TLab Shares Hosts
Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble Presents
In the Eye of a Dream
Choreographed by Anna Sokolow
Directed by Samantha Géracht
The Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble presents a new immersive production of Anna Sokolow’s tributes to painters Frida Kahlo and Rene Magritte. In “Frida,” an intimate portrait based on Sokolow’s personal relationship with Frida Kahlo, Sokolow created a multimedia homage to her friend’s internal life and public persona. Sokolow’s masterwork “Magritte, Magritte” sets the disturbing, paradoxical paintings of Surrealist Rene Magritte into action, with text by John White. With guest artists Clarence Brooks and Christine Dakin, former artistic director of the Martha Graham Company, and video projections by Proteo Media.
Performance Date:
November 9 , 10 @ 7:30
November 11 @ 3 and 7:30
November 12 @ 3
November 16 , 17 @ 7:30
November 18 @ 3 and 7:30
November 19 @ 3
Performance inside the Theater
Tickets:
$35 for General Admission, plus fees
$25 for Students and Seniors, plus fees
Click HERE to purchase!
About the Company:
SOKOLOW THEATRE/DANCE ENSEMBLE is the living legacy company dedicated to presenting Anna Sokolow’s vast body of emotionally riveting work. Over a 70 year career, Ms. Sokolow continuously broke the conventions of modern dance, focusing on the human experience and drawing upon whatever genre best served her artistic purpose. Her masterpieces remain relevant to our times and touch the hearts of all people as we struggle with the universal issues of living, regardless of differences in place and culture. The company’s projects include reconstruction, reimagination, deconstruction, historical performance, teaching, lectures, archiving, and partnering with contemporary choreographers—all modes through which we step inside Sokolow’s masterworks and draw from this perspective to better frame our future. ST/DE was founded by Sokolow protege Jim May and is currently under the artistic direction of Samantha Geracht. For more information visit www.sokolowtheatredance.org.
Meet the Crew/Cast:
Starring: Margaret Mighty Oak Brackey, Ilana Ruth Cohen, Samuel Humphreys, Krista Jansen, Luis Gabriel Zaragoza, Brad Orego, and Margherita Tisato
Guest Starring: Christine Dakin and Clarence Brooks
Guest Starring: Christine Dakin and Clarence Brooks
Associate Directors: Eleanor Bunker, Lauren Naslund
Projections: Kathleen Kelley (Proteo Media)
Lighting: Saúl Ulerio
Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) Known as one of the most dynamic and uncompromising of choreographers, Ms. Sokolow began her career as a dancer with Martha Graham. The work of Ms. Sokolow has had and continues to have a profound effect on the course of contemporary
dance throughout the world. She founded the first modern dance companies in Israel and Mexico and influenced such artists as Alvin Ailey, Pina Bausch, and Martha Clark. Ms. Sokolow also made important contributions to the theater. Her choreography for the Broadway stage included Street Scene (1947), Regina (1949), and Candide (with Leonard Bernstein, 1956); in
1967 she created the original dances for the off-Broadway production of Hair. She was a founding member of The Actors Studio, where she taught movement for actors. As a teacher of dance, Ms. Sokolow covered much ground, from the Juilliard School (prominently featured in a
2002 documentary) and the 92nd Street Y in New York City to the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. Anna Sokolow created a body of work that combines dance and music with theater, poetry and prose. Called the “Solzenitsyn of twentieth-century dance,” she consistently and uncompromisingly reflected the realities of society through her work.
Samantha Géracht, MFA (Artistic Director) performed with Anna Sokolow’s Players’ Project for eleven years and is a founding member of the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble. In 2017 Ms. Géracht was appointed the ensemble’s artistic director. She has toured and taught Sokolow’s repertory nationally and internationally, setting Ms. Sokolow’s works on professional companies, university dance programs, and solo dance artists. Ms. Géracht studied technique and composition with Alwin Nikolais and Murry Louis, Humphrey/Limon with Jim May, Betty Jones, Fritz Luden, and Gail Corbin, and Weidman with Deborah Carr. Ms. Geracht performed the Humphrey/Weidman repertory with Deborah Carr Theater Dance Ensemble and Gail Corbin. She has appeared with Rae Ballard’s Thoughts in Motion, and as a guest artist with David Parker and The Bang Group. In 2016 she choreographed Shadowbox Theatre’s The Earth and Me, a critically acclaimed climate change puppet/dance opera created for NYC public schools and community centers. Ms. Géracht served as a panelist for the Library of Congress opening of the “New Dance Group” archives. She holds an MFA in dance from Montclair State University (NJ) and a BS in dance from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
Eleanor Bunker (Associate Artistic Director) holds degrees from Hartford College for Women and SUNY Empire State College. She began her modern and ballet training at the Hartford Ballet where she studied with Enid Lynn, Lisa Bradley, and Michael Uthoff. She was a soloist and rehearsal director for eleven years with Rondo Dance Theater, a repertory company which featured masterworks of the American Modern Dance genre under the artistic direction of Elizabeth Rockwell. She continues to perform the repertory of Isadora Duncan, and is the dance faculty at Dominican Academy in NYC. Eleanor was a member of Anna Sololow’s Players’ Project for 14 years and has been a member of Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble since its founding. Eleanor reconstructs Anna Sokolow’s repertory and directs rehearsals for the company and for schools and professional dancers. She also oversees costuming for the company.
Lauren Naslund (Associate Artistic Director) began her modern dance studies in Chicago with Frances Allis. She holds degrees in biology from the University of Chicago and Harvard. She danced in Cambridge, MA with the Performing Arts Ensemble and the Massachusetts Dance Ensemble and in New York with the theater/dance company Plath/Taucher Productions. She has performed the works of Charles Weidman and Doris Humphrey with Deborah Carr’s Theatre Dance Ensemble and under the direction of Gail Corbin. She also works with Rae Ballard’s Thoughts in Motion and Andrew Jannetti & Dancers. She was a member of Anna Sokolow’s Players’ Project for 15 years, and has been with Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble since its founding. Lauren reconstructs and stages Anna Sokolow’s repertory for the company and for schools and professional dancers.
Kathleen Kelley (projections) is a choreographer, media artist, and the Artistic Director of Proteo Media + Performance, a company producing art at the intersections of technology and the body. Her experimental films have been featured at venues such as Gibney Center, Theaterlab, Movement Research, Judson Church, Gowanus Loft, and Triskelion Arts; in festivals such as the Oregon Short Film Festival, Newark International Film Festival, and the Utah Dance Film Festival; and online at the Triquarterly Literary Magazine, NPR's First Look, Rutger’s University, Philly Fringe, and Whitman College, among many others. Collaborative interdisciplinary relationships are at the heart of her practice, and she has partnered with artists such as zavé martohardjono, Christian von Howard, Bree Breeden, Paul Rabinowitz, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Janessa Clark, Pioneers Go East!, the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble and others. She is a 2019 Gibney Work Up resident, a Chez Bushwick Artist in Residence in 2018, and a 2015-2016 LEIMAY Fellow. She received her MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her BFA from the University of North Carolina- Greensboro where she also received the 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award. She serves as a Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Montclair State University.
Christine Dakin (guest artist), has for more than four decades been performing, teaching and creating dance, collaborating with musicians, scholars, dancers, photographers. She was principal dancer and Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, honored to receive the Dance Magazine Award, a “Bessie”, Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship and an Honorary Doctor of Arts from the Universidad de Colima, Mexico.
Dakin is guest artist with Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, founding member of Buglisi Dance Theatre and performs works created for her by contemporary artists Jaime Blanc, Brice Mousset and Alejandro Chávez. Her film La Voz del Cuerpo/The Body Speaks was an official selection of the 2013 New York Independent Film Festival and NEWFILMMAKERS NY and her ‘Terpsikon Vol.1’, filming and commentary on Martha Graham’s technique, is available on Vimeo on Demand. Dakin was a Fulbright Senior Scholar, USIA artist and awarded Rockefeller US-Mexico Fund for Culture and CEC ArtsLink grants. Her teaching includes a decade at The Juilliard School, Visiting Lecturer at Harvard and throughout Mexico since 1981. She is guest teacher for Tecniche di Danza Moderna (Italy), Graham for Europe (France) and on faculty at the Ailey School and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.
Clarence Brooks (guest artist) (he/they), a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and lecturer who toured the US and the world with 80+ companies, is currently a freelance dancer with danceTactics Performance Group, Pioneer Winter Collective, Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, The Dance Exchange, and David Parker and The Bang Group. For 18 years, Clarence directed the dance program at Florida Atlantic University where their creative scholarship was about presenting the Black experience in dance via old and new choreographies. Clarence can be seen in the video documentary The World of Alwin Nikolais and their essay “Dancing with the Issues” was published in One Teacher in 10 (Alyson Books). In 2019, the Library of Congress recorded their performance of Talley Beatty’s “Mourner's Bench” for the national archive. The recipient of several fellowships and awards, Clarence holds an MFA in dance, four somatic certifications, and sits on the boards of danceTactics Performance Group, Natural Movers Foundation, Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, Miami Dance Futures, Florida Dance Education Organization, and Humphrey Foundation for Dance. Follow Clarence on Instagram @clbdreadeddancer
COVID-19 policy: In guidance with the city and state COVID-19 policies, we will no longer be requiring masks, but strongly recommend them.