DANCE NOW BOSTON Will Present NYC/Cambridge Collaborative Dance Program

This year's edition of DANCE NOW BOSTON – the annual show co-produced and presented by The Dance Complex in Cambridge and New York City-based contemporary dance company The Bang Group – will run June 6 and 7 at the Complex.

Curated by Bang Group co-founding artists David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin (who both have strong Boston roots), the performance features myriad inspirations from long-time collaborators and new partnerships.

Works by Parker and Kazin, whose friendship and professional partnership has yielded three decades of alternately funny and poignant solos, duets and group dances anchor the performance. Their notoriously funny, Velcro-infused “Slapstuck” – shown above – will be featured this year.

Boston-based choreographer and Dances by Isadora/Boston co-director Kelli Edwards creates a new duet for the Bang Group pair, in the tradition of her company's namesake Isadora Duncan. Duncan was an early-20th century modern dance pioneer whose works were made almost exclusively for women, rendering Edward's two-man duet delightfully subversive. 

Illinois-based dancemaker Sara Hook, whose work reflexively spotlights the nature of performance and the tragicomic way dancers and their works are often perceived, guests in a duet co-created with Parker, who is a long-time collaborator. 

Three more Boston dance artists also contribute works to the program:

• Kristin Wagner/Bodies Moving presents MILK, which explores the intimate labor of feeding a baby, the cultural weight placed on bodies, and the struggles and joys of loving and nourishing ourselves and our children.

• Cassie Wang presents SHEER (parcel of her breathing body), a solo performance that investigates containment, sociocultural conditioning, and the cycles and repetitions in which humans find themselves. 

• Emily Jerant-Hendrickson's BECOMING reflects how it feels to move forward in seasons of change. Where progress faces resistance, this dance embodies openness, surrender and emergence as momentum reshapes and reroutes human behavior.

“DANCE NOW BOSTON exemplifies what The Dance Complex does best: bringing together artists whose deep histories, bold ideas, and collaborative spirits resonate across generations and geographies,” says Executive Artistic Director Peter DiMuro. “With The Bang Group's inventive, joie de vivre work at its core, and contributions from both longtime partners and new collaborators, this program honors dance traditions – but also winks at them – and provides a space where artists and audiences connect through creativity, humor and a shared experience.”