Michael Mao Dance Announces Guests For Saturday Night Performances

For the Saturday 7:30 PM performance, Company alum will return to appear in "Still Night": Artists and other company affiliations - pre and post Mao Dance
* Kevin Predmore (also danced with Martha Graham Dance Company) * Virginie Mecene (Graham) * Lisa Viola (Paul Taylor) * Kristin Draucker (Paul Taylor) * Penny Freeh (James Sewell) * Greg Nuber (Cliff Keuter, Mark Morris companies) * Alan Hineline (Cincinnati Ballet) * Lauren Jaeger (Buglisi Dance, Momix) * Karen Nicely ("Color Purple" on Broadway, and Keith Lee) * Donna Schenherr (Hubbard Street Dance)

Thursday & Friday, April 26 & 27 at 7:30 PM, and Saturday April 28 at 2 PM & 7:30 PM
New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street. Tickets: $25 general admission; $15 students/seniors ($7 for children 12 or under at the April 28 matinee)
Reservations: 212.924.0077 or www.newyorklivearts.org

Choreographer Michael Mao presents the 25th Anniversary Season of Michael Mao Dance with a program of company favorites and guests Virginie Mecene, Kevin Predmore and other artists who are Mao Dance alumni (at the Saturday 7:30 PM performance only). Four major Mao works have been selected for this celebration: Still Night, Kinderspiel, Weaving, and Shifting Shades. Performances, April 26-28 at 7:30 PM with a Saturday matinee, April 28 at 2 PM at New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street.

Still Night was originally commissioned by the Lake Placid Arts Center in 1993. Set to music by Arvo Pärt, the work was described in Chelsea Clinton News as "a dreamily beautiful dance full of grief and tenderness." The New York Times added that the dancers "seem like stately angels."

Weaving, (premiered at the Cunningham Studio in 1999), a dynamic company dance set to Japanese Taiko drumming, was described as "a strong feisty work, combining pounding drums and a multicultural sensibility driving towards a strong sense of conclusion." Edinburgh Festival Magazine, August 2010.

Mao's Kinderspiel is set to the composition of the same name by Felix Mendelssohn, inspired by the innocent joyfulness of the composer's Children at Play. Kinderspiel premiered at the Cunningham Studio in 2000.

The program also includes Shifting Shades, (premiered in 2010 at the Edinburgh Dance Festival), a collaboration with New York composer Huang Ruo as a dialogue between compositional modes and choreographic devices, which the Edinburgh Festival Magazine termed, "complex and dazzling."

www.MichaelMaoDance.org ;