Tag Archives: Streb Extreme Action Company

ACTION HEROES: HOME SEASON @ HOME

Horizon Line will be part of Streb fundraiser “Action Heroes: Home Season @ Home”

Who: STREB Extreme Action Company
What: Livestreamed virtual presentation and fundraiser
Where: STREB Zoom
When: Friday, June 26, $0-$50, 7:00
Why: No other dance troupe in New York City uses space like the STREB Extreme Action Company. The Brooklyn-based company, founded in 1985 by artistic director Elizabeth Streb, uses small- and large-scale proprietary constructions to jump, run, tumble, and soar in such locations as the Park Ave. Armory (Kiss the Air!), the World Financial Center (Human Fountain), Gansevoort Plaza (Ascension), Lumberyard in the Catskills, and the Sony Center am Potsdamer Platz, combining dance, gymnastics, athletics, and acrobatics in breathtaking ways. So what is such a company to do during a pandemic lockdown, with Streb and her “Action Heroes” sheltering in place?

On Friday, June 26, at 7:00, STREB goes virtual with “Action Heroes: Home Season @ Home,” a benefit fundraiser that will include classic archival footage, rarely seen pieces, and two new works choreographed specifically for Zoom, Horizon Line, which premiered last month and takes the troupe to a new, claustrophobic level, and the world premiere of Body Grammar. As always, Streb will be “pushing boundaries of what the human body can do,” with associate artistic director Cassandre Joseph, Jackie Carlson, Daniel Rysak, Tyler DuBoys, Justin Ross, Sophia Wade, Kairis Daniels, Brigitte Manga, Luciany Germán, and Matthew Keywas. If you’ve never seen Streb and her Pop Action movement vocabulary, you can watch this Ted Talk and check out Catherine Gund’s 2014 documentary, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity. Admission to “Action Heroes: Home Season @ Home” is free with advance RSVP, although donations are appreciated; if you give fifty dollars or more, you’ll be invited to the live postshow talk with Streb and the company.

SEA (SINGULAR EXTREME ACTIONS)

Elizabeth Streb’s Action Heroes return to Brookfield Place for five free performances May 24-26 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brookfield Place
230 Vesey St.
May 24-26, free
www.artsbrookfield.com
streb.org

You’re not going to find Arnold Schwarzegger, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, or Jackie Chan at Brookfield Place May 24-26 as part of SEA: Singular Extreme Actions. But you will see associate artistic director Cassandre Joseph, Jackie Carlson, Daniel Rysak, Felix Hess, Loganne Bond, Tyler DuBoys, Luciany Germán, and Justin Ross, the action heroes who make up STREB Extreme Action Company. Based in Brooklyn and under the leadership of Elizabeth Streb, the troupe combines dance and movement with breathtaking acrobatics using specially created apparatuses from which they propel themselves. Having seen the company perform several times, including at the World Financial Center, which is now known as Brookfield Place, I can vouch for the phenomenal abilities of these action heroes, who most definitely do not ever use stunt doubles. From May 24 to 26, they will be flirting with danger in the air and on the ground, performing pieces from their repertoire, which features “Air,” “Tilt,” “Squirm,” “Steel,” “Tied,” “Slam,” “Quake,” “Little Ease,” “Falling,” “Rock,” and “Silver.” The free shows, as always with DJ/MC Zaire Baptiste, will take place at 12:30 and 6:00 on May 24 and 25 and at 12:30 on May 26. In addition, there will be a KIDACTION class at 9:00 in the morning on May 26; advance registration is recommended.

TICKET ALERT: FALL FOR DANCE FESTIVAL 2013

Rennie Harris’s Alvin Ailey commission HOME examines the AIDS crisis in a positive way (photo by Paul Kolnik)

City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tickets go on sale Sunday, September 8, 11:00 am
Festival runs September 25 – October 5, $15 (plus free shows September 16-17 in Central Park)
212-581-1212
www.nycitycenter.org

The Fall for Dance Festival turns ten this year, celebrating a decade of providing low-priced tickets to performances at City Center by emerging and established companies from around the world. Tickets go on sale Sunday, September 8, at 11:00 in the morning, and at $15, they’re gonna sell out fast, so don’t hesitate. This year’s lineup includes three festival commissions: an untitled world premiere pairing New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns and Dutch National Ballet principal dancer Casey Herd, choreographed by Justin Peck and with a live piano score composed by Mark Dancigers; Ballet Hispanico’s Sombrerísimo, choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa; and an untitled piece by the Royal Ballet choreographed by Liam Scarlett and with a live score composed by Arvo Pärt. Program One (September 25-26) features Richard Alston Dance Company’s The Devil in the Detail, with live Scott Joplin music, a tango by Gabriel Missé and Analía Centurión, the Mearns/Herd piece, and DanceBrazil’s Fé do Sertão. Program Two (September 27-28) consists of Nrityagram’s Vibhakta, choreographed by Surupa Sen, 605 Collective’s Selected Play, HeadSpaceDance’s Light Beings, choreographed by Mats Ek and set to music by Jean Sibelius, and Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Gloria, choreographed by Robert Garland to music by Francis Poulenc. Program Three (September 30 – October 1) comprises American Ballet Theatre’s The Moor’s Pavane: Variations on a Theme of Othello, choreographed by José Limón, Colin Dunne’s The Turn, Ballet Hispanico’s Sombrerísimo, and Introdans’s Sinfonía India, choreographed by Nacho Duato.

Elizabeth Streb’s HUMAN FOUNTAIN should make a big splash as part of free Fall for Dance presentation at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Program Four (October 2-3) includes Dorrance Dance’s SOUNDspace, choreographed by Michelle Dorrance, Doug Elkins Choreography, etc.’s Mo(or)town/Redux, the Royal Ballet’s untitled world premiere, and one more to be announced. And Program Five (October 4-5) brings together Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui / Sadler’s Wells London’s Faun, BODYTRAFFIC’s o2JOY, choreographed by Richard Siegal, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo’s Black Swan Pas de Deux, choreographed by Marius Petipa, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Home, choreographed by Rennie Harris. The Fall for Dance Festival actually kicks off with two special free performances September 16-17 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park presented by the Public Theater and featuring the New York City Ballet’s Red Angels, choreographed by Ulysses Dove, Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Esplanade, Ronald K. Brown / Evidence’s Upside Down, and Streb Extreme Action Company’s Human Fountain. Tickets for those two shows will be distributed the day of the event at the Delacorte and via virtual ticketing.

EXTRAORDINARY MOVES

Elizabeth Streb’s “Human Fountain” should make a big splash as conclusion of three-part Extraordinary Moves dance presentation in World Financial Center Plaza (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

River to River Festival
World Financial Center
220 Vesey St.
Thursday, July 14, 6:00; Friday, July 15, 12 noon & 6:00 pm; Saturday, July 16, 2:00, 4:00 & 6:00
Admission: free
www.rivertorivernyc.com

Over the next three days, the River to River Festival will be presenting an exciting series of site-specific dance performances featuring three very different performances. Taking place in several locations around the World Financial Center, the ninety-minute Extraordinary Moves program begins with Australia’s Strange Fruit performing “The Three Belles,” followed by “Selected Works” from master juggler Michael Moschen, including “Triangle,” in which he situates himself inside a rather large version of the musical instrument. The audience will then make its way over to the STREB Extreme Action Company’s “Human Fountain,” a thirty-foot, three-story installation inspired by the Bellagio fountain in Las Vegas. Elizabeth Streb’s extremely talented company of performers blew away crowds at last week’s acrobatic, Whitney-commissioned ASCENSION, so this promises to be one heckuva finale. (In addition, Third Rail Projects will be presenting “Looking Glass” on Thursday at 12:30 in World Financial Center Plaza as part of the Extraordinary Moves series but not linked with the other three performances, and Judy Dennis’s “The Dancer Views” and “A Dance to Spring: The Drawings of Jules Feiffer” will be on view as well in the WFC Winter Garden and Courtyard Gallery, respectively.)

Australia’s Strange Fruit float through the air with the greatest of ease in “The Three Belles” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: The three-part Extraordinary Moves program is a whirlwind ninety minutes of breathtaking acrobatics. First up is Strange Fruit’s “The Three Belles,” in which a trio of dancers in elaborate purple Victorian costumes climb up bendable poles and then twist, turn, and lower themselves in the air, as if floating on the wind, looking spectacular set against the backdrop of the World Financial Center and the Lower Manhattan skyline. That is followed by Michael Moschen, who displays and discusses his unique approach to juggling, which ends up being more entertaining than it first sounds as he incorporates tap-dancing (seriously), a coat hanger, and an oversized triangle into his act. The program concludes with the thrilling “Human Fountain,” in which the fearless crew of the STREB Extreme Action Company clearly has fun re-creating Las Vegas’s famed Bellagio Fountain as they jump, fall, and soar off a three-tiered platform that reaches more than thirty feet high. The finale is simply dazzling. The three-day event concludes Saturday afternoon beginning at 2:00, 4:00, and 6:00.

ELIZABETH STREB: ASCENSION

Elizabeth Streb’s ASCENSION is part of special downtown Whitney series (photo by Tom Caravaglia)

Gansevoort Plaza
Gansevoort St., Little West 12th St. & Ninth Ave.
Updated: July 7, 3:00 & 5:00; July 8, 3:00 (5:00 canceled because of rain); July 9, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00
www.whitney.org
www.streb.org

Since 1985, New York-based choreographer Elizabeth Streb has displayed a penchant for extremely physical, adventurous, and challenging physical movement in her work. “Elizabeth Streb’s stubborn investigation of Action,” her website explains, “[ranges] from every day movements to the Extreme Action of sports, the circus and thrill rides; the impulse to action that is in our souls.” As part of the Whitney on Site: New Commissions Downtown program that is introducing the city to the future home of the museum, the MacArthur Genius has created ASCENSION, a free outdoor public performance piece constructed around a twenty-one-foot moving ladder. “There is a sense of beauty about a ladder, a device that has existed for centuries to assist us when the need to go higher arises,” Streb explains about the piece for nine dancers. “The climb, the ever revolving Sisyphean ascent to the unreachable top of the ladder, disallows arrival and the accomplishment of the quotidian function, to get somewhere.” ASCENSION, which is part of Streb’s work-in-progress KISS THE AIR!, comprising Essential Acts that incorporate equipment (and will be presented in December at the Park Ave. Armory), will be performed by the Streb Extreme Action Company, with music by master percussionist David Van Tieghem, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 3:00 and 5:00 in Gansevoort Plaza.

Elizabeth Streb and DJ/VJ Zaire Baptiste unhappily cancel the 5:00 performance of ASCENSION on July 8 but has added an extra show of the specially commissioned outdoor piece on Saturday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: Unfortunately, the rain forced Elizabeth Streb to cancel the 5:00 performance of ASCENSION on July 8, but she’s added another show on Saturday, July 9, so now the eleven-minute production will go on at 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00. Streb Extreme Action Company will also be outside at World Financial Center Plaza on July 14 (6:00), 15 (12 noon & 6:00), and 16 (2:00, 4:00, and 6:00) presenting Human Fountain as part of the River to River series Extraordinary Moves, which also includes Strange Fruit’s The Three Belles and Third Rail Projects’ Looking Glass.