The Flea Theater Announces Summer Line-Up Of Anchor Partners

The Flea Theater announces the roster of its Summer 2019 Anchor Partners, independent music, dance and theater companies who will perform at The Flea over the next three months. The Flea presents Elisa Monte Dance, Jody Oberfelder Projects, Spicy Witch Productions, Experiments in Opera, New Light Theater Project, Take Dance, New Georges and TOSOS.

"The Flea has always welcomed emerging artistic companies without permanent homes, and with our new three theater space, the opportunities multiplied." Says Producing Director, Carol Ostrow, "Our goal is to have three different shows playing in our three different theaters. Our Anchor Partners programs and productions are a great complement to the work that we do. We foster their work and they balance ours."

In summer 2019, The Flea's Anchor Partners will produce the following programming:

Elisa Monte Dance:
The 38th NYC Season (May 9 - 12) in The Sam.
The critically acclaimed and world-renowned Elisa Monte Dance (EMD), under the Artistic Direction of Tiffany Rea-Fisher, celebrates their 38th Annual NYC Season at The Flea. Rea-Fisher brings EMD to The Flea for their first season as Anchor Partners. EMD, founded by master choreographer, Elisa Monte in 1981, bridges cultural barriers through the universal language of dance. Rea-Fisher, Artistic Director since 2016, reinvigorates modern dance, while using the art form as a vehicle for community service. Travel across thirty-eight years of Modern Dance History in one evening. EMD will present classic master works, contemporary favorites, and world premieres. Monte's "Dreamtime" demonstrates the company's deep legacy in modern dance while proving the company's technical and theatrical excellence. "The Best Self" excerpt shows Rea-Fishers extreme range and sensitivity as a choreographer. Followed by a Rea-Fisher premiere, which sets out to elevate the American art form of Modern Dance into the future.

Jody Oberfelder Projects:
Madame Ovary (May 15-19) in The Sam.
Madame Ovary is a contemporary exploration of the body as a site of intuition, agency, and identity with choreography by Jody Oberfelder, music composed by Missy Mazzoli (funded by New Music USA), and lighting by Kathy Kaufmann. This new work uses Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary's story of a corseted life amid 19th Century social constructions as a springboard to address and provoke conversation on today's gender revolution and the #metoo movement. Oberfelder boldly weaves together small stories, broad contexts, and big dancing. With empathy, humor, embroidered breast plates, and badass rocker panache, Oberfelder addresses an ever-evolving terrain of womanhood. Madame Ovary is the third work in Oberfelder's body-part trilogy, following the heart, 4Chambers, (performed as an immersive installation on Governors Island and a former hospital in Brooklyn, 2013-14) and The Brain Piece, (at New York Live Arts in June 2017). This time Oberfelder focuses on the gut and genitals asking how are we defined by our bodies - or not?

Spicy Witch Productions:
Measure for Measure & Virtuous Fall (May 18 - June 1) in The Siggy.
Spicy Witch Production's fresh take on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure tells the story of women coming together to uncover a history of sexual harassment buried within the Justice System. This production explores sisterhood through a problematic classic and uncovers the zany humor at its core. Spicy Witch Productions' seventh season will explore the vital relationship between speech and power. We will present William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in repertory with the world premiere of The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows by 2019 Writer-in-Residence Gina Femia, inspired by Shakespeare's classic problem play. In the wake of the political and cultural tumults women have endured this year, SWP's season re-examines a frustratingly timeless question: if you speak the truth, who will believe you?

Experiments in Opera:
Chunky in Heat (May 31 - June 2) in The Sam.
Experiments in Opera and Contemporaneous present the premiere of Chunky in Heat an opera based on a libretto by celebrated author A. M. Homes. Chunky in Heat tells the story of a young girl who comes of age poolside at her family's home in the canyons of Los Angeles. Against this backdrop of privilege, she struggles to understand her place in her family and the world. Chunky in Heat features music by Jason Cady, Paula Matthusen, Erin Rogers, Aaron Siegel, Shelley Washington and Matthew Welch. This production is directed by Alison Moritz.

Take Dance:
In the Sea of Heaven (June 5 - 8) in The Sam.
TAKE Dance, the New York City-based contemporary dance company led by Artistic Director/Founder Takehiro Ueyama, presents In the Sea of Heaven. The program will include: New York premieres of In the Sea of Heaven and The Game 2 by Takehiro Ueyama, and a revival work Les Reves D'apres Midi by renowned choreographer/master teacher Kazuko Hirabayashi (1933 - 2016). The program's centerpiece is the New York premiere of In the Sea of Heaven, with live music performed by award-winning Japanese musician and composer, Kato Hideki. Inspired by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan as well as the 2017 hurricanes Harvey and Irma. It's a fairytale that pays tribute to the victims who are transformed into angels. Another New York premiere The Game 2 is a second incarnation of the men's quartet, The Game, from the full evening length work Salaryman. What happens when women join the workforce? How do their interpersonal relationships, dreams, desires and competitive nature to survive, to be recognized, to get ahead, reveal themselves? With gestures from the everyday lifestyle of the worker, these women fight their way to the top at any expense. There is no room for female sensitivities or sweet pleasantries. This is all about the big Win.
Les Reves D'apres Midi, music by Claude Debussy and choreography by Kazuko Hirabayashi is a classical modern duet based on an office romance between a boss and his secretary. As he dreams at his desk, his secretary becomes his object of desire, but only for a moment before they return to their mundane, everyday existence, while the memory lingers on. Originally choreographed on Takehiro Ueyama and Jill Echo in 2004, this revival is a way to honor Ms. Hirabayashi and her work. Her artistry and mentorship with Ueyama and Echo has spanned 30 years. Midi was outside of her normal body of contemporary, abstract work in that it leans more to the classical romantic approach to storytelling. It is timeless in its beauty and humanity.

New Light Theater Project:
The Great Novel (June 7 - 29) in The Siggy.
For most of her adult life, Bertha has served as the Brennans' housekeeper. While polishing the silverware and washing the windows, she dreams of honoring the promise she made to her grandmother long ago to write the next great American novel. But as she drafts her story, she can only see the imprints of the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and most of all, the Brennans. Spurred on by recurring visits from her Jamaican Granny in the afterlife, Bertha seeks a new language for a narrative that only she can tell, uninhibited by the ghosts of literary convention.

New Georges:
Leap and the Net Will Appear (June 10 - July 1) in The Sam.
What happens when Margie (raised to be a good girl; wants to be a lion) leaves home: twenty years whiz by like a moving train, logic and time escape their usual confines, steaks are eaten, tuxes are worn, the world expands, people transform, there is a rule that is breaking. In a world that is close to ours but is not ours, lions run with limitless grace, we all eat cake, and have some champagne.

TOSOS:
Bar Dykes (July 11 - August 3) in The Sam.
Behind a nondescript door you'll find a very distinct clientele where you get to immerse yourself into the world of butches and femmes, flirting, smoking and dancing. Playwright Mushroom, drawing on her experiences as a lesbian in the Deep South and New York City in the pre-Stonewall era, transports us into the hidden subculture of lesbian society in mid-century America, and into the women and their relationships in a precarious time.
Follow 11 bar dykes as they drink, dance, date, duke it out, and grab a few undisturbed moments. BAR DYKES will be an immersive staging, so the audience can experience and eavesdrop on a girls' night out captured in time, as it once was.

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