Jeanette Stoner and Dancers to Perform at Stoner Loft, 5/2-5

Choreographer Jeanette Stoner, known for her very individual sense of dance/theater, often using the spoken word, will present her Jeanette Stoner and Dancers in two world premieres and repertory, performed by an ensemble of artists who have worked with Stoner over the years and are mature interpreters of her vision. Noted choreographer Zvi Gotheiner, who has created the lighting for the Company for years, also returns as lighting designer. Four performances in the Stoner Loft, 83 Leonard Street (#1 train to Franklin, loft is on Leonard between Broadway and Church), Saturday through Tuesday, May 2-5 at 8 PM.

Critic Rachel Straus, reviewing the Company's 2014 season, remarked on Stoner's unique voice: "Like many choreographers who have perservered, Stoner has bore witness to many U.S. dance movements: the high drama of Martha Graham, the abstraction of Alwin Nikolais, the anti-virtuosity of Yvonne Rainer, the minimalism of Lucinda Childs, the fusion dancing of Twyla Tharp, and the formalism of Balanchine and Cunningham. Stoner's work incorporates aspects of each of these movements, but she doesn't appear to be a direct descendent of any of them. Perhaps it's because her work never entered the mainstream dance world. There is something to be said for being on the outside of the concert dance machine, which grinds many a choreographer up." (Musical America, March 16, 2014).

Stoner's premieres for the upcoming season are:
The solo "Numinous," created by Stoner with soloist Chase Booth, whose movement evolves mysteriously as a half-seen figure in a cloud of gold green fabric; and
"Stairs," music by Svjetlana Bukvich, created with and performed by Wolff, Booth, Gutierrez, Morales, and Nwaogu, in which a sleeping Wolff exists in a net that hangs from the ceiling. Four men, enacting a rite, climb up and down stairs, building into a wild energy that gradually rouse her from a dormant state.

Peter Davis will repeat "Wall," premiered last year. In this fascinating study, a man has a relationship with a wall. Stoner has added "Wheel 5" to her series of "Wheel" vignettes, which observe a curious character who travels his world with an industrial cable spool. Music by Marin Marais.

"Deep Past, Ancient Memories," also premiered last year, finds Stoner drawing "...on narrative, dream, and the psyche." remarked Rachel Straus, who added: "the choreographer seems to be summoning forth a ghost. Stoner creates a dreamlike landscape in which her protagonist seems to recall his past and witness its unfolding on the stage before him......these characters inhabit a brutal world where their fate seems to be decided by another more powerful. There is something fearsomely vivid about 'Distant Past'." (Musical America, March, 2014)

JEANETTE STONER performed with Truda Kachman in Connecticut as a young child, and as a professional dancer appeared with the companies of Alwin Nikolais, Nancy Meehan, Sara Shelton and Elina Mooney, among others. She was director of the Dance Theater of the Deaf and co-director of the Stoner-Hermans Dance Company. Stoner has completed numerous choreographic commissions and artistic residencies, including the Israeli dance companies Tamar and Tamar Jerusalem, The Yard, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, the U of Illinois, the U of Minnesota, and Barnard College. She has also taught at the American Centre in Paris, the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab, and CSC Repertory Theater, and taught the Young Masters Program at the 92nd Street Y.

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