2023 Festival Schedule & TICKETS

ALL EVENTS TAKE PLACE AT
WILBURY THEATRE GROUP
475 Valley Street, Providence, RI

Tickets on sale! Scroll down for details and to purchase.

THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 7:30pm

MOTION STATE DANCE FILM SERIES

$15 general admission / $10 students & seniors

The festival kicks off with a screening of short dance films and an opening night party!

Now in its fifth year, the Motion State Dance Film Series is only year-long, traveling short film festival in New England devoted to showcasing the diversity of contemporary creative voices exploring choreography for the camera.

Films include:

• 2Faced Dance Company (UK), Bert the Turtle's DOA

• Anabella Lenzu (USA), heart beats

• Ariel Scott (USA), All a Blur

• Jennifer Scully-Thurston (USA), un·fixed still life of Dolly S. Dalí... a mini epic

• McKay House & Utam Moses (USA), OVERANDOVER

• Nattie Trogdon & Hollis Bartlett (USA), UNCONVENTIONAL DANCE: Big Kmart

• Simone Rosset (Italy), MA CIGNO (The almost dead swan)

• Verena Billinger & Sebastian Schulz (Germany), Picknick

• Zac James Nicholson & Doron Perk (USA), Pedestrian

Learn more about the films and filmmakers here.

Stay after for a talk with Nattie Trogdon and Hollis Bartlett, and an opening night party with the artists performing live on Friday and Saturday… and free champagne!

FRIDAY & SATURDAY, MARCH 10 & 11, 7:30pm

LIVE PERFORMANCES

$25 general admission / $20 students & seniors

Bebe Miller, Darrell Jones & Angie Hauser, Tether (2022)

Commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center, where it premiered in October 2022, Tether is an improvised dance, sparked by curiosity about choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage’s manner of exchange with each other and their collaborators, and the evidence of the tethers they have left behind. The performers share a 20-plus-year creative scrutiny via dance-making together—Tether welcomes Cunningham as a fourth partner. The work asks: Could Cunningham’s notion of coexisting and predetermined materials serve as a trigger, a tether, for their own artistic interests?

“...These are expert improvisers, and in their gentle, speechlike interactions they keep discovering novel and fugitive beauty.” —Brian Seibert, The New York Times

“Through their casual braidings and purposeful exchanges—an invitation, a command, an admonition, a hot tip—the humanity of each dancer was revealed to be quietly, almost privately witnessed in shifting semi-darkness… In this intimate world, meaning is a given, even if narrative remains below the surface.” —Sarah Cecilia Bukowski, Dance Enthusiast

Aretha Aoki & Ryan MacDonald, IzumonookunI (work-in-progress)

A dance/punk/glam-goth/synthwave show weaving together the lost (her)story of Kabuki and its real and imagined influences and offshoots. MacDonald provides a live soundscape of synth loops, beats, and covered and original songs.

“Aretha Aoki performs with abandon and an unequivocal commitment to any task at hand. She embodies tension, strife, triumph, and an occasional irony with an enduring deftness that has come to characterize her performance work.” —Cassie Peterson, The Brooklyn Rail

Doron Perk: Grandfather Visit (2021)

Nominated for a 2022 New York Dance & Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performer, this solo explores themes of grief and heritage. Inspired by many visits to his grandfather in the last few years of his life, Perk created this performance to both deal with personal loss as well as his identity as a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. The dance language ranges from contemporary ballet to free-form improvisation and uses Israeli folk dance to reach emotional climaxes. Through the framing narrative of a visit, Perk dances out embodied memories, using the movements to evoke forgotten sensations.

“Perk’s facility and uniqueness as a mover…created something satisfying and intriguing... Grandfather Visit is an Exhibit A of how artists can present something that bloomed from deep inside themselves, but which can also connect with things deep inside their audience members." —Kathryn Boland, Dance Informa

Interspersed with dance films from:

• Baye and Asa: Suck It Up (2021)

• Billinger & Schulz: Car Walk (2021)

Stay for post-show talks.

Learn more about the artists.

SATURDAY, MARCH 11, DAYTIME

CLASSES & DANCE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION

$15 / class. Open to all levels. Class size limited; register below to reserve your spot.
CLASSES ARE NOW FULL! CLICK BELOW TO BE ADDED TO WAITING LIST.

11:30am–1pm CLASS: Gaga/dancers—Doron Perk
Gaga/dancers deepens dancers’ awareness of physical sensations, expands their palette of available movement options, enhances their ability to modulate their energy and engage their explosive power, and enriches their movement quality with a wide range of textures. The layering of familiar skills with Gaga tasks presents dancers with fresh challenges, and throughout the class, teachers prompt the dancers to visit more unfamiliar places and ways of moving as well, unlocking the endlessness of possibilities. Dancers are guided to connect their effort to pleasure and to discover the virtue of silliness.

1:30–3pm CLASS: Solo/Duo Dancing: A Choreographic Practice—Bebe Miller, Angie Hauser & Darrell Jones
This class offers an opportunity to further your own practice under the direction of Miller, Hauser and Jones, who have been collaborative dance-makers for over 20 years. At the core of our work is the expressive, articulate dancing body; we are honing our choreographic intention through the clarity of our physicality. We will explore how danc­ing is am­plified in both solo and duet work, develop­ing chore­ographic and improvisation scores through a range of composi­tional strategies. Beginning with a guided dance warm-up to prepare the body and imagination, we’ll expand into dancing, noting the rhythm and heft of action, arrival and intention.

3:30–5pm: COMMUNITY CONVERSATION (Free & open to all! No RSVP needed)
What Moves You? A conversation about dance, audience and community in the era of on-demand, in-your-pocket entertainment.
This is the second in a series of curated conversations around and about our regional dance community. This gathering will focus on the audience experience and its role in the larger performance ecosystem. Given the vast number of entities competing for our attention—both online and IRL—the question we'll pose is, “Why and how do you choose to see a live dance performance?” Join fellow audiences, artists and arts supporters to discuss the desires and realities of building and sustaining a strong dance community for both doers and watchers.
This series of Dance Community Conversations is organized by Motion State Arts and supported by Providence Art, Culture + Tourism.