Sarah Skaggs presents "The New Ecstatic"

Sarah Skaggs busts a move in her 1990 solo, Prelude for Salome, that turns her slender arms, splayed forward, into dowsing rods. At another moment, she repeatedly smacks the floor with the soles of her feet the way a sewing machine needle punctures a length of fabric. As this dancer attacks the air--unfailingly elegant, yet insistent--a voice pours through the space: "A prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord will raise them....Hear me, church!"

Skaggs calls her season at Danspace Project The New Ecstatic, referencing the role of ecstasy in her imagination and her oeuvre--with samples from past work and a new duet with the fascinating Cori Kresge--as well as reworking the idea of ecstasy for our current moment. At only 45 minutes, this ecstasy hits and runs, leaving slightly dazed viewers to piece it all together. 

Skaggs's aesthetic touchstones, reportedly, are everything from medieval Danse Macabre to the Depression-era Graham of Steps in the Street to rock'n'roll. Her vision for dancers Emie Hughes, Meredith Fages, Joanna Kotze and Kresge--the last two, especially, capable of absorbing and fulfilling Skaggs's precise look and dynamic without becoming erased--opens a catalog of striking imagery. Animated skeletons, perhaps. Cheerleading, semaphoring stick figures. Temple dancing flattened onto ancient friezes. A body on a path to becoming its own shadow. Fever housed within ice. Complexity masked by the architecture of purity. A time of between-time. Presaging rumbles that terrify...and energize.

Sarah Skaggs Dance in The New Ecstatic concludes its run tonight with an 8pm performance at Danspace Project. Click here for information and tickets.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (corner Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Dancers to commemorate 9/11

The Table of Silence Project
conceived by choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi and Italian artist Rosella Vasta

The Table of Silence Project represents the common threads of humanity which unite all mankind into a single force with common goals and aspirations, regardless of race, culture or religion. Through this event we wish to achieve the dual purpose of celebrating and honoring peace through listening - a united moment of silence - a call for Peace in our world from NYC's community of artists. -- Jacqulyn Buglisi

Sunday September 11, 8:20 AM, ending at 8:46 AM
Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Complete information here

Sarah Skaggs Dance
9/11 Dance -- A Roving Memorial
 
An 11-minute meditative dance for large groups of dancers, performed simultaneously on September 11 from Noon to 3pm at multiple locations:

• Three New York City parks (Union Square, Washington Square and Battery Park)
• Washington, DC in the atrium of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and as part of the Arts on Foot Festival
• Shanksville, PA at Memorial Park

In shaping the work, Skaggs was driven by such questions as: What is the function of dance post-9/11? What is the role of the body in an anxious and fearful climate? And can multiple bodies moving slowly in space create a shift in public consciousness?

The project will be broadcast on YouTube following the events. Visit Sarah Skaggs Dance.