The Very Best Of NYC Dance (October 2009)

New York City Center will present Studio 5 at City Center, curated and hosted by Damian Woetzel.  This new interactive series is designed to take the audience beyond the proscenium into the world of dance, and will include demonstrations by featured artist and their respective colleagues. The Studio 5 at City Center series begins Oct 26 with a look at the career of ballerina and muse Wendy Whelan, and will be followed by evenings with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater star Matthew Rushing and acclaimed Spanish ballet dancer and director Angel Corella. 

Jen Abrams current movement based performance Most of This Is True opens at Wow Café Theatre Oct 28. An unexplained event has exploded the lives of four women bound to each other by history, habit, love, and duty. As they fall apart, we re-assemble their story. Most of This Is True asks how we communicate—intentionally and unintentionally—about our relationships and about our expectations of ourselves. It merges dance, theater, text and sound to create a tight, intense world in which the characters we think we know—the control freak, the people-pleaser, the slacker, the train wreck—turn out to be far more complicated than they seem.

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts kicks off its World Stages: Dance Series with the Luna Negra Dance Theater Oct 25. The Chicago-based dance company will perform a program of works by Latino choreographers including the New York premiere of Danzón, a new piece created by Luna Negra’s former artistic director, Eduardo Vilaro.  Luna Negra’s distinctive style blends the discipline of ballet with the dynamic movements of contemporary dance, infused with the explosive energy of Latin and Afro-Caribbean dance forms. Also onstage special guests Turtle Island Quartet and the legendary Paquito D’Rivera.