2+2+4 – An Evening with Company E

Sat. Sep 27, 2014 at 8:00pm EDT
All Ages
Price: $15.00
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Price: $15.00
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2+2+4 – An Evening with Company E

Washington DC’s Company E makes its Richmond dance debut!


“Company E, Washington, DC’s celebrated contemporary dance company, praised by Ha’aretz Newspaper of Tel Aviv, Israel as a “company deserving of its reputation as one of America’s finest,” makes its Richmond debut on Saturday, September 27th at the Grace Street Theater.


“We’ve spent the majority of our first three seasons overseas,” commented Executive Director Paul Gordon Emerson. “This year, in addition to our international work with the State Department and Ministries of Culture, we wanted to work closer to home. Richmond has been a special place for many of us over the years, both through college and concerts we’ve done with other companies, and we wanted our season debut to be at the Grace Street Theater.”


For Grace Street the Company has chosen an evening of duets, including the US premiere of celebrated English/Israeli choreographer Rachel Erdos’s “Why We Tell.”


“Rachel is a special choreographer,” notes Co-Artistic Director Kathryn Sydell Pilkington. “This is our third commission with Rachel and we’re always amazed by how much humanity, depth and insight she brings to the stage. She’s the kind of artist who makes people feel they are a part of her work no matter where they are in the audience. We’re excited for our Richmond audience to experience the US premiere of ‘Why We Tell.”


Grace Street also marks the Company E US debut of Gavin Stewart, who spent the last two seasons with the Richmond Ballet, and VCU alumnus Kyoko Ruch. “Richmond is a special city for dance,” said Stewart. “Whether as a dancer at the Ballet or a choreographer myself, I’ve loved working there.” Stewart spent three weeks with Company E on a four-city teaching and concert tour of Kazakhstan in August. “The international work the company does is astonishing. We were working in places where contemporary dance is a completely new art form, where 100 students sign up for a two-week workshop with a few days notice and are just transformed in front of your eyes. Its an amazing reminder of the power of dance regardless of culture or language.”


Among the highlights of the Company E program of Richmond premieres is Emerson’s “Falling” the award winningduet the Washington Post praised as “a heart-stopping duet that portray(s) the highs, sputters and spats of a relationship,”2 and by Haaretz as “an exquisite duet.”3


“There’s one dance on the show which is not a duet,” notes Pilkington. “We doubled the 2+2 and took us to four with Robert Priore’s fascinating “Abandon,” which has been jury selected for concerts in New York City and Houston, Texas in October. It was too good to pass up the chance to share it with our Richmond audience.”


ABOUT COMPANY E


Founded in the Peruvian jungle in the summer of 2011 by Paul Gordon Emerson, Kathryn Sydell Pilkington, Jason Garcia Ignacio, Robert J. Priore and Amanda Engelhardt, Company E is an international contemporary dance troupe based in Washington, DC. In its first three seasons, most often in partnership with the US Department of State, the Company has toured to 20 countries on five continents, building partnerships, creating dances and crafting an enduring legacy of contemporary dance from the world’s great cities to communities where contemporary dance is a new and often provocative art form. From Switzerland to Tajikistan, Spain to Turkmenistan, Company E’s artists teach, engage, create and perform in Opera Houses in the heart of Europe and open fields on the Afghan border.


The seven member troupe has been commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC to create “Looking for Don Quixote”, honored by the US Department of State for its imagery, partnered with Embassies from Israel, Spain, Italy and others in Washington to bring great choreographers from abroad to make dances for the company and engaged dancers from far off Kazakhstan to intern with the company in Washington.


For more on Company E, visit the company’s website at www.companye.org

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Grace Street Theater 934 West Grace Street
Richmond, VA 23284