(JERSEY CITY, NJ) -- Art House Productions and Friends of the Loew’s are present the 10th Annual Your Move Modern Dance Festival sponsored by The KRE group, Harwood Properties, and Point Capital Development. This year’s four-day festival will return to the Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre, a historic venue in Jersey City which will celebrate its 90th anniversary this year. The festival will run from November 13-17, 2019.
Single tickets are now on sale at www.arthouseproductions.org. Single tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. Additional discounts are available for groups of 10 or more. Tickets for TEN: A Panel & Party are $10.
“It is a wonderful achievement for Your Move: New Jersey’s Modern Dance Festival to reach 10 years of production. Credit for this achievement should not only shared by Art House and the Your Move founders and producers, but by the dance community here in Jersey City and beyond. Dance is the most under-attended performing art, but Your Move has bucked that trend time and again with robust crowds and avid supporters that come year after year. We look forward to seeing you at the historic Landmark Loew’s Theatre in November.” says Meredith Burns.
Morgan Refakis, Your Move co-founder and curator says, “We started Your Move to provide a platform for the burgeoning dance community in Jersey City. Your Move has grown significantly over the years; we've hosted hundreds of choreographers and performers from around the world. The festival is known throughout the dance community for its high-caliber dance performances and supportive production and promotional teams. We continue to ensure the selection of performances have something for everyone... for an avid fan of modern dance and an audience member just dipping their toe. Sometimes there are boundary pushing performances that beg the question, "Is this dance?" And we aren't here to answer that question... Your Move is here to celebrate the diversity of dance as a medium of art and expression.”
Your Move is New Jersey's award-winning annual modern dance festival, designed to support inventive choreographers from New Jersey, New York and beyond. The festival has presented 175 companies spanning 12 states and three continents. Now in its 10th season, Your Move is curated by Morgan Refakis and Katelyn Halpern, and produced by the team at Art House Productions. Your Move was the recipient of the 2016 Jete Award, a Dance New Jersey honor given in recognition of the strong impact on the state's dance community.
This year’s choreographers include Claire Porter (featured choreographer), 78 Moves, Chaery Moon, Dalit Agronin, Elena Notkina, Hyunsang Cho, Katelyn Halpern & Dancers, Kristi Cole, mignolo dance, Morgaine De Leonardis , Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde, Paul Pinto, Ross Daniel Dance, and Sophia Zukoski.
Breaking the traditional boundaries of performance and spectatorship, Your Move is an active and unique experience for patrons. Each performance celebrates the vast, historic Loew’s JerseyTheater. Dances in the first half of each performance are presented in the theater’s lobby, a lavish, three-story promenade with elegant ornamentation. Following the intermission, patrons will be invited into the Italian Renaissance-style proscenium theater for the second-half of the program. Each dance is choreographed uniquely for the Loew’s awe-inspiring space, making this a truly one-of-a-kind experience.
Because of the site-specific nature of the program, audiences will be standing and walking around during the lobby performances. Audiences are encouraged to wear comfortable shoes. Limited seating will be available; to request accommodations prior to performance day, please email info@arthouseproductions.org. Art House Productions is committed to accessibility and inclusivity in all the public programming presented by our organization.
Art House Productions produces work with a shrewd sense of social responsibility and challenges the idea of "universal" mind and "universal" body in each artistic endeavor.
Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre is located at 54 Journal Square Plaza in Jersey City, New Jersey.
10th Annual Your Move Choreographers:
78 Moves (Nov. 14 & Nov. 17): Jade Salzano is a young choreographer from the Jersey Shore, best known
for her dynamic contemporary dance style under the title 78 Moves. Salzano graduated from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts Magna Cum Laude with a BFA in Dance in 2019, studying choreography directly under the mentorship of Pam Tanowitz. At Mason Gross, she had the opportunity to perform repertory by Yvonne Rainer, Christian Von Howard, Chien-Ying Wang, John Evans, Cleo Mack, and Blair Ritchie. Salzano draws her inspiration from her own experiences as a female millennial in America. Her work has been presented throughout New York City and New Jersey. Salzano's award winning dance films have also been presented across the United States.
Chaery Moon (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): As a dance maker and performer, Chaery Moon shares her internal thoughts and feelings through body motion. Working across live performance and new media, she mixes elements from both Eastern and Western cultures in creating work. Capturing time, exploring transitions, and expressing intent are inherent her movement vocabulary, which melds ballet and contemporary dance. Throughout her creative procedures, she embraces and trusts the unknown, freely allowing a nebulous idea to evolve into a concrete interpretation. She cherishes collaborating with other genres of artists in order to catapult her sequences of body movement into a deeper realm, surrounded by light, sound, and visual design. Moon believes that a good artist is not just a good mover, but a compassionate, generous, and respectful citizen of the world. She stands on the shoulders of her teachers who came before her and hopes to become a mentor to younger artists who wish to push the needle forward. Moon earned her BFA from The Juilliard School, then danced professionally with the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon. She recently returned to academia, and holds an MFA in Dance and Technology from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Claire Porter / PORTABLES *featured choreographer (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): Claire Porter, known for her comedic text/movement work and skilled teaching, has received many commissions and honors including those from The Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, NewMusicUSA, Rockefeller Foundation and The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Porter has an MA in Dance Ohio State, a BA in Mathematics and is a Laban Movement Analyst. She teaches at Montclair State and Fairleigh Dickinson University (Teaneck).
Dalit Agronin (Nov. 14 & Nov. 17): Dalit Agronin, a native Texan, graduated magna cum laude from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA where she received a BA in Dance and Psychology. Dalit has been making her own work for the past two years in the city. Her work has been showcased as part of the Lehigh Valley Dance Festival in Bethlehem, PA and in NYC with NACHMO, The Creators Collective at CC Bond Gowanus and Freddy's Bar and with Maya Kite and Dancers at The Tank. Additionally her choreography has been performed at the Actors Fund, Triskelion Arts, Hudson Guild Theatre, and at Dixon Place. Most recently with "mouthfull" at CPR, “Moving Men of Dance” at Dixon Place and a split bill show with Between the Seas Festival at NY Theatre Lab this past May.
Elena Notkina (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): Elena Notkina is a Russian born dancer and choreographer. She graduated from St. Petersburg State Conservatory with Master’s Degree in Dance Performance and Choreography. Elena has been performing with various dance companies in Russia and the US. and has choreographed numerous dance pieces as well as musicals, theatre productions and gala events. Her works were
presented in European and American festivals. Elena received awards such as Fyodor Lopukhov ChoreographyCompetition and Youth Festival of Modern Choreography “Runway”.
Hyunsang Cho (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): Hyunsang Cho has completed studies choreography at 'Korea National University of Arts'. Cho has presented works that showcase his philosophy of dance on stages such as ‘Ballet Festival Korea’ ‘Stockholm Fringe Festival’, ‘Sibu International Dance Festival’(Malaysia) and ‘KODAFE (USA) With the aim of reaching a wider range of audience with dance. He is working together with young artists to create imaginative and experimental dance performances for ‘Dark Circles Contemporary Dance’ in S.Korea.
Katelyn Halpern & Dancers (Nov. 14 & Nov. 17): Her eclectic body of work ranges from life-sized installations to cut-and-tape zines to concert dance, and is frequently constructed around the idea clusters of interiority/intimacy/reflection, strangeness/humor/freedom, and the lived experience of moving through the world in a feminine body. After graduating from the University of Houston with a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in Dance, she created the evening length danceworks JUICE (June ‘17) and Loose Heart (December ‘17) with her company Katelyn Halpern & Dancers; the immersive visual art installation Heartstrung (created with Talita Cabral, October ‘18); and the public art installation Labyrinth for Reflection and the Generation of Love [No. 9] (June ‘19). Her work has been performed throughout New York and New Jersey, including concerts at BAM Fisher, NJPAC, the Knockdown Center, and White Eagle Hall, and is created with support from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Jersey (New!) Moves Fellowship, chashama, and the 2017 Choreographers in Residence Program (CHIRP) at Jersey City’s County Prep High School, among others. Additionally, Ms. Halpern is the owner/artistic director of SMUSH Gallery in Jersey City.
Kristi Cole (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): Kristi Cole is a dancer and choreographer from Columbus, Ohio with a B.A. in Dance and Political Science from the George Washington University. She has had the pleasure of working with Maida Withers Dance Construction Company, Vicky Shick, Donofrio Dance Company, Lauren Beirne Dance Works, Georgina Bates, Amanda + James and Spaces of Fontana for stage, site specific and film collaborations. Kristi has shown her choreography at GWU and as part of the Capital Fringe Festival.
mignolo dance (Nov. 14 & Nov. 17): ~mignolo dance~ is a nonprofit contemporary dance company based out of New York and New Jersey founded by sisters, Charly and Eriel Santagado, in 2017. They have been dancing and creating together for more than ten years and use this experience to continue to collaborate with each other and other dancers and artists to create new work that explores elements of various artistic mediums through movement. The company has had work produced at many shows and festivals including KoDaFe, Dumbo Dance Festival, Triskelion’s SummerFest, Peridance's APEX, and Koresh’s Come Together Dance Festival.
Morgaine De Leonardis (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): Morgaine De Leonardis received her BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Temple University in 2017. Since then, Morgaine has established herself as an independent producer, freelance performance artist and newly-found artistic director of a collaborative, immersive, and site-specific company, MAD House Theater. Morgaine, a Jersey City born and based artist, has had the pleasure of showing work at Conwell Dance Theater, The Nash Theater, SMUSH Gallery, The Craft, Gibney, and Two River Dance Theater as well as site-specific pieces in parks across New Jersey and Philadelphia’s City Hall Park. She co-choreographed and co-produced a collaborative multi-media installation with commissioned shows at Arete Gallery in Brooklyn, New York and Presser Hall in Philadelphia, PA. She is currently working as the Artist Services Assistant at Gibney. MAD House Theater is focused on building strong communities of all types of dance artists, with many backgrounds and abilities. The mission of MAD is to produce work that is highly personal but widely available and relatable to all that witness.
Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde: Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde is Nigerian - North American freelance creating dance artist living in New Jersey. Since graduating from Rutgers University, he has worked with Colleen Thomas, Bill Young, Netta Yerushalmy, Company Stefanie Batten Bland, Kayla Farrish, Douglas Dunn, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker for a Broadway lab, The Trisha Brown Dance Company and his dear friends Kyle Marshall Choreography and Miriam Gabriel + Carlo Antonio Villanueva. He has presented work at Smush Gallery, Morristown Museum, Stuffed Arts and Movement Research Monday’s at Judson. This year Oluwadamilare is Dance on the Lawn's fifth Emerging Commissioned New Jersey Choreographer.
Paul Pinto (Nov. 14 & Nov. 17): Paul Pinto is a writer, composer and multi-disciplinary performer whose work fuses of opera and music-theatre with language, movement, extended vocal techniques, and instrumental and electronic music. He is a founding member of the acclaimed collectives Varispeed and thingNY, and he has toured his work across North America and Southeast Asia. He has a few albums on the Gold Bolus label, he sang and danced on Broadway, and now he's writing an opera about boxing.
Ross Daniel Dance (Nov. 14 & Nov. 17): Ross Daniel is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. He has shown choreography at Dixon Place (New York, NY) DåncēHøLø (Queens, NY) Triskelion Arts (Brooklyn, NY) Studio Le Regard (Paris, France.) He was a participant of “MANCC Forward Dialogues.” Ross is a current fellow with the Alvin Ailey New Directions Choreography Lab. Ross has an M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University and a B.A. in theatre from Georgia College & State University.
Sophia Zukoski (Nov. 13 & Nov. 15): As a classically trained dancer who earned her BFA in Acting from SUNY Purchase, Sophia has collaborated on and performed in movement theater pieces at venues such as New World Stages 59E59, Guild Hall, and WOW! Café Theater. Her work has been shown in H.T Chen’s NewSteps: Choreographer’s Series and Sans Limites Movement Festival. She is the Co-Artistic Director of POPC, an interdisciplinary company. She also teaches master classes in theatrical devising and choreography.
