Jane Comfort and Company to Debut New Work at La MaMa in March 2026
Jane Comfort and Company to showcase a world premiere alongside celebrated works at La MaMa
La MaMa will present Jane Comfort and Company for the first time in more than eight years with a program of three dance-theater works that confront America's cultural and political landscape through Comfort's incisive choreographic lens.
Featuring works from three distinct time periods, the program includes a world premiere, The Gulf of America, with new music by MacArthur Award–winning composer Heather Christian. This premiere is being presented alongside an excerpt from Comfort's Afro-Brazilian-infused Artificial Horizon (1983) and her piercing 1996 work Bites.
The Gulf of America addresses the nation's current immigration crisis. Christian's vocal composition, built on layered polyrhythms and polyphony, amplifies the choreography's complex movement structure, plunging the audience into the chaos brought on by the government's actions. Costumes are by Liz Prince.
In Bites, Comfort employs a game of musical chairs to examine a community grappling with dwindling resources. Performed to a percussive soundscape by Klimchak and underscored by an excerpt of Newt Gingrich describing his “Contract with America,” the work fuses movement, music, and text into a powerful theatrical statement.
Artificial Horizon weaves spoken word, written by Comfort, into a rigorously-structured polyrhythmic work of text and Afro-Brazilian movement. One of Comfort's earliest experiments integrating language and movement, the piece is set to live drumming by Auchee Lee and Pamela Patrick.
Performance Schedule and Ticketing
Performances will take place at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 E. 4th Street
Performance Times:
Thursday, March 19, 7:00pm
Friday, March 20, 7:00pm
Saturday, March 21, 7:00pm
Sunday, March 22, 2:00pm
Tickets: $30 for adults, $25/Seniors for students. First ten tickets for every performance $10 each (limit 2 per person). Tickets can be purchased online here
About Jane Comfort and Her Company
Jane Comfort is an award-winning choreographer, writer, and director known for issue-oriented works integrating text and movement. Since 1978, she has created over 60 multidisciplinary works and has won major accolades, including two Bessie Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and American Dance Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. Her work has been presented throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
Jane Comfort and Company creates dance theater works that push the intersection of movement and language to a new form of theater. The company is an extraordinary group of dancers, actors and singers whose multiple talents allow Jane Comfort to create deeply layered works utilizing a wide range of theatrical elements, from pure dance to chanted texts, a capella singing, film, lip-syncing, cross dressing, acted scenes and puppetry. The company creates theater in which transformation occurs through many voices. www.janecomfortandcompany.org
About La MaMa
La Mama Experimental Theatre Club is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa's 64th Season, LA MAMA NOW, focuses on creating solidarity and building community, exploring ways to build connections for cross-sector coalition and invite artists, activists, organizers and community members into the creative process.
La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics' Circle Special Citation. We are a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world, many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, Robert De Niro, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Cole Escola, Bridget Everett, Harvey Fierstein, Diane Lane, Charles Ludlam, Tom Eyen, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Meredith Monk, David and Amy Sedaris, Stephanie Hsu, Julie Taymor, Kazuo Ohno, Tom O'Horgan, Andrei Serban, Liz Swados, and Andy Warhol. La MaMa's vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.
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