Park Avenue Armory to Launch 2015 Season with Sellars and Gray's FLEXN

Park Avenue Armory has commissioned dance pioneer Reggie "Regg Roc" Gray and visionary director Peter Sellars to create a performance piece that evolves the tradition of flex, the Brooklyn-born street dance. Characterized by sharp, rhythmic contortion, pausing, snapping, gliding, and animated showmanship, the flex form evolved from the Jamaican bruk-up style popular in the dance halls and reggae clubs of Brooklyn in the 1990s.

Opening in March 2015, and marking the first presentation of the Armory's 2015 artistic season, FLEXN transforms the dance from its traditional, individual, combative style to create a collaborative work of social commentary and storytelling.

"FLEXN is such a wonderful embodiment of our mission here at the Armory to stretch the boundaries of artistic forms and always provide audiences with the unexpected and unpredictable," said Rebecca Robertson, President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory. "It has been so exciting to watch Gray, Sellars, and the dancers elevate this powerful form of expression to new heights."

Co-directed by Gray and Sellars, the Armory commission brings together 18 dancers from the Brooklyn neighborhoods where the flex movement was born. Assembled specially for this engagement and performing together for the first time, they will animate a 70-foot-long runway-style stage within the muscular Wade Thompson Drill Hall, which will incorporate images by photographer Richard Ross, creator of the work Juvenile In Justice. The dancers will perform alternatively solo and as a group to choreography created by the ensemble itself, with music provided live by DJ Epic.

"Flex is a truly New York style of dance, yet also one that speaks on a visceral level to a much broader audience," said Alex Poots, Artistic Director of Park Avenue Armory. "These dancers' movements, almost super-human, allow them to tap into incredible depths of emotion as they challenge themselves to use the form as a vehicle for storytelling and explore themes of empowerment, confinement, and breaking free."

FLEXN has been in development at the Armory since the second half of 2014, with workshops and rehearsals taking place in the drill hall. Previous dance presentations at the Armory include the final performances of the Merce Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company's iconic Astral Converted, the world premiere of Shen Wei Dance Arts' Undivided Divided, and Streb Extreme Action's Kiss the Air!.

Park Avenue Armory's 2014 season of programming concludes in December with the institution's eighth visual art commission, a collaboration between artist Douglas Gordon and pianist Hélène Grimaud, tears become...streams become... The Armory's annual gala will be held on October 30, 2014 and will honor FLEXN co-director Peter Sellars, whose acclaimed staging of St. Matthew Passion was presented at Park Avenue Armory this fall. The Armory's entire 2015 season will be announced in the coming weeks. More information may be found at armoryonpark.org.