Boston Dance Theater Comes to Upstate New York

Geneva Concerts will welcome the trailblazing contemporary company Boston Dance Theater (BDT) to the Smith Opera House, 82 Seneca St, Geneva NY, on Friday, February 6, at 7:30 pm.  BDT dancers will present Pinnacle Works, a diverse range of repertory choreographed by: Itzik Galili (The Netherlands, Israel), Marco Goecke (Germany), and Alessandro Sousa Pereira (Brazil, Denmark). As a special treat, BDT founder and Co-Artistic Director Jessie Jeanne Stinnett will give a pre-concert talk at 6:30 pm.  All are welcome. HWS students and students through grade 12 attend for free. Adult tickets - $35 and college students with ID – S10.

Opening the program is crowd favorite “Peekaboo” choreographed by Marco Goecke. Performers mysteriously appear and disappear while the sounds of Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, Op. 4 combine with the voices of the Finnish choir Huutajat.  The next work is BDT Co-Artistic Director Itzik Galili’s “If as If.” Set to music by Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis, two dancers relay a story of the search for comfort and the refusal that often comes with it. The cast will perform choreographer Alessandro Sousa Pereira’s “Awa”, an ode to Pereira’s Brazilian roots as revealed in steps, expression and music. 

Choreographed by Goecke with music by the legendary Johnny Cash, “Äffi” follows a solo dancer featuring quick, abrupt movements, darkness, and intense focus. The penultimate work is Goecke’s “Firebird Pas de Deux,” set to Igor Stravinksy’s 1910 score, which offers a new perspective to the classic story of The Firebird. Closing the evening is Pereira’s “Delicate Blue” which draws inspiration from the literature of Clarice Lispector, a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist whose works explore themes of intimacy and introspection. This extremely physical dance embodies movements of birds and their analogous movements in people.