New York City Players to Premiere Tina Satter's HOUSE OF DANCE at Abrons, 10/23-11/9

New York City Players' world premiere production of Tina Satter's House of Dance, presented in association with Half Straddle and Abrons Arts Center, will run October 23 - November 9 at the Abrons. House of Dance is the third production in New York City Players' American Playwrights Division, a program curated byRichard Maxwell and devoted to producing full productions by emerging writers who direct their own work. The cast of the world premiere will include Jess Barbagallo, Jim Fletcher, Elizabeth DeMent and Paul Pontrelli.

Performances of House of Dance will take place at 8pm October 23 - 27; October 31 - November 3; and November 7 - 9, in Room G05 of Abrons Arts Center. Critics are welcome as of Friday, October 25 for an official opening on Sunday, October 27. Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased at 212.352.3101 or www.abronsartscenter.org.

At a tap dance studio in a small town, four characters prepare for a competition. Tensions flare and dead dreams fly back to life as the instructor teaches a new routine to his student. Staged within the four walls of a dance studio, House of Dance creates a hyper-realistic environment that serves as a launching pad where dance practice turns virtuosic, piano accompaniment blossoms into evocative songs, and the roles of student and teacher begin to shift as the characters' fears are exposed.

Writer/director Tina Satter uses the setting of small-town tap dance studio to frame the desires of individuals looking for larger meaning in tap dance and indirectly each other. Furthering her interest in gender and performance, the play draws on the masculine energies of the four performers and their roles in the piece.

The creative team includes Chris Giarmo (composer, music director), Hannah Heller (choreographer), Andreea Mincic (sets), Zack Tinkelman (lights), Enver Chakartash (costumes), Randi Rivera (stage management), Ilan Bachrach (video design), Richard Maxwell (producer) and Lindsay Hockaday (associate producer).

Tina Satter has been described as a "rising experimental star" by The New York Times and named a 2011 Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch by Time Out New York. She has written and directed five plays that have been curated into seasons at various venues in New York City, including the PRELUDE Festival, Incubator Arts Project, HERE Arts Center, and the 2010 Ice Factory Festival. Her play In the Pony Palace/FOOTBALL was named a Top 10 Show of 2011 by Paper, among other honors, and Family was named a Top 10 Show of 2009 by Time Out New York. Her other full-length plays include Away Uniform, The Knockout Blow and Nurses in New England. Additionally she has been invited to show smaller pieces and works-in-progress at Envoy Gallery, Dixon Place and CATCH! performance series. She is the artistic director of the performance company Half Straddle, a co-curator of Little Theatre at Dixon Place, and a featured director at Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival. Satter attended Mac Wellman's graduate playwriting program at Brooklyn College and received a B.A. in English from Bowdoin College and an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Reed College.

New York City Players' American Playwrights Division program helps early-career auteurs create theater on their own terms. Previous productions include Vision Disturbance by Christina Masciotti, and Dreamless Land by Julia Jarcho.

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