NYMF and The Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company Present ENCORE 10/1-3

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) and The Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company present The Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company (DGDC) in ENCORE, conceived, directed and choreographed by Daniel Gwirtzman. ENCORE performances will take place on Thursday, October 1 at 8:00PM, Friday, October 2 at 8:00PM and Saturday, October 3 at 4:30PM at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, 248 W. 60th Street, between Amsterdam and West End Avenues. Tickets, priced at $20 go on-sale September 1, and can be purchased online at www.nymf.org or by calling (212) 352-3101. For more information, please visit www.NYMF.org or www.GwirtzmanDance.org.

Presenting a behind-the-scenes perspective, ENCORE gives audiences rare insight into a troupe of Broadway dancers preparing to go on the road under the pressure of a fastidious and demanding choreographer. During their final rehearsal, the cast goes through the rigorous and lightning-quick paces of one show-stopping number after another - set to classic jazz recordings - working through the uncertainty, headaches and hilarity of the intense process of making art, and raising the age-old question: will the show come together? ENCORE's exploration of speed, virtuosity, and non-stop movement challenges the stamina of its performers, as well as its audience's expectations. ENCORE is a bit of feel-good escapism, designed to leave the audience humming and tapping. ENCORE alternates between the artifice of the stage, depicted through vibrant, theatrical numbers, and the reality of life in the studio.

The Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company (DGDC), a New York-based non-profit organization directed by Daniel Gwirtzman was "founded upon a philosophy that dance should celebrate human achievement through a combination of discipline and unbound optimism" (The New York Sun, 2008). Since its inception in 1998, the Company has consistently earned praise for its exemplary dancers and inventive choreography, as well its demonstrated commitment to education. DGDC celebrated its tenth anniversary last year - a decade of programming without pause - and has stayed true to its mission of cultivating the creation of innovative art and presenting it to the public in interactive, accessible and meaningful ways through classes, workshops, lecture-demonstrations, residencies, performances, its website, and instructional videos.

In June 2007 the Company premiered ENCORE at Joyce SoHo to critical and public acclaim. It was later reprised in December 2007 as part of The Joyce Theater's twenty-fifth anniversary season. In the spring of 2008, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs funded the Company in a ten-performance tour of ENCORE, taking the Company to four of the City's five boroughs.

DGDC has been awarded residencies by The Joyce Theater Foundation (NY), The Yard (Martha's Vineyard), Raumars Artist-in-Residence Program (Finland), the Sacatar Foundation (Brazil), and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (CA).

As part of its tenth anniversary season in December 2008, Timebomb premiered at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan. The New Yorker described the piece:

Gradually building up from a solo into a quartet, Timebomb doesn't explode all at once. Instead, eyeing each other warily as they work in the round, negotiating handholds and counterbalances in fraught encounters, the dancers suggest participants in the kind of complex schoolyard game that can turn brutal in an instant. A drum-heavy score helps sustain the tension, but it's mostly Gwirtzman's choreographic craft and invention-setting the free swing of limbs and bodies against forces of suspension and hesitation-that keep the work taut and surprising.

Please visit the Company's website for additional information - www.gwirtzmandance.org.

Daniel Gwirtzman directs, choreographs, and dances for the New York-based Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, a nonprofit performing and teaching organization. Since 1995 his work has been received to critical acclaim. Known for its entertaining flair, stylistic diversity, musicality, innovation, and accessibility, his choreography has been performed at venues throughout the country and abroad. As a dancer he has been described as a willowy John Travolta, sensual, playful, a rag doll, unusually supple, and one who moves like the wind. He has toured nationally and internationally with Garth Fagan Dance and the Mark Morris Dance Group, among other companies and has been a guest choreographer at various institutions including the North Carolina Dance Theater, the University of Michigan, the North Carolina School of the Arts, Fordham University/The Ailey School, Princeton University, New York University, Barnard College, Duke University, The University of the Arts (Philadelphia), The Interlochen Center for the Arts (Michigan), and the LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts. Gwirtzman helped to develop the Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts, the NYC arts curriculum mandated by Mayor Bloomberg. His solo Character (excerpted from ENCORE) was presented at the National American College Dance Festival's Kennedy Center season in 2006. In January 2008 he was one of twenty-five artists from fifteen countries invited to attend the Rural Retreat near London, an international think tank/leadership conference for future leaders in dance sponsored by DanceEast, one of the UK's leading dance organizations. Last year, his essay Fan The Flames was published in Dance/USA's spring journal and he choreographed Kiss Me, Kate for the Muhlenberg Summer Music Theater Festival. Gwirtzman holds a BFA from the University of Michigan, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The New York Musical Theatre Festival, now in its sixth year, has premiered more than 175 new musicals since 2004. The largest musical theater event in America, NYMF has been hailed as "the Sundance of Musical Theatre," and is widely regarded as the key source for new material and talent discovery. NYMF is the flagship program of National Music Theater Network, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is presented in association with BroadwayWorld.com, Production Resource Group and TheaterMania.com, and is supported by Back Stage, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, BroadwayBox.com, BroadwayInsider.com, Broadway.TV, Clear Channel Spectacolor, DFD-TV, Frank & Camille's Fine Pianos, King Displays, Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, New World Stages, NASDAQ OMX, Next Magazine, Queerty.com, Reuters, Sweet Caroline's, Tekserve, TheMenEvent.com, The Tank, and Times Square Squared. Major supporters include The ASCAP Foundation, BMI Foundation, Inc., The Nathan Cummings Foundation with the support and encouragement of Jamie Mayer, The Charlie & Jane Fink Charitable Fund, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Theater League. NYMF is supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Tickets to individual festival events are now on sale to NYMF Members and will go on sale to the general public on September 1. NYMF Memberships, which combine charitable contributions with valuable, flexible ticket packages and perks like early seating, are currently available for purchase at (212) 352-3101 or www.nymf.org.

Catch ENCORE at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center (248 W. 60th Street), located between Amsterdam and West End Avenue, with performances Thursday, October 1 at 8:00PM, Friday, October 2 at 8:00PM, and Saturday, October 3 at 4:30PM. All tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at www.nymf.org or by calling (212) 352-3101. For more information, please visit www.NYMF.org and www.GwirtzmanDance.org.

 

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