DOUGLAS DUNN + DANCERS presents APRIL FESTIVAL – EARLY & LATE

TIME OUT (1973) and the premiere of TANDEM (2018)

Choreography by Douglas Dunn
Douglas Dunn Studio

Doors open at 7:00 – Curtain at 8:00
Seating Limited.

Time Out – It was a pivotal year for Dunn. He was thirty-one. He had left the Cunningham Company in the spring of 1973. Grand Union was sporadically continuing. He had danced duet concerts with Sara Rudner, David Gordon, and Pat Catterson, here and there had also presented short solos on mixed programs. What now? He wrote: “I’m in turmoil. It’s a question of confidence. These theatrical scenes running around in my head, for years. If I can bring them to life as an evening-length solo, my dance-heart will strengthen, I will persevere. If not, retreat to shyest corner is likely.” The piece premiered at The Westbeth Theater, NYC, December 4,5. Parts of the solo were then included in a collage of ‘70s work at Dance New Amsterdam in 2007. Dunn says: “It’s character work. There’s hardly any dancing in it. I think I can do it. One last foray. The mature version.”

Tandem – Performers: Douglas Dunn, Jules Bakshi, Alexandra Berger, Emily Pope, Jin Ju Song- Begin, Paul Singh, Jake Szczypek, Timothy Ward, Christopher Williams. Dunn writes: “The new piece imagines wide space. You look out over a savannah, turning your head. What’s going on over to the left, what’s going on over to the right? In the studio, audience will sit against the brick wall, allowing maximum sideways elasticity. The title? With bodies, singly or together, one thing must follow another. While working, I consider this limitation an opportunity.”

Douglas Dunn began presenting work in New York City in 1971. In 1976 he formed Douglas Dunn + Dancers and began touring the U.S. and Europe. In 1980 the Paris Opera and the Autumn Festival invited him to set Stravinsky’s Pulcinella on the Paris Opera Ballet. He has collaborated on film and video-dances with Charles Atlas and Rudy Burckhardt. He works with visual artists (Mimi Gross, David Ireland, Uli Gassmann, Jeffrey Schiff), composers (Joshua Fried, Bill Cole, Eliane Radigue, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, Linda Fisher, John Driscoll, Ron Kuivila), poets (Anne Waldman, Reed Bye, Ruth Margraff), and lighting designer Carol Mullins, to present a multifaceted dance image. Dunn has received funds for his work from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and other sources. In 1998 he received a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award for Sustained Achievement.

For more information about Douglas Dunn + Dancers, visit www.douglasdunndance.com

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“Almost nothing can’t not happen” – Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice
“Astringent, but never abrasive, it’s like fire on ice – impossibly beautiful and always in the process of disappearing before your very eyes” – Allen Robertson, TIME OUT
“Dunn has acquired an impressive reputation as an intrepid and illuminating explorer of new dance forms…a presence and individuality that have a few counterparts today” – Dale Harris, The Guardian
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