This weekend, for the second year in a row, Jersey City’s Art House Productions and the Insurgo Stage Project will feature a series of dance performances from various emerging choreographers. Working in concert, co-producers Avianna Perez, Morgan Hille Refakis, and Meagan Woods have created Your Move, a showcase of young emerging choreographers who are working in the New Jersey and New York-area.
Refakis said the trio has tried to “select pieces that were clearly about something, that said something that really came across in the movement. In other words, we were not interested in movement just for the sake of movement.”
The four-day run of Your Move, which begins on Thursday, Nov. 10, will feature the work of Jonathan Campbell, Lauren Connolly, Alexis Convento, Victoria DeRenzo, Austin Diaz, Louise Eberle, Valerie Green, Daniel Holt, Columbine Macher, Nikki Manx, Molly Merkler, Jonathan Riedel, Chafin Seymour, Katherine Stehura, Laura Van Dyke, Kierstin Williams, in addition to pieces by Refakis, Perez, and Morgan.
‘We were not interested in movement just for the sake of movement.’ – Morgan Hille Refakis
____________
Contemporary dance culture, she said, tends to lean either towards the “shocking” or towards “movement that’s just put together. While each of those trends are somewhat at opposite ends of the spectrum, [in both of those styles], there isn’t a lot of investigation on the part of the choreographer.”
The dance works selected for this year’s Your Move series are, according to Perez, “diverse. Some of the pieces are funny, some are like dance theater, some are more serious or investigative.”
“When we were curating this show, there were really two steps to the process,” she continued. “First, there was figuring out which pieces fit the mission of Your Move. And then, second, curating them in a way that illustrates the mission. We also wanted to put pieces next to each other that demonstrated variety.”
In total, the Your Move series features 16 choreographed pieces of about 15 minutes each.
In an improvement over the 2010 debut of Your Move, the producers this year invested in the rental of a sprung Marley dance floor, a specialized surface used by professional dancers.
“I know it’s just a floor, but believe me, this will make everybody’s experience a lot more authentic, I think,” said Refakis. “It just solidifies and professionalizes the whole series. Having the right surface is for dancers what a canvas is to a painter.”
In addition to giving exposure to emerging dance and choreographic talent, Perez and Refakis said Your Move had a secondary goal: to give dancers and choreographers an opportunity to work with their peers, something they get too few opportunities to do.
“The dance community is small, and it’s easy to kind of fall into a clique, where you are dancing with or working with the same people over and over,” said Perez. “I wanted to open the circle. I wanted to introduce some of our northern New Jersey dancers and choreographers to people in New York, and I wanted dance professionals in New York to get an opportunity to work with people in New Jersey. The way this show is programmed, not only is each performance a good mix of dance pieces for the audience, but it also allows the dancers and choreographers to work with several different groups of people.”
Performances will be held in a rotating roster on the following dates: Thursday, Nov. 10 at 8 p.m., Friday, Nov. 11 at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 12 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 13 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door, and can be purchased online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/202246. Advance purchase is recommended.
For more information, including a programming schedule, please visit www.arthouseproductions.org or call (201) 915-9911. Art House Productions is located at Hamilton Square, 1 McWilliams Place, 6th Floor, in Jersey City.