DANCE NOW's final bow

Today, DANCE NOW’s Founders and Board announced in a letter to artists, audiences and supporters that they had made the difficult decision to shutter operations as of December 31, 2021. The full text of the letter is shared below.

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Dear Beloved DANCE NOW Community,

DANCE NOW started in 1995 as a wild experiment to bring artists and audiences together through unconventional and accessible programs as a catalyst for creativity and exploration. From a small program in the Soho Arts Festival to a widening network of performance, creative development, and educational opportunities, DANCE NOW (DN) has been steadfast in our love for dancemakers and their ability to tell stories, to connect and provoke, to move and inspire. It is with a heavy heart, but also tremendous pride and gratitude, that DN shares that this is our final bow. The combined challenges of the COVID epidemic, the uncertainties around live performance, and loss of some foundational income has led the Board to this necessary decision. While the leadership announced the close of programming
by December 31st, DANCE NOW is honoring all existing commitments to artists through 2022, including the commissioning fees of 22 digital works and a creative commission for Kyle Marshall. The Fall On Demand program, featuring short dance works by The Davis Sisters, Davalois Fearon, Paul Singh, Rourou Ye, Audrey MacLean, and The Bang Group, will premiere at a virtual Watch Party on November 4, 2021 and will serve as the final performance event for DN.

Over the years, DN presented dance in more than 25 traditional and unconventional venues throughout NYC, and became the fall kick-off to the dance season. In 2003, DN created the Dance-mopolitan series, using the intimate setting of Joe’s Pub at The Public to inspire creativity and to give audiences an up-close and personal cultural experience. In the past decade, DN has diversified its programming to help start, expand, and  advance the careers of artists through residencies, teaching and performance opportunities, including more than 25 evening-length works for Joe’s Pub. DN constantly grew our community of artists, seeking out new voices, while continuing to support and promote existing artist
relationships across many generations. In response to the challenges of COVID, DN celebrated our 25th Anniversary through a new digital platform and interactive artist-to-audience celebrations. DN has presented the work of 1,000+ choreographers and more than 10,000 performers have graced our
stages and screens.

To our partners, funders, and audiences, thank you for your faith, investment and support on this exciting adventure. To our staff, Board and advisors, thank you for helping to steer the ship over the years. To Lauren, thank you for going above and beyond in every role you’ve taken on to realize the DN vision for 13 years. And to our beautiful, brilliant and passionate community of artists, thank you for 25 years of extraordinary dance and magic.

It has been our honor and privilege to have been an ally, accomplice, advocate, and ringleader. We look forward to seeing how we can all continue to dance outside the box!

With much love,

Robin Staff, Founder & Artistic Director
Tamara Greenfield, Founder & Board Chair

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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The cupcake-ization of New York: Penny Arcade speaks out

Penny Arcade on the Professionalization of Performance Art
by Geraldine Visco, Hyperallergic, December 31, 2014

A valentine from David Parker at Joe's Pub

Jeffrey Kazin (left) and David Parker in Head Over Heels
at Joe's Pub
(photo by Yi-Chun Wu)

"I used to think of myself as a song-and-dance man manqué," said choreographer David Parker, as he welcomed a huge Valentine's weekend crowd to his latest show, Head Over Heels, created expressly for Joe's Pub and DANCENOW. "I've been able to realize my dreams here." Parker and his gang, The Bang Group, are perfectly happy to cram themselves into the Public Theater's little pie-wedge stage, and the cheerful nightclub setting serves them well.

The timely theme, this time, is love in all its ups and downs and uncertainties. That theme--surely you've noticed--owns lots of real estate across the artistic landscape and certainly plays out across all areas of great attraction to Parker: classic show tunes and romantic comedies, tuxedo-ed tap dance numbers and the like. Head Over Heels, with its intense "musical chairs" couplings--enacted in close quarters by Parker, Jeffrey Kazin, Amber Sloan and Nic Petry--marries conventional entertainment values to unconventional, and continuously shifting, romantic configurations.

Parker (left) with Nic Petry and Amber Sloan
(photo by Yi-Chun Wu)

Made for the Joe's Pub space-time continuum--that pie wedge, those 60 minutes, that audience serviced with food and drink and then quickly ushered out before the next crowd arrives--Head Over Heels compresses a lot into its limitations. There are ten numbers, all linked to the letter "R": Restlessness, Retrenchment, Replacement, Reconciliation, Reconsideration, Recrimination, Resolution, Resilience, Relapse, Restoration. A little too cute, this, and I lost track of which "R" was which in any given moment, but that probably does not matter. The "What's New, Pussycat?" section of "Replacement" showed the tightest example of Parker's clever intricacy of craft, with Kazin and partner Petry confined to and spinning around an axis as if dancing and figure skating atop a turntable.

More generous and bubbly in nature than subversive, Head Over Heels is, nevertheless, every openly gay-positive show--on television, in the movies, on Broadway, on the ballet stage and on ice--that folks from my generation should have been fortunate enough to see when we were growing up. Parker goes back to go forward.

Head Over Heels has closed. Keep up with The Bang Group's activities by clicking here. For information about upcoming events at Joe's Pub, click here.

Susana Cook brings her "Caligula" to Joe's Pub

Joe's Pub 
presents

Susana Cook's

WE ARE CALIGULA

A show about Cruelty and Pleasure

November 19, 9:30pm

Susana Cook (photo by Lorie Novak)

Legendary downtown theatre auteur Susana Cook brings back Caligula, the meanest man in history, in this delightfully witty and savagely funny play. Caligula, the cruel and brutal man who thinks he's God, is dissected, lampooned and spliced with the everyday acts of normalized cruelty that people do in the name of entertainment, pleasure and protein - and because they taste good. There will be comedy, savagery and even an orgy or two - all to a musical score by Julian Mesri.

“Cook’s style is to employ chitchat and push it to extremes of absurdity. She’s really good at it.” -EDGE New York, New York

“With an entertaining blend of show tunes, massacres, and orgies, “We Are Caligula” explores just how our species justifies war, and racism, and homophobia, and all the other stuff that ends in us devouring each other (and animals) without a second thought.” -Gay City News

Info/Tickets

Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette (between Astor Place and West 4th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Celebrate with Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely!

TOSHI REAGON & BIGLovely

invite you to

 Toshi's Annual Birthday Celebration

January 18-20

at Joe's Pub

Musician Toshi Reagon

Friday, January 18 -- 9pm

Saturday, January 19 -- 9pm

Sunday, January 20 -- 7pm The Sacred Music Show featuring Bernice Johnson Reagon [SOLDOUT!]

Featuring Judith Casselberry, Stephanie McKay, Marcelle Davies Lashley, Adam Widoff, Robert Burke, Fred Cash, Jason Walker, Josette Newsam Marchak

Tickets can be purchased online at joespub.com, where customers are able to select their seat from an interactive seat map when purchasing, by phone at 212-967-7555, or in person at The Public Theater Box Office (1 PM to 6 PM) located at 425 Lafayette Street, NYC.

Directions to Joe's Pub

We hope to celebrate, but even if...

Toshi Reagon

Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely

invite you to a

Post Election Show 

No Matter What!

Friday, November 9 (9:30pm)

@Joes Pub

featuring Judith Casselberry, Marcelle Davies Lashley, Stephanie McKay, Fred Cash, Adam Widoff, Bobby Burke

Tickets and info here

About Toshi Reagon and BigLovely

Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette Street, near Astor Place (Manhattan)

We love Toshi!

By the time you get to the end of January, you might already find 2012 a little played out. But not if you celebrate with award-winning singer/songwriter/musician Toshi Reagon!

Toshi Reagon
(c)2008, Sharon Farmer 

Join Toshi for one of her four annual birthday shows at Joe's Pub (January 26-29) and catch the spirit. Get all the details and your tickets here.

Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place), Manhattan
(directions: scroll down)

AUDIO PREVIEW: David Parker

Delightful dance artist David Parker talks about his new collaboration with Jeffrey Kazin--Misters & Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance--in this audio preview.

Click here to listen.

David Parker and The Bang Group 

Misters & Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance

Joe's Pub
at The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street

(between Fourth Street and Astor Place)

Manhattan

Thursday through Saturday, June 2-4, 7pm

Misters and Sisters, a new work by and about David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin and their performing alter egos, represents a new way of working for Parker. This show─a kind of autobiographical fiction─is inspired by and dedicated to Parker’s father, mystery novelist Robert B. Parker, whose words “Don’t look for yourself in your work, look for your work in yourself,” Parker pays homage to here. Delving into their lives together, Parker and Kazin, joined by Nic Petry and Amber Sloan, cut a swath through an array of romantic standards from the American songbook as they chronicle their life together in song and dance. Misters and Sisters includes dramaturgy by Anne Davison and musical direction by Anna Ebbeson.

Ticket information and purchase: 212-967-7555, online or in person at The Public Theater box office from 1-6pm, and at Joe’s Pub from 6-10pm daily.

a DanceNOW [NYC] presentation

Eva's Grabbag.1

Let's be frank: In New York, there's so much to do, see, hear, read, think AND write about that it's impossible to keep up with it all. (As you folks post your events on Facebook and email your press releases, just imagine my hands thrown up in a mixture of overwhelm and surrender.) So, every now and then, I'm just going to toss out some quick recommendations for InfiniteBody readers to consider and hope you'll step forward and take it from there.

I think I'll just call this Eva's Grabbag!

Eva's Grabbag.1

Dance critic Jennifer Homans (The New Republic) gave a fascinating talk and Q&A about her critically-acclaimed, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, at 92Y Tribeca this afternoon. After listening to Homans trace the intricate, mutually transformative connections between classical ballet and the societies that birthed and nurtured it, I'm ready to take the complete journey with her. I enjoyed her clear, lively analysis, her embodied perspective as a former ballerina and her obvious passion for her subject. "Dancing--ballet, in particular--was one of the most powerful experiences of my life," she told us, and this sounds like a valuable and powerful book. (Random House, 2010)

Coming up at Joe's Pub--Sandra Bernhard and Justin Vivian Bond in Arts & Crafts:

"...country cousins whose lives have led them in very different directions. One went from being a rock chick to born again motherhood in the Midwest and the other from small town gay to urban art world sophisticate. When the two meet up again at a family wedding they set of on a journey rediscovering their authentic selves and learning that ideology doesn't mean much when stacked up against art love and really good acid." March 7, 7:30 and 9pm. Get info and tickets.

Salsa, baby! Lehman Center for the Performing Arts presents its 30th Anniversary Gala Concert with the legendary Ruben Blades ("El Poeta") and Gilberto Santa Rosa ("El Caballero de la Salsa") performing together for the first time! Saturday, February 26, 8pm. Get info and tickets.

American Tap Dance Foundation presents TAP TALKS / TAP FILMS on Sunday, February 20, 1:30pm: Juanita Pitts: Race, Gender and the Female Hoofer (video and history). Presentation by Margaret Morrison. Free for registered ATDC students. $5 general admission. American Tap Dance Center, 154 Christopher Street, Manhattan. Get info or call 646-230-9564.

More grabbags to come soon! Everybody have a fabulous evening!

Taps like a butterfly

Joe's Pub welcomes the world-renowned tapdancer Roxane Butterfly

Saturday, July 31, 9:30pm

Underground tap-icon Roxane Butterfly comes back to New York with a brand new collaboration featuring the music of pianist Frederique Trunk, to offer an evening of contemporary tap, ethno-jazz and spoken-word. The two French-American women will join their talent to reflect on their experiences as women, perpetual immigrants and lovers of life. This two years-old collaboration started as a co-production of Central Art Process, a multi-disciplinary artists collective based in Barcelona and has toured Italy and Spain. With Hilliard Greene on bass.

Joe's Pub

425 Lafayette Street (near Astor Place), Manhattan

(212) 539-8777

Information and reservations