New York-based nonprofit performing and teaching organization Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company presents Dance With Us, an educational digital platform centered around the premiere of a series of new dance films. The resource launches from June 25-27, 2021 at 7pm ET with the premieres of the films and the reveal of the platform, a website whose URL will go live at this moment. The same program will be repeated on the three successive evenings, with a special guest host each night.

The evenings will be hosted by emcee Daniel Gwirtzman with special guests Dante Puleio, Artistic Director of the Limón Dance Company on June 25; Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Artistic Director, Elisa Monte Dance on June 26; Seán Curran, Artistic Director, Seán Curran Company on June 27, and Michael Novak, Artistic Director, Paul Taylor Dance Company, who will appear all three nights virtually with a special message.

The kickoff events include an exclusive guided tour of the website, a screening of several short films, the World Premieres of Willow and Dollhouse, and previews of six new dance films that will launch monthly through the end of 2021. The events are free with advance registration requested here. Donations are accepted via the Company’s PayPal Giving Fund, where 100% of contributions go to the nonprofit. Mixing discussions, dancing, and conversations, the interactive premiere promises to be highly accessible, entertaining, and educational. Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/477005623/da16bc6f95.

This multi-faceted project explains ways to view and speak about dance. Utilizing performance and studio footage, the resource demystifies concert dance by teaching fundamental concepts of the art form. This digital resource will be distributed widely and freely, contributing to the Open Educational Resources movement (OER), a commitment to equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The resource will be available to anyone regardless of geographic location. Multiple partnerships will ensure the impact on students, professionals, and the general viewership. The Company will also provide the resource to channels, institutional libraries, public and private schools (K-12, Higher Education), and culturally based organizations.

Schedule of Events
6:45pm: House Opens with Pre-Show Slideshow of 200 Company Photographs
7:00-8:00pm: Program
8:00-8:30pm: Discussion
8:30-9:00pm: After Party

Highlights
Amuse-Bouche: Parade, a two-minute film for the ensemble, acts as a curtain for the evening.
Tour of the Site: Like walking through the rooms of a house, the platform will be revealed and explained.
Watch excerpts of the pedagogical films.
View the Library, an archive of dance films and filmed performances documenting the Company’s history.
Be among the first to watch a suite of new films produced during the pandemic.
Featured films Willow, Dollhouse, and The Fantasyland Project.
Sneak Peek at the upcoming dances to be launched this year.

Premieres
Willow and Dollhouse. These films were created last August, early on in the pandemic, when the Company came together for a residency in Newfield, NY, near Ithaca. Precautionary measures to test, self-isolate and stick to a limited bubble, allowed the dancers to rehearse and create outdoors in a range of stunning landscapes, from forests to meadows.

Willow
The film, showcasing an ensemble of dancers moving in unison in a variety of natural settings, finds inspiration from the transformative process of a tree. Filmed last summer, the title of the piece and the nature of it resonates at this time. Trees bloom again and so will we. We may be weeping now, but we will soon bloom flowers! Remaining stationary does not mean we are incapable of growth. There is much beauty in what we can accomplish despite seemingly stagnant positions. We are more than capable of blossoming into magnificent, strong trees. The metaphor reminds that good that can come from reconnecting to one’s roots, or from planting new seeds in order to form new roots, or connections, in one’s life. An elegy for those that passed from the pandemic, Willow is set to Scott Joplin’s stirring Weeping Willow.

Dollhouse
Filmed in an eccentric interior, a series of vignettes animate an eclectic cast of ten in this dollhouse which comes to life. Dollhouse toys with the trope of a traveling troupe of performers seeking to entertain, challenging the viewer to determine for whom the performance is happening, questioning the perspectives of performance itself. Colorful, humorous, moody, and exuberant, Dollhouse features unmasked dancers in proximate relationships set to a breakneck version of Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm, played by pianist Jonny May.

Discussion
Then stay with us immediately after for an interactive half-hour to continue the conversation of dance, an open forum where viewers can engage directly with the Company.

After Party
Each night, the Company will host a 30-minute interactive dance party, with Daniel and guest emcee teaching an array of fun, easy-to-learn social dances, including his signature, the 1970s classic The Bus Stop. Designed for everyone, the night promises to finish on a high and energized note.

“Contemporary dance has been seeping more and more into the mainstream culture for decades, enhanced with the advent of shows such as So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars. With the proliferation of dance online, increased exponentially during the pandemic, more people are arguably seeing contemporary dance than ever. And an appetite for innovative choreography is a byproduct of this exposure,” said choreographer and company director Daniel Gwirtzman. “The development of Dance With Us was in place years before the pandemic, with resources that have been created over the past two decades, an extension of programming we have offered as a company since our inception in 1998. We have long been committed to conversing about dance, empowering audiences to trust their opinions, and gain more knowledge of dance in pursuit of expanding one’s dance literacy. The ubiquity of dance on film, finding more currency in popular culture, is not going to change. This platform gives everyone, regardless of their exposure to dance, tools to use to speak about dance, encouraging them to understand their viewpoint is as valid as that of an ‘expert.’ At this moment when there is so much dance to see, this platform seeks to serve as a how-to primer.”

A teaching and performing organization celebrating its 22nd Anniversary, Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company has demonstrated a commitment to education since its inception. The Company has stayed true to its mission of cultivating the creation of innovative art and presenting this to the public in interactive, accessible, and meaningful ways. The Company believes everyone can join the dance. Programs encourage audiences to be active participants, integrating communities into the dance-making and performing processes, and teaching how dance can play a meaningful part of one’s physical and overall health.

This project is aligned with the Company’s core values, pedagogy, and programming, which have consistently gained acclaim. Narrated films will present favorite dances from the Company’s repertory, illuminate dance histories, provide wellness best practices, and showcase the Company through behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. The project is also aligned with the production of dance films the Company has consistently created the past ten years. This April 16, the Company’s acclaimed film Terrain (2015) screens at the Videoskin Festival in Nepal. Watch the 40-second trailer at https://videoskin2018.wpcomstaging.com/.

Six months prior to the pandemic shutting down life in the U.S., the Rockefeller Brothers Fund allocated a grant of $10,000 to DGDC toward the creation of an interactive educational digital resource geared toward a general viewership.Dance With Us seeks to bridge the divide separating dance from mainstream culture, underscoring the primacy, purpose, and possibility of dance in contemporary life. Combining the instructional with the performative, the resource aims to increase the public’s knowledge of dance and their dance literacy, to share the love of dance, and to introduce ways to view, speak about, and participate in dance with comfort. The platform seeks to demystify concert/contemporary dance.

“Being in touch with humanity and understanding empathy is articulated and sharpened through the arts,” said Daniel. “Art in general provides that opportunity to be in touch with the range of emotions and the range of connections that make us tick as humans. And dance specifically, where you are literally sharing somebody’s weight, you’re holding somebody’s hand, you’re looking in their eyes. You’re having an analog connection, not a digital connection, in this increasing age of more and more technology and distractions. The spirit of being alive comes through art.”

One of the new films central to the Dance With Us platform is The Fantasyland Project, which premiered a few months into the pandemic. While this had a limited screening at that time, the film will live, free of charge, on the new platform, available for all to enjoy.

The Fantasyland Project, a collaboration between choreographer Daniel Gwirtzman and a cast of sixteen dancers, investigates the notion of fantasy through a range of lenses. Through a very socially distanced process, each dancer was charged with responding to a series of written prompts to spark the conceptual kernel that interested them most. Working with Daniel to distill the intellectual ideas and ground them in a concrete scenario, the process of creating a unique fantasy necessitated finding a location, and collaborating with the choreographer, costumer, and composer. The project reflects this moment in time as a springboard from which to explore the mundane, comedic, dramatic, and the horrific.