Fly-by-Night Dance Theater's 20th Anniversary Performances | Return To Form at Five Angels Theater @ The 52nd Street Project

Twenty years ago, Choreographer and Artistic Director Julie Ludwick teamed up with dancer and Assistant Director Janet Aisawa to found Fly-by-Night Dance Theater, Inc., a Modern Dance company that embraces low-flying Aerial Dance. Together they have created a repertory based on the philosophies of Joan Skinner and Robert Davidson that has expanded the expressive possibilities of Aerial Dance.

PERFORMANCE VENUE AND DATES: Five Angels Theater789 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10019 Saturday, February 1 @ 8:00 PM & Sunday, February 2 @ 7:00 PM Tickets: Adults $25 (advance) $40 (at the door) Adult + 1 child $26 (limited number available in advance) www.flybynightdance.org (212) 627-4409

Choreography by Julie Ludwick with performances by:
Janet Aisawa, Martin Richard Borromeo, Sharon Connelly, Cecilia Fontanesi, Alissa Kaplan Soto, Erica Lessner, Julie Ludwick, Maia Ramnath, Despina Stamos, with live music by Paul Uhry Newman

Fly-by-Night Dance Theater expands the genre of aerial dance through visceral works that traverse emotional territories. The repertory integrates dance and low-flying trapeze and includes live music in performances and regularly commissions original music for dance. The Aerial Dance repertory extends the movement into the vertical plane, painting the stage space with eloquent strokes of movement. *This is not a production of The 52nd Street Project.*

Featured Artists:
Julie Ludwick has created dozens of works for Fly-by-Night Dance and her choreography has been produced at numerous venues including The Flea Theater, PS 122, Dixon Place, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, and Mabou Mines Theater as well as several colleges around the U.S.. Her work with theater includes Mapou Productions How Papa Noel Forgot Haiti at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall starring Danny Glover and The Circus Show at the University of Missouri's Graduate School for Theater. She is a master teacher, choreographer, dancer, and scholar (MA from Teachers College Columbia Univeristy, MFA from George Washington University). Her Aerial Dance technique was built on the approach of her mentor, Robert Davidson, and it has been featured in Paper Magazine, Time Out NY Dance Magazine, and in a documentary from AfterEd TV, as an outstanding alum of Teachers College, Columbia University. As Artistic Director of Fly-by-Night Dance she has produced 8 Aerial Dance Festivals in New York City, 8 Free-for-Kids Projects, and 13 seasons of her own repertory. Her projects have received support from The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Puffin Foundation, The Frances Alexander Family Fund, The Cartwheel Foundation, the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NOMAA), JP Morgan Chase, Fleet Bank, Dance Theater Workshop,and The New York City Council. Fly-by-Night Dance believes it is vital to open up opportunities for artists of color and each year they hold a scholarship audition for dancers of color to study Aerial Dance with the company.

Janet Aisawa is a founding member of Fly-by-Night Dance Theater and has been Assistant Director, Rehearsal Director, and performer for the company. In her own work she has choreographed and directed an evening-length multi-media dance performance, "Them", in June of 2017 which was about the experience of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the 1940s and was presented at University Settlement in NYC. In 2016 she collaborated with Yuko Takebe on the film "Shadows of Hiroshima", which premiered in NYC. She has co-directed and performed in evening-length pieces with Beth Soll and Mary-Clare McKenna and, in 2012 conceived and directed "Generations-Women Dancing form 9-90". She also worked with Lee Nigrin for 20 years, as Assistant Director, Dramaturge, and performer. She has performed with Ollom Movement Art, Kristin Hatleberg, Laura Shapiro, and Dan Froot.

Paul Uhry Newman is a percussionist in the Haitian tradition and toured nationally and internationally for twelve years with the traditional Haitian drum and dance ensemble La Troupe Makandal. His work as a drummer can be heard on recording with Makandal for the Smithsonian Institute as well as on soundtracks for industrial videos with Virginia Quesads. He has worked with various jazz and improvisational groups. As a member of the Frank Marino Multi-directional Music Collective he performed avant-garde jazz music numerous times at the Main Street Arts Theater in Nyack, New York. He has also worked in theater in New York as a playwright in collaboration with Mapou Productions on shows at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and is a published poet. As a composer and poet he has performed and recorded on a variety of instruments including numerous drums, voice, diddley bow, bowoul, xylophone, piano, newspaper shoes, and other found objects that he has used as instruments. He has performed with Fly-by-Night Dance Theater for numerous seasons and received Meet the Composer grants for his work.