July Dance Festivals

July is a time when many dancers who work or go to school elsewhere come to New York for a summer vacation. But being the highly disciplined creatures they are, dancers typically spend their holiday soaking up as many technique classes, composition workshops, or training intensives as possible. Opportunities to study with master teachers and leading choreographers in all genres abound in New York, and July is a great time to avail yourself of all the city has to offer.

In addition to doing all that dancing, however, it is also important to take advantage of the many chances you have in New York to see dance performances of top quality and unparalleled diversity. But because there is so much to see here, you may find it overwhelming and impossibly time-consuming to sort through all the offerings and decide what performance to attend each night. As a way to begin to attack this daunting task, I suggest you check out two dance festivals that are happening in New York this month: Tap City, which runs July 5–11 at Symphony Space, will present a series of performances by the most respected classic and cutting-edge tappers from all over the world; Summerdanz, which plays July 8–19 at Dance Theater Workshop, promises to showcase some of the most interesting established and emerging choreographers on the contemporary dance scene.

Tap City

"Our performances this year will feature such well-known tappers as Jason Samuels Smith, Brenda Bufalino, Barbara Duffy, Michelle Dorrance, Acia Gray, and a whole host of others," says Tap City's founder and producer, Tony Waag, the artistic and executive director of the American Tap Dance Foundation. Now in its eighth season, Tap City was started by Waag to combat what he perceived as a sparseness of tap-dance activity in New York back in 2001. "I contacted Gregory Hines about the idea of starting a festival, and he said, 'Sure, what do you want me to do?' And that was all I needed," explains Waag. "Once I had Gregory behind me, the rest was fairly easy. I was able to get funding and pull in the whole tap-dance community. And I mean from all over the world. In July, a lot of local New York dancers and audiences leave the city, but we attract participants from all over the country and abroad. Particularly now, with the dollar being worth so little, we're getting many international students, performers, and audience members."

In addition to its performance events, Tap City also offers hundreds of classes throughout the week. "It's very complex," Waag says. "We offer a youth program, a teen program, and an adult program. And there are all types of programs within those programs—there's à la carte master classes, four-day residencies, as well as showcase opportunities."

Tap City's performance offerings include a program titled Tap and Song, which celebrates the classic approach to tap dance and features what might be described as traditional-style tap routines. Another program, Tap Forward, attempts to introduce audiences to new takes on tap dance. "In that show, we present a variety of very contemporary approaches to tap," Waag explains, "more of the improvography type of work. And we also give awards that evening to people we feel are doing significant contemporary work. This year we're giving the award—we call it the Hoofer Award—to two people: Derick K. Grant, who created that big show in Chicago called Imagine Tap, and Tina Pratt, who has been doing great work for a long time but has never been recognized."

One of the highlights of Tap City each year is the induction of new members into the Tap Dance Hall of Fame, which was started by Waag in 2002, at Hines' urging. "Unfortunately, Jimmy Slyde just passed," Waag says, "but we will be inducting him into the Hall of Fame this year. Sarah Petronio is flying in from Paris, where she worked with him for many years, to perform a tribute." Other inductees will include Ernest "Brownie" Brown, Harold Cromer of Stump and Stumpy, and Mable Lee.

For more details about all of Tap City's festivities, visit www.atdf.org.

Summerdanz

A brand-new festival premiering this year as part of Dance Theater Workshop's Guest Artist Series, Summerdanz will offer five different programs: four by recognized contemporary dance companies and one showcasing the work of four emerging choreographers.

"The whole idea of Summerdanz is to not just present these companies, but to create a focus or interest of some sort, which is so hard to do in New York with so many artists presenting work all over the place," says festival co-producer Ken Maldonado, director of Gotham Arts Exchange, a not-for-profit organization that provides management, administrative, booking, and fundraising assistance for a curated roster of dance artists. "The mission of Summerdanz is to help grow companies, both in infrastructure and in audience. There are so few presenting organizations for dance in New York City," Maldonado explains. "The Joyce, City Center, the Ailey theatre—they're all rental spaces for the most part. So it becomes a problem for companies that have done their entry-level development at places like P.S. 122, Dixon Place, or Joyce SoHo and are now ready to move on to larger venues. There is no program out there that helps them get to the next level—that is, to go from a 60-seat theatre to someplace larger, where they can really begin to develop and expand what they do. You really have to be a huge, established company to mount a season at, say, City Center. So what we've done with Summerdanz is divvy up the dates within a two-week period at DTW and share the producing costs among a group of companies. We want audiences to stop and say, 'Hey, there's something more going on here than just a few performances by one dance troupe.' "

Summerdanz opens with performances by Paradigm, a company of renowned mature dancers including Carmen de Lavallade. They will dance New York premieres of works by Robert Battle and Larry Keigwin. The second company to perform will be the Minneapolis-based Zenon Dance Company, offering choreography by Bebe Miller, Sean Curran, and Minnesota's Wynn Fricke.

Their performances will be followed by two shared evenings featuring new dances by emerging choreographers Camille A. Brown, Jacob Peter Kovner, Sydney Skybetter, and Jessy Smith. "These shows are the festival's real mentoring events," explains Maldonado. "They are funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. And there are three alumni from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts on the program, so we also got funding from the Tisch alumni association. But we wanted to do more, of course, than just give these artists two nights at DTW. So we matched up each of the choreographers with mentors, who they invite into the studio to look at their work and to give them feedback. In some cases the choreographers told us who they wanted as mentors and in other cases we made the selections. Jacob Kovner wanted to establish a relationship with Miguel Gutierrez because he's interested in working in the European market and wanted to talk with Gutierrez about his experiences there. Jessy Smith is making work on an all-female company, so we decided it would be good to hook her up with Gina Gibney. Camille Brown told us she's interested in working in musical theatre, so we set up meetings for her with choreographers from the Broadway world. What we're ultimately trying to do is help these young choreographers by creating connections across generations."

Summerdanz will close with performances by the 25-year-old New Jersey–based Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company and then a very young troupe, the Nicholas Andre Dance Theater. Dorfman's evening, part of her Jewish Legacy Project, will include a preview of "Echoes," a new dance-theatre piece featuring the Norwegian Jewish actor-vocalist Bente Kahan, which is scheduled to premiere in Poland in 2009. NADT's performances will comprise choreographic works by the company's artistic director, Nick Seligson-Ross.

For Summerdanz ticket information, visit www.dancetheaterworkshop.org.

-- Lisa Jo Sagolla

Comments

[Acting class Hollywood]

hey, i've seen the performance at SS last year when i went to NY for a friend's acting debut. it' is so amazing to see these classics dance tap live! hope there would be a repeat this year. :)

by: matthew