DANCEOFF!

Andy Horwitz

After packing them in at Galapagos, The Flea, Symphony Space and Joe’s Pub, DANCEOFF! will be performing this Tuesday, Oct 19th at Performance Space 122.

Terry Dean Bartlett (STREB) and Katie Workum (Workum/Garrett Dance Theater) will continue their critically acclaimed series with another of their signature brand, full-contact, non-competitive (sometimes non-dance) not-really-competitions.

Bringing you what’s up in downtown dance, the evening will feature eight short-works by modern dance’s best, brightest, and newest emerging artists. It’s a guaranteed good time.

October’s DANCEOFF features: Noemie La France, Danny Clifton, Jenny Seastone Stern & Julia Jonas, Katie Workum & Leigh Garrett, Young Dance Collective, Clare Byrne, David Neumann, a new dance-film by Terry Dean and Katie and more!

For more information visit the DANCEOFF! website.

October 19
8pm and 10pm
Tickets: $15
Performance Space 122

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3 responses to “DANCEOFF!”

  1. Quinn Batson

    This review was originally written for offoffoff.com, but was not published. It is posted here in its entirety.

    DANCEOFF!
    PS122, October 19, 2004
    by: Quinn Batson

    Choreographers:
    Terry Dean Bartlett and Katie Workum
    Noemie Lafrance
    Daniel Clifton and Aaron Draper/A+D Dance
    Kimberly Burnette/Young Dance Collective
    Leigh Garrett and Katie Workum
    Hal Hartley/David Neumann
    Julia Jonas and Jenny Seastone Stern
    Clare Byrne

    Danceoff! is a quirky little dance series hosted by Terry Dean Bartlett and KatieWorkum that doesn’t take itself too seriously but mixes things up well. This edition of the series was full of weirdness and humor but left room for sweetness and light as well.

    A slightly precious site-specific piece by Noemie Lafrance kicked things off by using the support columns as onstage props, with light African music by Fela and vaguely simian performances by Emma Stein and Jeffrey Crumrine.

    “Danceoff!: The Motion Picture” was Terry Dean Bartlett and Katie Workum goofing around in clueless-geezer-workout-clothes drag at running-track exercise stations with just enough dance movement and reference to be “dance.”

    An excerpt from “This is a True Story” amped up the psychosexual electricity a bit with a twisted tale of cross-dressing, identity issues and love geometries, set somewhere in the Daisy Duke South. Daniel Clifton, Aaron Draper and Amy Larimer, aka A+D Dance, gave this piece just the right amount of conviction and lethargy to do justice to a piece with “additional text by George Orwell.”

    Far on the other end of the spectrum was the angelic “Be There for Me” by the appropriately named Young Dance Collective, a group of protodancers with an average age of ten. Hannah Burnette, Sophia Orlow, Liana Ray, Isa Reisner, Cosmo Scharf and Kassandra Thatcher gave every fiber of themselves to performing this delicate piece set to Steve Reich music in white costumes, danced around parallel translucent white walls of fabric. It was a joy to watch these kids give staple dance movements fresh life, and their enthusiasm was contagious.

    Returning to, um, Iraq, was the barely sane duet “The Toni and Marylin Story, part 2: Going International” by Leigh Garrett and Katie Workum, which followed this duo as they pursued grant money from the NEA, which in this scary future has actually been merged with the USO. They gamely go with the flow and against each other to create something full of conflict that the armed forces might actually appreciate. This dance audience certainly appreciated it.

    David Neumann performed a solo by filmmaker Hal Hartley as only he could, giving a Willie Loman salesman character his sad and undivided attention in deceptively mundane movements that ultimately touch something deeper.

    “I May See You on Tuesday” was a somewhat confused amalgam of narration and movement with an unexpectedly brilliant biblical interpretation of Job’s story thrown in midway, performed by Andrew Dinwiddie, Chris Wild, Tim Donovan, Jr., Kourtney Rutherford, Jennie Marytai Liu and Julia Jonas.

    The finale, truly, was Clare Byrne’s excerpt from “Swing High, Fly By” danced by Byrne, Will Rawls and Sharon Estacio. This piece drove home what a misnomer “jazz dance” via Bob Fosse and Broadway musicals really is. For the first time, this dance set to jazz by Eric Reed fits the name “jazz dance.” Jazz is a music of fluidity and flux performed best by virtuoso musicians, and “Swing High, Fly By” matched this musical energy with virtuoso dancing in a fluid and beautiful piece.

    Danceoff! events are scheduled for February and April 2005. See http://www.danceoff.net for more information.

    Reply
  2. terry dean

    There is an All New DANCEOFF! scheduled for February 18th & 19th @ Symphony Space’s “Laughter After Dark” Comedy Festival starring Leigh Garrett, Ryan Bronz, Jonah Bokaer, Parallel Exit, Ivy Baldwin Dance, Jenai Cutcher, Nathan Phillips, Katie Workum, and Terry Dean Bartlett w/ Members of STREB!

    To Purchase Tickets goto: http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/eventPage.php?eventId=1023&genreId=3

    Check out Culturebot’s Preview of last year’s DANCEOFF! at Symphony Space here->
    http://www.culturebot.org/archives/2004/01/12/Danceoff.php

    For complete info on this, and future DANCEOFF! productions, goto http://www.danceoff.net

    Reply
  3. Isa Reisner

    It was alot of fun performing in the Dance Off. I enjoyed the whole experience and I liked meeting other dancers. Thank you for inviting the Young Dance Collective!!!!!

    Reply

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