Save The Date! November 29 - Dec 9
Keely Garfield Dance - Perfect Piranha
Presented by The Chocolate Factory.
SEATS ARE VERY LIMITED SO GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!
““Garfield’s work is an act of disruption, an unmasking with occasional masks, a mouthful of Pop Rocks, a baptismal immersion in feelings that continuously build.” ”
Perfect Piranha emerges as an uninterrupted flow of continuous movement, veering between a whisper and a roar. Declarative dancing gives sway to mixed emotions, evaporating patterns, and vaudevillian flourishes. The dance concludes in an immaculate outpouring – Mandala – a dance within a dance. Mandala is an extraordinarily intricate ascending spiral that serves as soulful completion.
Winston Churchill said, “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” What can be expressed is simple. What cannot be expressed is most urgent. What if there are no words yet for what we are living through? Meaning accrues - intonation, accumulation of speed, diminishing space, hate speech, embodied listening, sublime utterance – who are we now? I hit you and you hit me is one way to communicate. Inchoate and tentative, we turn away. A Piranha’s teeth are serrated, sharp as blades, and ideal for shearing and tearing flesh. A veneered smile is heralded as indication of how smart and happy a person is. Let’s turn back, reach deep into our subterranean hearts, and remember who we can be. Imagine a piranha’s strong jaw and teeth closing in, and turn towards this awareness. Snap! Wake up! We struggle with what we have made. Let’s start over. Compassionate and in accord, we turn…None of us can do this alone.
Perfect Piranha is choreographed by 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, Keely Garfield. Garfield is joined in performance by Bessie awarded dancers Molly Lieber and Raja Feather Kelly, Bessie nominated Paul Hamilton, and newcomer, Emma Rose Brown. Lighting design is by Madeline Best.
““Keely Garfield has been on a phenomenal tear in recent years, creating work that seems always on the verge of plunging off a cliff — you watch spellbound, waiting for the car to crash and burn in spectacular fashion. Somehow, though, she always makes the curve...If you are going to make a stand best to make it at the height of your powers!” ”
Keely Garfield joyfully participates in the great body of the world as a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and curator. Born in London and based in New York City, Garfield is the artistic director of her company, Keely Garfield Dance (KGD), which has been widely commissioned and presented at theaters and festivals nationally and internationally, garnering several Bessie awards and nominations. Garfield is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, a NYFA Fellow and received the Chancellor’s Award from University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she obtained her MFA in choreography. Garfield is an adjunct professor in dance at The New School and has taught at many universities and colleges. Alongside her artistic career, Garfield is an integrative yoga therapist, yoga teacher, and Reiki Master focusing on wellness for dancers, and works in oncology and hospice. A spirit of philosophical inquiry and compassionate concern unites her dedicated engagement in all her endeavors.
Garfield has created over sixty dances for KGD, and made work for other modern dance companies, theater, musicals, ballet, film, MTV, site-specific projects, schools and universities. She has collaborated with dancers, actors, musicians, students, children, people with disabilities, young adults in under-served communities, and even animated the movements of mechanical robots and antique puppets. Highlights include: Deep (The Joyce Theater), Twin Pines (Danspace Project), Disturbing The Peace (Zenon Dance Company), Iron Lung (Groundworks Dancetheater), Disturbulance (NYLA), Sinister Slapstick (Queen Elizabeth Hall), My Father Was A Spanish Captain (Tanzmesse), Scent of Mental Love (A film for Radio Bremen/Canal Arte), Damsel (Dance Theater of Harlem), Body Wisdom (Rubin Museum of Art), and Gypsy (Sundance Theater), Folk Dance In Gold (The Wooden Floor).
www.keelygarfield.nyc