RIOULT Dance Headed to The Joyce Theater, 6/17-22

RIOULT Dance NY, a leading American modern dance company with a classic sensibility, will present two unique programs during the June 17-22, 2014 New York Season at The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), NYC. The schedule runs:Tuesday at 7:30pm; Wednesday at 7pm; Thursday and Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2pm & 8pm; and Sunday at 2pm & 7:30pm. Tickets start at $10 and are available at JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800, in person at The Joyce Theater Box Office, or online at joyce.org.

Described by The Huffington Post as "captivating" and "intensely musical," the company celebrates its 20th Anniversary with two programs highlighting Pascal Rioult's powerful choreography, profound humanity, and extraordinary dancers. In Program A, Martha, May & me, Rioult pays homage to his mentors with a performance of May O'Donnell's classic Suspension, created in 1943, and Martha Graham's iconic El Penitente (1940). Rioult's Black Diamond (2003) and Views of the Fleeting World (2008) round out the program. Program B features a World Premiere set to music of Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the powerful Wien (1995), and last year's premiere, Iphigenia.

RIOULT's 2014 Gala benefit will take place on Wednesday, June 18. For more information and tickets, please call 212-398-5901 or email gala@rioult.org.

In Suspension, dancers move in a state of suspended balance and order where harmony is maintained by the independent patterns which join, separate, energize, and become tension points for each other to maintain the order and balance of the whole. The idea and ideal of Suspension uses the dance as a medium where harmony and balance are maintained between individuals. It might be said that Suspension is like the planetary system existing in space and eternity, where each planet maintains a position of independence and balance in relation to the whole. "...at the still point of the turning world, there the dance is..." - T.S. Eliot. Suspension (1943) has been set on the company by former May O'Donnell Dance Company dancers Lynn Frielinghaus, Nancy Lushington, and Barbara Allegra Verlezza.

El Penitente premiered in 1940 at Bennington College in Vermont, part of the Bennington School of the Dance, now the American Dance Festival. The dance has the look of primitive folk art come to life. Born out of Martha Graham's fascination with the American southwest and specifically a sect of Penitents who believed in purification through severe penance, the dance has a simple formalism, episodic structure and naïve, archaic gestures. Constructed as a play within a play, El Penitente opens with the entrance of a troupe of strolling players. They don their costumes and enact a series of vignettes from the Bible. Audiences see a childlike pageant that includes flagellation, revelation, seduction, repentance, crucifixion, and salvation - a stylized meshing of dance of celebration perhaps meant to inspire the generosity of the onlookers. El Penitente (1940) is set to music by Louis Horst. The piece was set for RIOULT with Pascal Rioult, Joyce Herring, and Kenneth Topping all teaching their former roles to current dancers.

An abstract piece for two female dancers, Black Diamond (2003) achieves poetry through dance; every movement translates to qualities embodied by a black diamond - strength, beauty, purity, and mystery.

Views of the Fleeting World (2008) was inspired by the ancient woodblock prints of the Japanese master Hiroshige and the ingenious structure of Bach's musical score. The ephemeral quality of all living things and the eternal cycle of life are the themes that Rioult found common, and explored in this contemporary dance work. Each of the nine short vignettes - "Orchard," "Gathering Storm," "Wild Horses," "Dusk, Rain," "Night Ride," "Summer Wind," "Moonlight," and "Flowing River" - captures a moment in time and nature through the colors, lines, and rhythm of the dance. These moments reflect the depth of emotion that can be found in such seemingly spare and simple elements.

Iphigenia (2013) is a dance drama chronicling a young woman's transfiguration from innocent child to transcendental heroine. Based on Euripides' "Iphigenia in Aulis," it focuses on King Agamemnon's decision to sacrifice his daughter - much to the horror of his wife, Clytemnestra and his daughter's betrothed, Achilles - and Iphigenia's ultimate acceptance of her fate. Through dramatic dance scenes weaved together with a recurring ensemble-the Greek chorus, the part-narrative, part-abstract piece unfolds, reintroducing audiences to this beautifully tragic story.

Wien (1995) turns the Viennese waltz's revered image of grace, clarity, and social refinement inside out, using it as a metaphor to expose the decadence and moral disintegration of a society. Six dancers create the illusion of an entire city, moving continuously in a large, clockwise path, alternating in their portrayal of victims violently swept to humiliation, imprisonment, and death, to aristocrats aloof and detached from the horrific reality.