Labyrinth Dance Theater Announces Sasha Spielvogel's Critically Acclaimed NOOR 11/13

Sasha Spielvogel's critically acclaimed NOOR returns to the stage for one performance only at 3:30PM on November 13, 2016, at the Saint Mark's Church in heart of New York City's East Village. Felicia Norton performs her role as Noor, and writer Sasha Spielvogel will once again direct the performance.

NOOR tells the story of unsung World War II heroine, Noor Inayat Khan. Though her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, founded the The Sufi Order and brought Universal Sufism to the West and she grew up in a family that practiced pacifism, she became the first female wireless operator to infiltrate Nazi-occupied Paris and ultimately the last communication link between British and French forces. Not the stuff that spies are made of, Noor struggled over the decision to join the war effort. She felt she must play her part in opposing the atrocities of Nazi Fascism, passionately believing the words of the Sufi prayer, "Raise us above the distinctions and differences which divide us." With unbounded courage, Noor (code named Madeleine) managed to keep her unlikely spy ring operational even after its cover was blown, often doing the work of six Morse-code operators. Though the Nazis had a full description of her, she evaded capture during the summer of 1943. Eventually, after a stunning betrayal, she was caught and held captive at Gestapo headquarters in Paris. Her heroic life would end after being transferred to Dachau where she was executed. Defiant to the end, Noor's last cry was "LIBERTÉ!"

Felicia Norton performs the role she originated with an intensity and daring worthy of its subject. In this forty-minute tour de force, Norton's performance deftly captures the essence of Noor's heroism, beauty, and idealism for which Ms. Norton received standing ovations in London, Paris, Edinburgh Fringe, and New York.

Emmy nominated composer David Majzlin's gripping score evokes Noor's inner spiritual world and the harsh outer world she put herself up against, integrating Noor's poetry and music with speeches by Hitler and Churchill, Tagore's "My Country Awake," letters to her brother, Indian ragas, and songs by Edith Piaf.

"I believe in Noor and what she did," Sasha Spielvogel, founder and artistic director of Labyrinth Dance Theater, told Richard Holloway in a BBC Radio interview. "I feel, through dance, there is a great opportunity to repair the world." Spielvogel, whose father escaped the Holocaust from Vienna, is known for creating dance performances with messages of social justice as well as bringing deeply humanistic subject matter to the stage.

Labyrinth Dance Theater/Sasha Spielvogel's work has been called "Totally mesmerizing!" "Striking!" "A powerful achievement!" "Raises the art form to where it should always be: Towering!"

For more information about NOOR and to purchase tickets through Brown Paper Tickets: http://noor.bpt.me/

BBC Radio Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D6F4bf-91U

NOOR clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hm9RcBYY4

(Total runtime of event: 2 hours = opening with Roger Ansanelli playing crystal bowls and singing, NOOR dance performance, and talkback)

Labyrinth Dance Theater (LDT), founded in 1979 by Sasha Spielvogel, is a New York City based Dance Company that creates theatrical pieces which study nobility, frailty and intensity of emotion. The critically acclaimed company has performed to sold-out audiences throughout the world, most recently touring eastern European countries in the summer of 2016.