New Dance Alliance Announces Lineup For The 32nd Annual Performance Mix Festival

New Dance Alliance is pleased to announce the lineup for the 32nd annual Performance Mix Festival. "The most elaborate festival of the unpredictable" (The New York Times), the 2018 edition brings together more than 30 artists with diverse approaches to performance, inviting audiences to engage with the unexpected and to experience some of the newest voices in experimental dance. This year's festival also includes Performance Mix's annual community breakfast, a free movement workshop, and other special events. The festival runs June 7?10, 2018, at The Performance Project at University Settlement. Performance Mix is curated by New Dance Alliance Founder and Director Karen Bernard.

Tickets for the 32nd annual Performance Mix Festival range from $15?$20 and can be purchased online at Brown Paper Tickets: Performance Mix tickets

All performances will take place at The Performance Project at University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street (at Rivington Street) on the Lower East Side.

The Breakfast Mix and Workshop will be held at New Dance Alliance Studio, 182 Duane Street, in Tribeca.

For more information about the festival, visit: www.newdancealliance.org/performance-mix-festival.

Schedule of Performances and Events

THURSDAY, JUNE 7

Two shared programs: Tickets: $15 one program / $20 both programs

Opening night reception following the 8:00pm performance

7:00pm: Parijat Desai | Ainesh Madan | Mari Meade Dance Collective

India-born, U.S.-raised choreographer Parijat Desai's JustLikeThat 4.0 is part of an ongoing exploration of language and state power using dance and experimental theater. Desai began the project in 2014 exploring badly written Indian news articles and turning them into song and dance. In the most recent iteration, she began to develop additional characters. For Performance Mix, Desai is joined by performer/collaborators Trinity Bobo, Quentin Burley, and John Maria Gutierrez. Together they continue her exploration of official-speak with text and movement.

Ainesh Madan's Phantasies is a pledge of allegiance to the universal dark horse. It questions our understanding of the underdog and his/her/their role in accepting, or refusing, the struggles that define our daily existence.

Mari Meade's dialogue (excerpt) is a danced series of city-life conversations and interactions. Characters as diverse as a group of expectant mothers waiting for their doctors' appointments and a trio of arguing male board room members share slices of urban life and the stressors, humilities, hubbub, and private moments of reflection therein.

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8:00pm: Sebastian Abarbanell | Stacy Grossfield Dance Project | Simon Portigal

Sebastian Abarbanell's work parasites deals with the absurdity of human existence in today's society. The choreographer/performer navigates through abstract and distinct physicality depicting this notion from a personal perspective.

In Stacy Grossfield's work, performed by Nola Sporn Smith, the artist is many things in one container. Some of what she is will be exposed and she will be working really hard.

Montreal-based choreographer Simon Portigal will share an excerpt from his newest work, Aattitle. Here, bodies are an overwrought network of senses, signs, feelings, and gestures, burdened and charged by collective histories, individual narratives, and fictions. Portigal has constructed conditions to free-fall into an oversaturated no-place, a virtual after-space from which to see over again. Aattitle is a secular performance prayer, soliciting near futures.

FRIDAY, JUNE 8

Breakfast Mix and Workshop: Free admission. Two shared programs: Tickets: $15 one program / $20 both programs

10?11:30am: Breakfast Mix - Meet the Artists

Free admission, reservations recommended

Breakfast and convivial gathering to meet this year's international artists.

11:30am?2:00pm: Workshop with João Costa Espinho / Molecular Dance

Free admission, reservations required

Portuguese-born, France-based dancer/choreographer João Costa Espinho leads a workshop that focuses on the anatomy of the body as both matter and energy and how this amplifies our individual bodies' existent micro-movements in a shared space. The method: Work from the organic movement of each participant, let our individual energies be traversed by other bodies seeking a collective body, using those revealed movements in a dynamic and transformative process.

Both events will be held at the New Dance Alliance Studio, 182 Duane Street, in Tribeca.

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7:00pm: Jenn Goodwin | Victoria Libertore | Gabrielle Revlock*

Toronto-based choreographer Jenn Goodwin brings her latest work, To do. To don't, a duet with a blanket and hair. Through comfort, protection, hostility, and weight, the work touches on "being enough." Trying to get out of bed, take it in, keep it out, change, or make change. There is a lot to do. And a lot to don't.

Choreographer and writer Victoria Libertore returns to Performance Mix with I Want to Die One Day After You, a new solo described as an 89-year love story that comes to an end with ferocity and grace.

In Gabrielle Revlock's Performance of a Feminine Object a hoop animates a female performer making reference to the historic and cultural disciplining of the female body. There is a tension in the work between poise and chaos, beauty and awkwardness, sense and nonsense.

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8:00pm: Simon Portigal | Nicholas Rodrigues | Christopher Unpezverde Núñez

Montreal-based choreographer Simon Portigal will share an excerpt from his newest work, Aattitle. Here, bodies are an overwrought network of senses, signs, feelings, and gestures, burdened and charged by collective histories, individual narratives, and fictions. Portigal has constructed conditions to free-fall into an oversaturated no-place, a virtual after-space from which to see over again. Aattitle is a secular performance prayer, soliciting near futures.

In Igloo, Nicholas Rodrigues uses elements of contemporary dance, hip-hop, and martial arts infused with nuanced personal styles to explore how feeling cold physically and emotionally affects one's body and one's relationships to those around it.

Christopher Unpezverde Núñez's The sun set twice on the same day explores the complexities of human migration and its impact on cultural norms, identity, and the concept of self.

SATURDAY, JUNE 9

Two shared programs: Tickets: $15 one program / $20 both programs

After-party with DJ

7:00pm: João Costa Espinho | Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company | Anna Rogovoy

João Costa Espinho's Simon 06.07.08.09 explores the interior journey of a man who is questioning himself as a specie. He wants to be something else. He wants to be a "thing." Any "thing." A less human "thing." Simon is a strange dialogue between himself and his idea of imperfection, between himself and his own strangeness.

Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, will present Affront, a quartet that explores the tipping point when intimacy crosses into violence, peeking into the darker side of relationships and the pressures, dangers, and abuses that can arise. The movement language alternates between relaxed pedestrianism and razor-sharp precision.

How difficult is it for one body, created and performed by Anna Rogovoy, is one white Jewish woman's perspective on otherness and displacement, underscoring the importance of bodily autonomy via rigorous durational movement tasks and oral histories.

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8:00pm: Melanie Greene/Brianna Taylor | The Wondertwins | Ashley Yehoda/Lillian Joergensen

Melanie Greene and Brianna Taylor will present Taming the Amazon, a movement conversation about female politics, power, race, and history. "The work is big and badass," not to mention thoughtfully modest. It is a collision of fairy tales, chanting sheroes, and talking tarts.

Boston's legendary Wondertwins (Billy and Bobby McClain) will present A World of Pure Imagination, designed as 3D-style movement using various songs from movies and sound bites from four different decades.

Knees Up, a duet by Ashley Yehoda and Lillian Joergensen, seeks to explore modes of masculine gender presentation. They draw heavily on the idea of vaudeville male revues and slapstick skits and question what it means to be a man on stage.

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9:00pm: After-party. Video by Charles Dennis. Performance by Alexander D'Agostino. DJ Mister White.

Exorcism on Ice (2016) is a short film by choreographer/video artist Charles Dennis in which he appears as a ninja-like shaman dancing on ice skates in an effort to dispel the dark forces that threaten humanity. With music by David Telson.

Hailing from Baltimore, interdisciplinary artist Alexander D'Agostino brings The Dying Swan, a work he describes as a manifestation of an invisible queer rage that follows him wherever he goes. Throughout the performance he asks people to attach feathers to his body as offerings for queer spirits. When he is covered, he transforms into a possessed, otherworldly being.

SUNDAY, JUNE 10

All-Day Extravaganza / All-day pass: $20

12:00-5:00pm: Site specific performances throughout the building in the library, gym, and hallways. Audience members are welcome to come and go. 1:00-5:00pm: Performances in the theater.

Site-specific works by The Do-Mystics | Nicole Goodwin

The feminist collective The Do-Mystics, created by Arantxa Araujo and Monique Blom, will present Blood and Soil-The Art of Survival. An installation and movement-based ritual performance, the work focuses on 12 repetitive domestic tasks that women perform daily. The tasks are performed as freedoms: freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom from the social constructs. In these actions Araujo and Blom attempt to bring light to gender equality issues and remember those who have been lost due to gendered violence.

A 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow and 2013-2014 Queer Art Mentorship Literary Fellow, Nicole Goodwin will present Ain't I a Woman (?/!), a project that she first performed in public spaces around New York City. This is the first rendition of the project, where she poses topless with the words "Ain't I a Woman (?/!)" inscribed all over her body to represent black women and body positivity.

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Performances in the theater

1:00pm: João Costa Espinho | Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company | Anna Rogovoy

João Costa Espinho's Simon 06.07.08.09 explores the interior journey of a man who is questioning himself as a specie. He wants to be something else. He wants to be a "thing." Any "thing." A less human "thing." Simon is a strange dialogue between himself and his idea of imperfection, between himself and his own strangeness.

Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, will present Affront, a quartet that explores the tipping point when intimacy crosses into violence, peeking into the darker side of relationships and the pressures, dangers, and abuses that can arise. The movement language alternates between relaxed pedestrianism and razor-sharp precision.

How difficult is it for one body, created and performed by Anna Rogovoy, is one white Jewish woman's perspective on otherness and displacement, underscoring the importance of bodily autonomy via rigorous durational movement tasks and oral histories.

* * * * *

2:00pm: Oren Barnoy*| Sarah Chien/Emily Faulkner | Elena Rose Light

Oren Barnoy's new work, Curved Eyes a Symbol of Magic, is born out of his desire to craft his own version of a daily prayer through movement. The performer exists between the initial impulse to create and the moment when meaning appears.

Sarah Chien and Emily Faulkner's Solo for Two presents the raw beauty of individual research as part of a shared structure. Two solo performers challenge themselves to take the personal impulses that make an improvised solo exciting and layer them onto the collaboration of another performer/dancer. They ask: How can our bodies support each other even while we actively perform that which makes us most unique?

Elena Rose Light will use ventriloquism to consider dissonance as a valuable tool in developing critical thought. Through physical and emotional extremes, she will attempt to embody the act of argumentation. In ventriloquism, the face must be kept extremely rigid and controlled. Can the rest of the body reach some other intense physical state to create a dialogue within a single person?

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3:00pm: Sari Nordman | lily bo shapiro | Rachel Thorne Germond

Saari-Island, a new dance and video by Finnish-born Sari Nordman, is an investigation into personal history and how encountering new environments shapes one's identity. The work explores how these encounters illuminate a conversation between past, present, and the path ahead.

Describing her work, lily bo shapiro writes: "gorgon again: a buzzing, stinging, sucking, luring swarm / bleached coral ghosts re-turned to thriving flesh. / into a widening (w)hole / we / shimmering / refracting / reflective / predatory / feeding: the convergence forms constellations / invent the rearview mirror / the sea is stained with blood / it churns lyrics."

Rachel Thorne Germond's Performance Collage #2 - Tripod is a multimedia performance work that grapples with the nature of movement as metaphor or analogy, a world that is not dissimilar to everyday life, and addresses aspects of fantasy, imagination, and memory. Intrigued by a wide range of random and disparate inputs from modern life, Germond employs multiple strategies of investigation, in which ambiguous juxtapositions and new, unfamiliar languages come to life.

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4:00pm: Antonio Ramos* | Larissa Velez-Jackson | Ash R.T. Yergens

Antonio Ramos's El pueblo de los Olvidodos (The Forgotten Town) is an exploration and research about post Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Dedicated to la Familia, los amigos y la Tierra, and all of the forgotten ones. Not a complete work but the beginning of an idea to bring light to the darkness (literalmente).

Larissa Velez-Jackson will present Star Crap Method for Dancers: Healing Edition. Star Crap Method is a dance-improvisation/live composition practice that embraces technical brilliance and failure in equal measure, ushering in a form of creative limitlessness with opportunities for great humor, vulnerability, and absurdity. Through spoken inner monologue while dancing, LVJ shares the dancers processing of not only their performance experience, but the narration of somatic forms used to address injury and personal trauma.

Ash R.T. Yergens' The New Miracle Meat by Hormel is an accurate re-imagining of the 2011 documentary Becoming Chaz. The performance includes invisible interviews with family members and friends as the iconic transition is followed.

*LiftOff Creative and Project Development Resident Artist

About Performance Mix Festival

In 1986 New Dance Alliance (NDA) created the Performance Mix series now known as the Performance Mix Festival to advance emerging methods, techniques, and trends of innovative dance. Of the many dance festivals in New York, NDA's Mix stands alone in its commitment to: 1) offering artists comprehensive career and artistic development support; 2) presenting risk-taking art by emerging and established artists at a critical experimental phase of their development; and 3) providing programming for audiences interested in the creative process of experimental dance and performance. The festival has grown to include artists from around the globe, including South Africa, Canada, Europe, and South America. Director Karen Bernard has been invited to many festivals across Canada and Europe, forming relationships that have broadened her curatorial process and widened the festival's scope. By bringing her expansive awareness of culture into an intimate setting, Bernard cultivates an important sharing of creativity internationally.

About New Dance Alliance

Incorporated in 1989, New Dance Alliance (NDA) is an arts service organization whose mission is to actively promote emerging forms of innovative dance, music, video, and interdisciplinary performance. NDA's initial aims were to support an artistic community that had limited institutional resources, and to provide that community with increased opportunities for sharing experimental works with the public. Today, NDA's goals remain deeply rooted in those founding principles, and have also expanded in response to current artistic challenges and goals. NDA's expanded programming includes initiatives that foster national and international artists, and promote increasingly diversified audiences through annual events, retreats, educational panels, and performances. Its four main programs are: Performance Mix Festival; LiftOff: Residency and Workshop; Subsidized Rehearsal Space; and creator and performer, Karen Bernard. Collectively, these programs support the work of more than 100 experimental artists, and bring in 2,500 audience members each year.

This season New Dance Alliance has received support for the Performance Mix Festival from the following foundations and organizations: Arte Institute/ TAP Air Portugal, Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund, Bernstein Family Foundation, Cultural Services of the Quebec Government, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation.

New Dance Alliance has received support from the following public funds: the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and from generous individual donors.

About University Settlement's Performance Project

University Settlement is New York's premier social justice organization. The arts are represented across all of its programming, fostering a sense of belonging, reciprocity, and possibility for creative leaders from all walks of life at every stage of their development. Since 2007, the Performance Project has been offering local young artists and professional emerging artists opportunities to connect, create, and publicly present new work. University Settlement's incubator for the next generation of citizen artists is fueled by its distinct, yet connected, cohorts: the Artist-in-Residency Programs for Professional Emerging Artists, The Fellowship Program for Young Artists, and an annual Group Performance Intensive for young adults. The organization also hosts other community ensembles and dynamic guest artists seeking an affordable and supportive opportunity to self-produce their work. To learn more about the Performance Project, please visit www.universitysett