LEADING BAY AREA CHOREOGRAPHER BOUNCES BACK AFTER A LIFE THREATENING ILLNESS
After battling a life threatening liver & lung disease for over two & half years ENRICO LABAYEN, considered as one of San Francisco’s contemporary dance innovator & multi-award winning choreographer, returns with a world premiere of his experiences; his visions, near death experience, death, pain, struggles and the idea of the afterlife in the world premiere of “Crossing” in Labayen’s Dance/SF’s Fall Season...
LEADING BAY AREA CHOREOGRAPHER BOUNCES BACK AFTER A LIFE THREATENING ILLNESS
After battling a life threatening liver & lung disease for over two & half years ENRICO LABAYEN, considered as one of San Francisco’s contemporary dance innovator & multi-award winning choreographer, returns with a world premiere of his experiences; his visions, near death experience, death, pain, struggles and the idea of the afterlife in the world premiere of “Crossing” in Labayen’s Dance/SF’s Fall Season 2016. Labayen is creating a dance concert celebrating love, life, hope & the future; a village of dancers and choreographers afloat in the spirit of dance at Dance Mission Theater from October 14 & 15 @ 8PM &16th @ 7PM 2016.
The Fall Season opens the concert with a world premiere of Labayen’s "Crossing", a contemporary piece about wars to those who are directly involved in it and the dreadful experiences of survivors and by their loved ones. WAR: between other, the world, others and within ourselves.
Eclectic and visionary choreographer Anandha Ray will premiere "Blood Runs Thick", inspired by the spirit of the choreographer's great-grandfather, a Cherokee Medicine Man, and the struggles of the Cherokee people. The work is a dance that will cross cultural borders to the world where spirits dance through myth and storytelling. This is a search for pure and authentic movement that comes from a place where blood runs thick, binding people through time and space in the understanding that we are all one.
Laura Bernasconi, a dance artist and choreographer in demand worldwide will premiere a mind-boggling work of physical impossibility in "Balance". Trained in all forms of dance which she sees as only ONE DANCE, she has developed a movement and choreographic language so unique that incorporates classical ballet, contemporary & modern dance, yoga and classical Indian Odissi dance all rolled into one to create a hybrid sense of theater and dance.
Celebrated choreographer Erik Wagner, will present the premiere of "Reckless, Just Enough" a contemporary ballet of still untitled duet with company principals Leda Pennell and Ismael Acosta to the haunting music of Rachmaninoff.
Malu Rivera-Peoples, award winning choreographer and artistic director of Westlake School of Performing Arts collaborates with hip-hop artists Pat Cruz in "The World Is Watching Me", a contemporary dance that deals with the problems, confusions, paranoia, peer pressure and drugs common in young adults that informs the viewer of growing pains that American teenagers is going through.
Closing the concert is Enrico Labayen's a re-staging of the exciting, classically structured piece and a popular audience favorite “Quirk" (2010), classically structured, the work is a tounge and cheek look at legendary choreographers Petipa, Balanchine, Alonzo King, Jiri Kylian and William Forsythe with Labayen's twist on it.