Stephen Petronio Company Announces Open Rehearsals And Classes

As part of the Stephen Petronio Company's final season, the Company will be offering monthly open rehearsals and free classes this spring and summer.

Rehearsals will feature excerpts of some of Petronio's choreographic highlights, including Lareigne, Full Half Wrong (his take on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring), and from his Bloodlines initiative, Yvonne Rainer's Chair Pillow.

Class is a rigorous movement practice that begins with a warm-up that guides participants through an intimate connection to their unique physicality. Emphasis is placed on the articulation of the spine, the opening of the joints, and the direction and flow of energy throughout the body and into space. This preparation is followed by learning phrase material from the Company's repertory that embodies dynamic sequencing and polyrhythmic initiation within complex architectural forms. Recommended for professional dancers.

Schedule

Thursdays: May 1, May 29, and June 26

Open Class: 1:00-2:30pm

Open Rehearsal: 2:45-3:45pm

The open rehearsal on May 1 will include Yvonne Rainer's Chair Pillow. Information about future open rehearsals will be posted on the Company's website.

Classes and open rehearsals will take place at New York Center for Creativity and Dance, 287 East 10th Street, NY, NY 10009.

Space is limited. Advanced registration recommended. Registration will open two weeks prior to each class/rehearsal. Link to register for May 1: https://petron.io/calendar/.

About Stephen Petronio

Stephen Petronio is an acclaimed American choreographer, dancer, and artistic director known for his innovative and boundary-pushing work in contemporary dance. As a graduate of Hampshire College, an early student of Steve Paxton, and the first male dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Petronio has made a significant impact on the dance world through his unique artistic vision and his commitment to pushing the limits of movement and expression.

In 1984, Petronio founded the Stephen Petronio Company, committed to touring and performing throughout the world. The Company quickly gained recognition for its bold and visually striking performances. Petronio's choreography challenged traditional notions of movement and explored themes of sexuality, gender, and identity.

Over the years, Petronio has collaborated with some of today's most innovative visual artists, designers, and composers, including Cindy Sherman, Anish Kapoor, Robert Longo, Stephen Hannock, Teresita Fernandez, Janine Antoni, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, Rufus Wainwright, Jozef Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch, Ryan Lott/Son Lux, Monstah Black, David Linton, Narciso Rodriguez, Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ, Patricia Field/Iris Bohnner, Leigh Bowery, Ghost, and Michelle Rhee, as well as choreographers Anna Halprin, Michael Clark, and Johnnie Cruise Mercer.

Petronio has also created dances for other companies around the world, including the Frankfurt Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He has received numerous awards including a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie), an American Choreographers Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Petronio's memoir, Confessions of a Motion Addict, is available on Amazon.com. His latest limited-edition book, In Absentia, features entries from his journals written in quarantine at the Petronio Residency Center paired with never-before-seen studio photos by Sarah Silver and Grant Friedman.

Stephen Petronio's contributions to the field of contemporary dance have had a lasting impact on the art form. His fearless exploration of movement, his commitment to collaboration, and his relentless pursuit of innovation have solidified his place as one of the most influential choreographers of his generation.

About Stephen Petronio Company

Founded in 1984, Stephen Petronio Company has performed in 40 countries throughout the world, including numerous New York City engagements with 25 seasons at The Joyce Theater. The Company has been commissioned by Dance Umbrella Festival/London, Hebbel-Theater/Berlin, Scène National de Sceaux, Festival d'Automne à Paris, CNDC Angers/France, The Holland Festival, Montpellier Danse Festival, Danceworks UK Ltd., Festival de Danse–Cannes, and in the US by San Francisco Performances, The Joyce Theater, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Wexner Center for the Arts, Walker Art Center, and White Bird, among others, and is the recipient of a Dancing Lab residency at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron (NCCAkron).

The 2014-15 season marked the first incarnation of Bloodlines, a Stephen Petronio Company project to honor and embody a lineage of American postmodern dance masters. Distinguished for creating original languages that exemplify the highest level of artistic excellence displayed through extreme physical and conceptual rigor, these artists have had a profound impact on Petronio's own artistic path. To date, the Company has restaged 12 works by Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Rudy Perez, and Steve Paxton.

In 2017, Stephen Petronio Company expanded its focus on American postmodern dance to explore the meaning of legacy and its impact on the future and sustainability of this most ephemeral art form, establishing the Petronio Residency Center, which provided a safe haven for intensive developmental choreographic research. PRC supported future choreographic invention in the field with artist residencies and education initiatives. The program served more than 100 artists, becoming part of a growing ecosystem in the US dedicated to fostering a new model for the future of contemporary dance.

In 2021, with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, PRC established a permanent conservation easement designating it the Doris Duke Preserve at Round Top, Greene County as a preserve in perpetuity, putting PRC at the forefront of regional conservation efforts. http://petron.io