SEA OF MEMORIES Set For 40th Anniversary Concert For Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Company

Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Company (AMM & DCO) returns to The Performance Garage for its 40th Anniversary Concert with an immersive event Sea of Memories, choreographed/conceived by Artistic Director/Founder Anne-Marie Mulgrew.

The program reflects the company's history over the decades built on collaboration, experimentation, risk taking, resilience, and pure joy. The program includes works for concert stages, alternative sites, and film. Highlights include the reconstruction of AMM & DCO's first major work Facing 9-5 (1986), excerpts from Unknown City (1999) and Project 2012 (1996) to original music by Peter Price. These two works made their international premiere in Toronto, Canada. In addition, there are excerpts from the full-length work SALT (2009-2010) created in collaboration with Mulgrew and video artist, Carmella Vassor-Johnson, Three Women Three Bowls 2017, and two premieres The Living Museum and Sea of Memories plus selected works for film.

The Living Museum opens the concert It features iconic moments from the Company's arsenal of works re-envisioned for the concert stage. Seven performers inhabit seven distinct worlds from works such as Strange Tongues 1997 created for a film studio rowhouse in South Philly; The Lemon Lady 2003 produced by Philadelphia Fringe Festival at the Nexus Gallery window running the length of the festival; and Le Dada va Gaga 2011 set in the glorious and somewhat dilapidated Rotunda's sanctuary space for the Kimmel Center's PIFA Festival. Willing audiences may join the performers and narrator on stage, view from off stage, or from their seats.

Facing 9-5, set to an eclectic sound score for six dancers in black pants, ties and white shirts, explores the intensity, repetition, diversity, and frustration of the 9-5 human machinery. It comments on the artist life - the struggles, hopes, and dreams as one straddles two worlds of belonging and not belonging.

SALT was inspired by Mark Kurlansky's fascinating book "Salt A World History." The program includes four excerpts from the full-length work - the opening duet with two dancers (Joe Cicala and JA Kirk) around a silver tub of salt and Cleanse a solo originally performed by Mulgrew danced by Nerissa Tunnessen plus two short films by Carmella Vassor-Johnson.

Unknown City features soloist Joe Cicala wrapped in forty yards of red material, expressing the underbelly of a city - the fears, anxiety and hidden secrets that haunt us. Project 2012 used Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot," the Mayan Calendar (which predicted the end of the world in 2012) and overwhelming media overload as departure points. We find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic state with no desire to be futurist but mere mortals. The excerpt features the ending duet and a trio using a familiar prop.

Sea of Memories, a 16-minute work, performed by the six Company dancers, closes the program. The sea is a metaphor for life, mystery, wonder, vastness, fluidity, and awe. Set to music by Elecktron Analogue Four, Armand Amar, Mechanics Clasica, with moments of silence and the human voice, this contemporary abstract work explores an underwater community and its connectedness/relationship to one another, the environment and like the sea its constant shifting behavior. The movement vocabulary features unison phrases, duets, solos, group lifts, drops, falls, slides, inversions, extensions, shakes, leaps, and extensive use of stage space interspersed with movement tableaus.

The program also includes Three Women Three Bowls inspired by bucolic paintings of women at ease in the natural world and an encore interactive short celebration dance.

In addition to Ms. Mulgrew (choreography-concept-direction), the collaborative team who provided input for Sea of Memories features dancers Elrey Belmonti (AMM & DCO alum, The Living Museum narrator and featured in the SALT film), Joe Cicala (30+ year company member making a rare appearance in The Living Museum, Unknown City and SALT), Company members Leslie Ann Pike in her 16th Season, Shelby Bakota, Jasmin Cicchino, JA Kirk, India Scott, and Nerissa Tunnessen. Major collaborators on the program include composer Peter Price, installation artist Vida-Vida (Unknown City Project 2012, Strange Tongues), visual artist Susan Sapareto (Facing 9-5), and video Carmella Vassor-Johnson (SALT, The Lemon Lady, Le Dada va Gaga).

This program is for all ages. There will be a short Q &A with the Company after the show after Sat. 3pm.

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