15
Jun/11

GUEST ARTIST SERIES: BEN MUNISTERI DANCE PROJECTS

15
Jun/11

Todd Allen, Kelly Garone, Katie Weir perform in Ben Munisteri’s BINARY 2.0, which will be part of three-piece program at DTW this week (photo by Christopher Duggan)

Dance Theater Workshop, Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
June 16–19, $20
212-924-0077
www.dancetheaterworkshop.org
www.munisteri.com

Many choreographers get caught up in theme and concept, making statements with their carefully designed visual vocabulary. Not so much Ben Munisteri. “I am more interested in the way a dance looks to its viewers than in how it feels to the dancers performing it,” the New York City-based Munisteri explains on his company’s website. “I am not a movement innovator, a dramatist, a philosopher, or a semiotician. Instead, I see myself as an excellent editor, tailor, and craftsman who manages to make something artful, meaningful, and beautiful with these skills (and with smart, generous, talented dancers).” Since 1994, Munisteri has been creating works for Ben Munisteri Dance Projects that he is continually fiddling with, constantly coming up with what he calls “remixes” or “recompositions,” regularly reinventing his oeuvre. BMDP will be at Dance Theater Workshop this week presenting three pieces: 2009’s Catalog, set to music by Radiohead; an expanded version of last year’s Binary 2.0, with music by Debussy; and the New York premiere of Robot vs Mermaid , with a score by Kirk O’Riordan. The company features dancers Katie Weir, Todd Allen, Shane Rutkowski, Anica Scott-Garrell, Cameron Burke, and Kelly Garone and associates Christine McMillan, Eric Sean Fogel, and Beau Hancock, with lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann.