Work & Show Festival

An outgrowth of the Tribeca Performing Arts Center’s ten year old Artist-in-Residence program, the Work & Show Festival features material by eight artists representing dance, theater and music. The program for the series is as follows:

March 14 & 15, 2007
Rob Reddy’s Small Town
The Book of the Storm
Presenting the world premiere of saxophonist/ composer Rob Reddy’s hour-long composition, The Book of the Storm. The four-movement piece is performed by the new 19-piece ensemble Rob Reddy’s Small Town, featuring some of the most respected musicians in New York. Reddy explains the inspiration for the piece: “Many cultures have stories of a ‘great flood’ […] and we recently saw the near death of a major American city by a modern-day storm that left thousands ignored and displaced. The piece is also inspired by the metaphorical storms of social, political and economic oppression, as well as the personal struggles creative artists face in today’s world.”

March 16 & 17, 2007
Christal Brown/INSPIRIT
Sixteen Stories
INSPIRIT’s first venture into dance theatre is a multimedia tapestry of narratives. Through dance, video, spoken word and text, the company portrays 16 distinct stories; tales of people who only have in common the concrete borders of an apartment building. This is a dance about environment, perspective, and the essentially human desire to thrive regardless of circumstance. The dance features several original compositions from musician Daniel Jose Older and poetry from Nikki Giovanni.

March 19, 26 & 27, 2007 (FREE)
Lynn M. Thomson/America-in-Play
March 19: From Sea to Shining Sea: American Landscapes
March 26: Yankee Doodles: From Crackerbarrel Philosophers to Silk Crooks
March 27: Tall Tales, or Performing Democracy
For nearly two years, a dozen writers have investigated a neglected legacy from America’s popular drama created between 1776-1914. Now, the playwrights, building on and responding to this precious cultural inheritance, create short new plays, to be presented over three evenings. This series of readings seeks to explore the shared national identity of “We, the People” in contemporary stories. Participating playwrights include Erin Courtney, Les Hunter, Ruth Margraff, Dominic Taylor, Anne Washburn and Gary Winter.

March 23 & 24, 2007
Pedro Ruiz (Double Bill, Part 1)
Passages of Love – Pasajes de Amor
This new dance piece explores the private world that exists within each of us of love lost and love found. Inspired by both Spanish and South American music and culture, Passages of Love capture’s the joy and pain of romance. Through dance, romance in all its emotional expression – passion, despair, joy and fulfillment – is dynamically expressed and portrayed in a series of vignettes. The contemporary dance fuses ballet, modern and Latin dance forms into a spirited and vivid image of Hispanic-American culture.

March 23 & 24, 2007
Mei-Yin Ng/MEI-BE Whatever (Double Bill, Part 2)
Cinderella Toe Jam II: Royal Pink
Inspired by The Lotus Lovers by Howard S. Levy, which documents the custom of foot binding in China, Mei-Yin Ng has created a new full-length dance piece that explores concepts of female beauty and the position of women in different cultural settings, and how these concepts relate to the body and to movement. Royal Pink explores restriction through the body, resulting in a dance that reveals an unusual and unexpected beauty – the transformation of body, lives, movement.

March 30 & 31, 2007
Andrew Palermo and Taye Diggs/dre.dance (Double Bill, Part 1)
me, myself and lie
A dance work divided. It is structurally broken into two main sections and eight subdivided sections. The piece is built to work as a whole, or to be pulled apart, leaving each vignette to serve as it’s own mini-work. Artistically, the thirty-minute work deals with identity, focusing on our inner definitions of “self,” versus what we display to the world.

March 30 & 31, 2007
Deganit Shemy (Double Bill, Part 2)
Yod
This dance piece choreographed by Deganit Shemy explores the inner microcosms of five women with hidden rules and roles. Born and raised in Israel, Deganit Shemy studied plastic art at the Kalisher School in Tel Aviv. In 2002 she won the coveted Ministry of Culture Prize for Young Choreographers.