Acclaimed Contemporary Dance Company ROBERT MOSES' KIN Debuts at Meany Hall

Robert Moses' Kin performs at Meany Studio Theatre Thursday-Friday, May 29-30, at 8pm and Saturday, May 31 at 2pm and 8pm. Tickets are $25 and general admission. Tickets may be purchased by phone at 206-543-4880, online, or in person at the UW Arts Ticket Office. Meany Hall is located on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington.

Robert Moses: Approaching Thought
Bliss Kohlmyer: Snapshots of Longing
Gregory P. Dawson: 808 KICK revisited
Robert Moses: Speaking Ill of the Dead
Robert Moses: Draft

Robert Moses' Kin is presented by the UW World Series as part of its new Studio Series, which also included SITI Company in November 2103 and JACK Quartet in March 2014. The Studio Series showcases emerging and influential artists in intimate spaces The Series is designed to enrich the community's cultural offerings through University of Washington partnerships and provide interactive educational opportunities for students through lectures, workshops, master classes, and residencies.

Founded in 1995, Robert Moses' Kin is considered by many to be one of the most prolific and exciting new contemporary dance companies to emerge nationally in the past decade. The company's mission is to produce work which speaks to what is specific and unique in human nature. Robert Moses' Kin uses movement as the medium through which race, class, culture and gender are used to voice the existence of our greater potential and unfulfilled possibilities. Founder and Artistic Director, Robert Moses explains, "My work expresses my concern with the honor, dignity, truth, and potential of real people. Human lives and beliefs are the material, the choreographic elements, of my work."

Robert Moses' diverse eleven-member company is known for its eclectic movement vocabulary, demanding choreography, ferocious dancing, and provocative themes. Moses' focus on the expressiveness of the human body and his desire to speak with the voices of his African American heritage have produced works with regional, national, and international recognition.

Since founding Robert Moses' Kin, Moses has collaborated with a number of prominent dancers, musicians, composers, sculptors, authors, poets, and designers to realize the concept of dance as a unifying form of art, an art-form which speaks broadly from a specific place. The company has commissioned works from choreographer Julia Adam, Alonzo King, Sara Shelton Mann, Margaret Jenkins, KT Nelson, and Robert Henry Johnson. In addition, Moses has collaborated with numerous other artists including Marcus Shelby, SoVoSo, Keith Terry, Will Power, Frank Boehm, Joe Venegoni, Dan Reiter, Joanna Haigood, Amy Seiwert, Alex Ketley, Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble, and the poets of Youth Speaks.

Robert Moses' Kin has presented an annual home season in San Francisco since 1995, premiering several new works every year with a repertory of over 70 works that range from neoclassical ballet to postmodern movement theatre. Over the past several years, Robert Moses' Kin has enjoyed an increase in touring opportunities to universities, colleges, and festivals throughout the U.S., including Jacob's Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival, Dance Center at Columbia College, University of Nevada, University of Texas, Orange Coast College, Dance Umbrella, Stanford University, ProArts Collective, the Maine Festival, and New York's City Center's Fall for Dance Festival. Robert Moses' Kin regularly participates in residencies and offers master classes and lecture-demonstrations while on tour.

The company's work has earned a host of awards, including four Bay Area Isadora Duncan Awards (IZZIES), the most recent ones were in 2007 for Best Individual Performance of Doscongio by Robert Moses and in 2004 for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for The Soft Sweet Smell of Firm Warm Things. Robert Moses and the company have also been awarded a Bay Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Award in Dance (Goldie); and a San Francisco Weekly Black Box Award for Choreography.

Robert Moses' Kin has been the recipient of major funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Princess Grace Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Rockefeller MAP Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, California Arts Council, and Walter & Elise Hass Fund.

An ambitious and diverse company, Robert Moses' Kin has received tremendous national media coverage in such publications as The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Dance Magazine, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, The Village Voice, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, as well as on radio, television and the internet.

Artist website: http://www.robertmoseskin.org

Since founding Robert Moses' Kin in 1995 in San Francisco, choreographer Robert Moses has created numerous works of varying styles and genres for his highly praised dance company. His work explores topics ranging from oral traditions in African American culture (Word of Mouth, 2002), the life, times, and work of author James Baldwin (Biography of Baldwin, 2003), and the dark side of contemporary urban culture (Cause, 2004), to the nuanced complexities of parentage and identity (The Cinderella Principle, 2010), and the simple joys of the expressive power of pure movement (Toward September, 2009). Moses has worked collaboratively with numerous artists and organizations, among them Julia Adam, Margaret Jenkins, Alonzo King, Sara Shelton Mann, Joanna Haigood, SoVoSo, Marcus Shelby, Keith Terry, Frank Boehm, Will Power, Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble, Bill Morrison, Ann Galjour, David Worm, Kid Beyond and Youth Speaks. Since 2008 Moses has composed original scores for several of his dances.

In addition to his work with Robert Moses' Kin, Moses has choreographed for San Francisco Opera (La Forza del Destino, 2005), Philadanco, Cincinnati Ballet, Eco Arts, Transitions Dance Company of the Laban Center in London, African Cultural Exchange (UK), Bare Bones (UK), Oakland Ballet, Moving People Dance, and Robert Henry Johnson Dance Company, among others. He has choreographed for film, theater and opera, with major productions for the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, New Conservatory Theater, Los Angeles Prime Moves Festival (L.A.C.E.), and Olympic Arts Festival.

Robert Moses' Kin has received significant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and San Francisco Foundation, among others. The company is the recipient of three Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, the Bonnie Bird North American Choreography Award, the SF Weekly Black Box Award for Choreography, and the SF Bay Guardian Goldie Award in Dance. RMK has performed at many nationally esteemed venues such as the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Fall for Dance/City Center, Bates Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival and Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century. The company performs its annual home season at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

In 2005 Moses was named Choreographer-in-Residence and Artistic Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University, where he has been on the dance faculty since 1995. An alumni of California State University Long Beach and a highly regarded master teacher, Moses has taught on campuses and at festivals throughout the United States, including Bates Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival, Goucher College, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, University of Texas, and University of Nevada. Moses has been a returning guest artist at the Northwest Dance Project and a mentor with Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME). He conducts movement and performance workshops internationally, most recently for artists of African descent with State of Emergency Limited in the United Kingdom.

About UW World Series

The UW World Series is one of Seattle's leading performing arts organizations, presenting innovative, provocative, and diverse international artists in music, theater, and dance. More than 450 visiting artists from around the world have performed as part of the UWWS. The eclectic mix of programming has given Northwest audiences a broad view of the world of performing arts, from sampling unique cultural traditions to experiencing innovative new works that expand the scope and direction of contemporary performing arts. The UW World Series' mission includes supporting the educational goals of the University of Washington by providing extensive arts learning opportunities for UW students and faculty, area school children and teachers, and members of the community at large.

Tickets, Meany Hall, and More Information

Purchase tickets: Call 206-543-4880, or order online at uwworldseries.org. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the UW Arts Ticket Office, located at 1313 NE 41st. Or fax your order to the Ticket Office at 206-685-4141. Tickets are subject to availability. Artists, dates, programs, and prices are subject to change.

Location and parking: Meany Hall is located on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington, on 15th Avenue NE between NE 40th and 41st Streets. Parking for Meany Hall is available in the Central Parking Garage (entrance at 15th Avenue and 41st Street). On-street metered parking is also available.