92Y to Present the HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL

The 92Y Harkness Dance Festival's 2020 season opens with the newest work from the award-winning and internationally produced Jaewoo Jung. Perfect skill pairs the Seoul native with Braveman, the collaborative four-person Korean dance company he founded in 2017 with Minsoo Jung. Braveman works collaboratively and freely without separating the roles between choreographers and dancers.

In Perfect skill the body, illuminated by flashlight, is both concealed and revealed, disguised and exposed. The rhythmic, rapid-fire use of pin point light on parts of the body and into the dark space creates an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. What will happen next? And what happens next is an unexpected male duet that turns to absurdity and farce eliciting guffaws from an unsuspecting audience.

Perfect skill was developed from an earlier piece called Dive that contains dancing with flashlight as well as a nude mail duet. Perfect skill now includes those portions from Dive as well as additional choreography extending the piece.

The performance concludes with the solo uninhabited island, that brought Jaewoo to recognition as the Junior winner of the International Choreography Festival Seoul 2017.

Runtime: 50 minutes (no intermission)

This performance contains nudity.

Coming up at the Harkness Dance Festival

THE FADING OF THE MARVELOUS (L'AFFADISSEMENT DU MERVEILLEUX)

Daniel Lévéille Danse (Montreal, Canada), Catherine Gaudet, choreographer

Fri, Feb 28, 8 pm; Sat, Feb 29, 4 and 8 pm, from $35

"...In this powerful work, the intense passage between bodily states and the total dedication of the five performers brings us to the brink of catharsis." Mélanie Carpentier, Le Devoir (Montreal)

Interested in subtle shifts in the body and micro-movements that reveal hidden sensations, Canadian choreographer Catherine Gaudet combines raw, precise corporeality, dramatic tension, obsessiveness, and the grotesque in this arresting work for the company of five.

Runtime: 55 minutes (no intermission)

This performance contains nudity.

https://www.92y.org/event/hdf-the-fading-of-the-marvelous

HOPE HUNT AND LAZARUS AND THE BIRDS OF PARADISE

Oona Doherty (Belfast, Northern Ireland), Joss Carter, DJ

Fri, Mar 6, 8 pm; Sat, Mar 7, 4 and 8 pm, from $35

"...intelligent, raw and meticulously detailed performance, full of sharp body language...this stunning solo...potent, impressionistic dance-theatre treatment of what she, Oona Doherty, refers to as 'the male disadvantaged stereotype.' It's riveting and moving, and she's a simply phenomenal performer." - *****Donald Hutera The Times, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Fearless Northern Ireland choreographer Oona Doherty performs, in Hope Hunt and Lazarus and the Birds of Paradise, a brash and nearly violent solo that channels the men who inhabit her world of strife and division. Oona arrives to the theater by car, thumping with House music through rolled-down windows, and emerges full-flung from the 'boot' onto the street and into the audience where she performs amongst the onlookers. Accompanied by staggering sound, Oona then leads the audience through the lobby and up the stairs to the performance space, where she performs this aspirational portrait that mixes physical and sociological theatricality, the urban dance alphabet, and neoclassical ballet memories with an aspiration to the sacred.

Runtime: 40 minutes (no intermission) followed by a 30-minute DJ set

https://www.92y.org/event/hdf-hope-hunt-and-lazarus-and-the-birds-of-paradise

GOOD RHYTHM WONDERFUL LIFE

Kazu Kumagai (Sendai, Japan)

Fri, Mar 13, 8 pm; Sat, Mar 24, 4 and 8 pm, from $35

Kumagai "... channels dissonance and passion, taking tap to a stormy place beyond the familiar sunshine." (Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Tap dance catalyst Kazu Kumagai animates the field with his distinctive and dynamic improvisatory presence, waking up the senses with delight and groove. "Tap is a language. When I go to Europe, I don't speak to the audience, but they can understand. When I went to Senegal, we could communicate." Communication is all in the tap, and alongside his live band, Kumagai taps his way, with astounding skill and musicality, to the rhapsodic urgency of swing.

Runtime: 70 minutes (no intermission) live music

https://www.92y.org/event/hdf-good-rhythm-wonderful-life

A PALO SECO

Sara Cano (Madrid, Spain)

Fri, Mar 20, 8 pm; Sat, Mar 21, 4 and 8 pm, from $35

Blending flamenco tradition, Spanish folklore, Japanese butoh, Israeli folk dance rikudim and contemporary dance, Sara Cano is both shaping and advancing the flamenco dance form. With her commanding stage presence, brilliant technique and atypical approach to tradition, Cano mesmerizes audiences with dances that go beyond convention and into the transformational.

This performance is part of the well-loved and lauded annual Flamenco Festival 20/20 produced by Miguel Marin.

About A Palo Seco

Cano translates renowned Japanese butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno's approach to experimentation - his search for an ever-deeper reality by dancing from the soul - into the simmering multi-award winning A Palo Seco. As Cano is profoundly influenced by the work of Ohno, Ohno was profoundly influenced, in 1926, by the great flamenco dancer, La Argentina. Set to a penetrating soundscape by Spanish composer Héctor González, A Palo Seco, charts Cano's personal evolution toward the future without losing the grasp of tradition.

Runtime: 60 minutes (no intermission)

https://www.92y.org/event/hdf-a-palo-seco