Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company presents the New York City premiere of e-Motion at the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival on Friday, April 18th at 7:30pm, Saturday, April 19th at 5pm and Sunday April 20th at 3pm at The Downstairs Theatre at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 66 E. 4th Street, NYC. Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for students and seniors, and $10 for La MaMa Members. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.lamama.org/la-mama-moves-2025/.

e-Motion, a dance-theater collaboration between choreographer Daniel Gwirtzman and playwright Saviana Stănescu, explores AI, neuroscience and what it means to be human in a digital age. Gwirtzman creates a physical interpretation of Stănescu’s provocative text that brings conceptual ideas deep into the human body. The score is text, augmented by music composed by the late Jeff Story, a longtime collaborator of DGDC. The narrative duet, performed by Gwirtzman and Sarah Hillmon, follows the presentation of the AI creature for public consumption. The big launch. What could go wrong? Reviewing the premiere, The Ithaca Times wrote: “What e-Motion does well is to articulate the concerns (part ethical, part dystopian) of the bond between human and AI.”

e-Motion is presented in a shared program with Pat Catterson’s Tremor, a work for five dancers, and Then, a new solo. Join Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company in celebrating the 20th anniversary season of La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in a performance that explores resistance and transformation. The full festival runs from April 10-May 4, 2025.

About Daniel Gwirtzman

Daniel Gwirtzman celebrates thirty years as an NYC company director and choreographer. Since co-founding Artichoke Dance Company in 1995, “a welcome addition to the New York dance scene” (The New York Times), he has choreographed and performed without pause. Reviews from Artichoke’s debut concert earned him comparisons to Mark Morris, by Elizabeth Zimmer in The Village Voice, whose company he toured internationally with over several years as a guest.

A busy artist/scholar, Daniel Gwirtzman is deeply immersed in multiple arenas: as a producer, dancer, educator, and filmmaker, known for his blend of innovative and charismatic work. Collaborations blend genres and disciplines, take risks, involve community, promote optimism, and celebrate individuality and humanity. The New Yorker and The Village Voice describe him as “a choreographer of high spirits and skill,” and “an abundantly inventive artist with a subtle defiance of gender roles.” The New York Times writes “Mr. Gwirtzman does know that in dance less can be more. He can evoke strong feelings with a few gestures.” He has been awarded commissions, residencies and fellowships nationally and abroad. He is a professor at Ithaca College’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance and contributes nationally to the dance education field through his service as a Board Member of the National Dance Education Organization and as Chair of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance Alumni Board, his alma mater. Spring 2024 he was in residence at the Dora Maar Cultural Center in Provence, France where he produced the dance film Framing Ménerbes, which premieres this June in France and in NYC at the Dolby 88 Screening Room June 26 in Manhattan. For more tickets and more information visit, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/framing-menerbes-film-screening-and-reception-tickets-1242414337729.

About Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company

Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, known for its optimistic ethos, was formed in 1998. Since its inception, it has demonstrated a commitment to education operating with the philosophy and programming that everyone can join the dance. Incorporating dance and story into the film medium has been a consistent practice along with creating original programming for the stage. His repertory has earned praise for its humor, musicality, stylistic diversity, and accessibility. The Company’s acclaimed recent creation, Dance With Us, a free online educational resource received leadership support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and is designed to demystify choreography and increase comfort viewing and speaking about dance. The digital resource showcases the Company’s decade-long practice working in the dance for camera genre. Lincoln Center and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented the Company in 2023 during its 25th Anniversary season in a stand-alone program called Everybody Can Dance. In the summer of 2024 DGDC was in residence at the American Dance Festival where it developed its newest evening-length dance Flashpoint. Highlights include performances at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, Battery Dance Festival, Fire Island Dance Festival, Bryant Park, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

LA MAMA EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE CLUB is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa’s 63rd Season, the “La MaMa Beyond Season,” expands efforts to develop creative methods and tools for greater access to the arts. Pop-up performances and installations will be held in parks, neighborhood community centers,

and online. By going beyond La MaMa’s physical campus, new audiences and artists from different contexts are welcomed into the creative process.

La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently, a 2023 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Special Citation. We are a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world, many of whom have made lasting

contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, Robert De Niro, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Cole Escola, Bridget Everett, Harvey Fierstein, Diane Lane, Charles Ludlam, Tom Eyen, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Meredith Monk, David and

Amy Sedaris, Stephanie Hsu, Julie Taymor, Kazuo Ohno, Tom O’Horgan, Andrei Serban, Liz Swados, and Andy Warhol. La MaMa’s vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races, and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.

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