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Announcement: AN EVENING OF WORKS BY KAZUKO HIRABAYASHI DANCE THEATRE

October 20, 2009 by  
Filed under iDANZ Performance Bulletins

AN EVENING OF WORKS BY
KAZUKO HIRABAYASHI DANCE THEATRE

KAZUKO

Friday, October 23 – 9pm
Saturday, October 24 – 8pm
Sunday, October 25 – 3pm

 
Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th Street at 9th Ave.
New York, New York 10019

The Spring (WORLD PREMIERE), a large ensemble piece set to Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”, explores the traditional ritual of the “iomante” ceremony celebrated by the Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan. Deities such as the black bear, who delivers fur and meat to the Ainu, are indispensable to their lives. The Ainu bear sacrifice is a ceremony to send the spirit of the bear back to its own world, thus ensuring a bountiful hunt.

Haiku (WORLD PREMIERE) is a solo for Sarah Stackhouse, a former lead dancer with the Jose Limon Dance Company, about whom Jennifer Dunning wrote, “Her gifts have been forged in the fire of dance history.” The accompaniment is "Two Haiku" by Basho set tothe music of Joji Yuasa, “Koto Uta Basho’ s 5 Haiku.”

Light Is Calling (WORLD PREMIERE) is a joyous escapade for six dancers to a section of music of the same title by contemporary composer Michael Gordon.

Mudai (1971) is a revival of a quartet to an organ score by the late German-Argentinean composer Mauricio Kagel features performances by Daniel Madoff of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Jeremy Nedd, formerly of Hubbard Street 2. In a 1978 review in the NY Times, Jennifer Dunning wrote: Mudai is “a work of clarity and invention…one of Miss Hirabayashi’s more sculptural dances, and like many of the works she choreographed then it grants… the same rare sense of vitality to the space between shapes as does a formal Japanese garden.”

Bereft (2008) is an ensemble piece featuring eleven dancers Kathryn Alter of the Jose Limon Dance Company, set to the documentary film score, "Koyaanisqatsi", by Philip Glass.  Based on the story of Genesis, Bereft proceeds from the point when Adam and Eve are exiled from the Garden of Eden.  Jennifer Dunning called the work "a dark, swirling maelstrom".

DANCERS—–  Sarah Stackhouse, Kathryn Alter, Daniel Madoff, Selena Chau, John Hinrichs, Stacy Martorana, Jeremy Nedd, Adrian Silver, Alenka Cizmesija, David Claps, Giovanna Gamna, Kyle Gerry, Kathryn MacLellan, Hanan Misko, Luke Murphy, Rio Tasia Smith, Jessica Stanelle, Meggi Sweeney, Hiroko Yanagawa

For reservations email KHDTinfo@gmail.com or call 212-966-6414

Tickets: $20/$15 student

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Formed in 1971, Kazuko Hirabayashi Dance Theatre’s work is drawn from Ms. Hirabayashi’s unique background.  It combines her firm base in classical and modern American dance with her Japanese heritage and its Eastern philosophical and artistic assumptions.  She appeared with the Martha Graham Dance Company as a dancer, and also served in many capacities at the Martha Graham Center.  Ms. Hirabayashi currently serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School and Alvin Ailey Dance Theater School.  She is the graduate program director at SUNY-Purchase; and is the director of dance for the Burgos Summer Program in Spain, which has expanded this past summer with the implementation of a Paris program.  Ms. Hirabayashi is a recipient of the Doris Humphrey Choreography Fellowship, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council for the Arts.

This program is made possible in part by the Soar Grant from the Asian American Arts Alliance.

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