opportunity for these students to appear with the professional dancers in our company, and to showcase the esthetic that we have helped them to realize in their emerging dance careers."

New Jersey students featured in "Moonlight" Include: Erin Ambry (South Amboy), Bria Bacon (Rahway), Brittany Barthelmy (Lafayette), Jackie Carelli (Bridgewater), Kristen Fry (Howell), Karolina Holstrom (Mount Tabor), Lauren Karow (Hillsdale), SAra Martino (Edison), Kenneth Montes de Oca (Union City), Nayaa Opong-Nyantekyi (Cherry Hill), Rebecca Pavelko (Bayonne), Joseph PIccioto (West Orange), Francisca Quantanilla (North Bergen), Adrianna Santoro (Belle Mead), Claudia Soga (Milltown), Christina Trautwein (Kendall Park), Jose Vidal Mejias, (Union City), Micayla Wynn (Sussex), Abigail Wolski (Sayreville), Kerry Zak (Livingston).

A Silent Auction to benefit the company will take place that evening in the Café at George Street Playhouse.

Grant funding for this performance has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders through a grant provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State.

About 10 Hairy Legs

10 Hairy Legs is an all-male repertory Dance Company performing existing and newly commissioned works. Since our founding in 2012 we have commissioned 12 works from choreographers Doug Varone, Doug Elkins, Tiffany Mills, Manuel Vignoulle, Julie Bour, Megan Williams and founder Randy James. We have served more than 65,000 patrons, students, artists and educators throughout the NY/NJ region, in NYC at New York Live Arts, The 92nd Street Y, Brooklyn Dance Festival, Modern Dance at Bryant Park, Dixon Place, Gibney Dance, Joe's Pub, West End Theatre, Fire Island for the DRA Benefit Week End, Dance at Socrates, Koresh Come Together Festival; on tour to the Choregus Dance Festival in Tulsa, OK, Seattle, WA, The Cayman Islands, New England; and Rhode Island; broadcast nationally and internationally on NJTV's State of the Arts, The Meredith Vieira Show and Nick Cannon's Red Nose Dancathon, and in residence at the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center. In December 2016 we were the only American Dance Company appearing at the Cape Town (South Africa) International Dance Festival. We provide a wide range of education programs for all ages focusing on the many facets of maleness as expressed through dance, serving more than 6,500 students and educators each year.

"...since its formation in 2012, its rapid growth has been astonishing...The diversity of this programming is a treat for audiences...this company has also become a welcome source of choreographic commissions." - Robert Johnson, 2014.

In 2015 10 Hairy Legs launched 10 HL Projects, which includes women for specific productions outside of the all male company. The first of these was a new full-length work based upon C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, choreographed by James that had its World Premiere at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in January 2016.

Our Artistic Collaborators are choreographers Julie Bour, Seàn Curran, David Dorfman, Dan Froot, Doug Elkins, Heidi Latsky, CLeo Mack, Tiffany Mills, David Parker, Stephen Petronio, Claire Porter, Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor, Doug Varone, Manuel Vignoulle, Christopher Williams and Megan Williams; musicians Tigger Benford, Sarah Biber, Jane Chung, Lachlan Glen, Kyle Olson, Robert Maggio, Michael Wall, Dorian Wallace and Peter Whitehead; and designers Abraham Cruz, Oana Botez, Cindy Capraro, Benjamin Heller, John Lasiter, Naomi Luppescu, Mary Kokie McNaugher, Dennis O'Leary-Gullo, Lauren Parrish, Amanda Ringger, Amanda Shafran, Ken Tabatchnik and Olivier Theyskens. In addition to their work with 10 Hairy Legs, our company members are currently featured artists with The Bang Group, Stephen Petronio Company and Zvi Dance, among others.

Leadership funding for the company has been provided by The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, New Music USA's Live Music for Dance Program, The Frank & Lydia Bergen Foundation, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The O'Donnell Green Music & Dance Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Magyar Bank Foundation, Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission, with assistance provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Dept. of State, the Rutgers Research Council and The Hyde & Watson Foundation.

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