HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA

DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP
in association with
DOUG ELKINS & FRIENDS and
DAVID PARKER AND THE BANG GROUP
present
HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA
featuring
FRÄULEIN MARIA
and
NUT/CRACKED

New York, NY, November 5, 2009 – Dance Theater Workshop in association with Doug Elkins & Friends, and David Parker and The Bang Group present HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA featuring FRÄULEIN MARIA and NUT/CRACKED. This holiday mini-festival opens with FRÄULEIN MARIA, Doug Elkins’ delightful take on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. This New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award winning workincludes ballet, hip-hop, voguing, stepping, stomping, and more. Directed by Barbara Karger and Michael Preston, with a mix of original cast members, downtown dance all-stars, and new faces including Devin Buchanan, Cindy Chung Camins, Carolyn Cryer, Doug Elkins, Kevin Fitzgerald Ferguson, Krista Racho Jansen, Jeffrey Kazin, Deborah Lohse, Scott Lowe, Meghan Merrill, Lisa Niedermeyer, Donnell Oakley, David Parker, Michael Preston, and Amber Sloan.

On the weekends, FRÄULEIN MARIA is joined by matinee performances of David Parker and The Bang Group’s NUT/CRACKED, the contemporary dance world’s beloved version of The Nutcracker. With an enterprising mix of tap, ballet, contemporary, disco and even toe tap, Parker conjures a comic, subversive neo-vaudeville tinged with whimsy. NUT/CRACKED is danced to both novelty and popular arrangements of the score as well as the traditional orchestral suite.

HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA brings these widely toured and awarded treats home for the holidays. Complete with family packages and discount pricing this festival offers an affordable Holiday entertainment option with a contemporary twist.

Performances of FRÄULEIN MARIA will take place at Dance Theater Workshop in the Bessie Schönberg Theater, December 10 – 12 (Thursday- Saturday) at 7:30pm and December 17 – 19 (Thursday- Saturday) at 7:30pm. There will be a Pre-Show Talk on December 10 (Thursday) at 6:30pm with Ted Chapin, President of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, and a free wine reception following every performance. Fee-free tickets are $25 and are available online at dancetheaterworkshop.org, over the phone at 212.924.0077, and in person at the box office. Dance Theater Workshop Members, Students, and Seniors are eligible for a 20% discount ($20 Tickets).

Performances of NUT/CRACKED will take place at Dance Theater Workshop in the Bessie Schönberg Theater, December 13 (Saturday) at 2:00pm, and December 19 – 20 (Saturday – Sunday) at 2:00pm. Fee-free tickets are $25 and are available online at dancetheaterworkshop.org, over the phone at 212.924.0077, and in person at the box office. Dance Theater Workshop Members, Students, and Seniors are eligible for a 20% discount ($20 Tickets).

Box office hours are Monday – Friday from 5pm – 9pm and Saturday – Sunday from 12pm – 8pm.  Dance Theater Workshop is located at 219 West 19th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.

PACKAGE DEALS:

See both FRÄULEIN MARIA and NUT/CRACKED for only $40!

Families with two adults and two kids can see both shows for ONLY $100!

Discounts are available online at dancetheaterworkshop.org, at the box-office and over the phone at 212.924.0077.

FRÄULEIN MARIA BIOGRAPHIES

Doug Elkins is a two-time New York Dance and Performance “BESSIE” Award-winning choreographer who began his career as a B-Boy touring the world with break dance groups New York Dance Express and Magnificent Force, among others. In 1988, he founded the Doug Elkins Dance Company with Lisa Nicks and Jane Weiner, which performed nationally and internationally for fifteen years before disbanding in 2003. Doug is a recipient of significant choreographic commissions and awards from the NEA, National Performance Network, Jerome Foundation, Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation, Dance Magazine Foundation, Metropolitan Life/American Dance Festival, Hartford Foundation, Arts International, The Greenwall Foundation, and The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. In 1994, Doug received a Brandeis University Creative Arts Medal, sharing the stage with author Philip Roth and photographer Nan Goldin. In 2006, he was honored in New York City by the Martha Hill Award for Career Achievement.  Doug has taught and choreographed extensively in the U.S. and Europe and has created original work for Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company, Flying Karamazov Brothers, MaggioDanza, Pennsylvania Ballet, Union Dance, and CanDoCo of London, as well as a number of university dance companies and the renowned Mini & Maxi of Holland. His theater work includes collaborations with Joanne Akalaitis and Philip Glass, Robert Woodruff, Pavel Dubrusky, Annie Hamburger, Molly Smith, Craig Lucas, David Henry Hwang, Michael Preston, and Barbara Karger.  Most recently he worked with Arin Arbus on her critically-acclaimed Othello for Theatre for a New Audience. At A.R.T., where Doug frequently consults, he worked on Cardenio (written by Charles Mee and Stephen Greenblatt and directed by Les Waters) and The Communist Dracula Pageant (directed by Anne Kaufman) in the 2008 season.  A graduate of SUNY/Purchase, he received his MFA in Dance from Hollins University/ADF in 2007.  He currently teaches at The Beacon School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Barbara Karger was born and raised in Vienna, Austria and received her MFA in Physical Theater at the renowned Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany. She was a founding member of the theater company, Antagon, which toured throughout Europe. As a performer she has worked with various companies including a world tour with the Swiss Mask Theater Troupe “Mummenschanz.” Since the early 90’s she has been directing productions both in the U.S. and abroad, including Peter and the Wolf with Doug Elkins and Michael Preston.  She is an Associate Professor of Theater and Dance at Trinity College, Hartford.

Michael Preston was a member of the Shaliko Company in New York City, founded by Leonardo Shapiro. He also worked with such artists as John Sayles, David Cale, Wynn Handman and Theodora Skipitares. From 1991 until 2000, he toured the world as one of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, which included three different runs on Broadway. With them, he collaborated on and performed nine different shows, ranging from the post-modern tragedy Le Petomane to an update of Room Service (winner of an L.A. critic’s award in 1998). They were nominated for an Olivier award in London for Best Comedy in 1994. He directed their last show, Life: A Guide for the Perplexed. He co-directed Peter and the Wolf, with Barbara Karger, which was choreographed by Doug Elkins, in Amsterdam in 2001. He is currently an Associate Professor of Theater and Dance at Trinity College, Hartford.

NUT/CRACKED BIOGRAPHIES

David Parker grew up around Boston and began studying tap and ballet when he was 16. He continued to study dance at Bard College and began to experiment with mixing the post-modern forms he was learning there with classical and percussive dance. Moving to New York in 1979, he danced with an unusually broad range of choreographers and companies in styles which included historic modern dance revivals, folk dance, experimental and traditional tap forms, contemporary and post-modern dance, and even character roles in classical ballet. This provided the basis for his choreographic work which began in earnest with his appearances on Dance Theater Workshop’s Fresh Tracks series in 1990 and 1992. He undertook his first full-evening show in 1993. This season’s performances of NUT/CRACKED represent his seventh full-evening program presented by Dance Theater Workshop. He has been presented twice by Danspace Project and twice by Symphony Space where his company will appear in partnership with Gina Gibney Dance in March 2010. He has a long relationship with DanceNOW [NYC] which recently commissioned him to create Show Down, a choreographic reinvention of Annie Get Your Gun which returned by popular demand for an encore run at Joe’s Pub in June 2009.

The Bang Group recently celebrated its tenth anniversary as a company in residence at Summer Stages Dance Festival in Concord, Massachusetts where they have developed most of their new work over the past decade. They are also a company in residence at Manhattan’s West End Theater where Parker and Jeffrey Kazin present thrice-yearly mini-festivals of new dance.

NUT/CRACKED was originally co-commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop and the Carlo Felice Opera House’s Auditorium Theater in Genoa, Italy in 2003 and has enjoyed over 150 performances throughout the U.S., Italy and Scotland over six consecutive seasons of touring.

The Bang Group has appeared throughout Europe in festivals in The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Monaco, Scotland, and The Czech Republic. Parker himself has made over 20 commissioned works for other companies and university dance groups including Juilliard New Dances, Pittsburgh Dance Alloy Theater, GroundWorks Dancetheater in Cleveland, The Anna Sokolow Players Project, The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, The Barnard/DTW Project, and most recently at Northwestern University.

Parker makes frequent appearances as a guest performer with Sara Rudner (Dancing on View at the ICA Boston), Christopher Williams, Sara Hook, New York Theater Ballet, Catherine Tharin, Fiona Marcotty, Dixie Fun Lee Shulman, and as Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter in Doug Elkins’ Fräulein Maria.

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Dance Theater Workshop is the preeminent U.S. based center for dance and performance that maintains an uncompromising mission to identify, present, and support independent contemporary artists and companies to advance dance and live performance in New York and worldwide. Dance Theater Workshop supports innovative artists through all facets of their creative process and offers audiences the opportunity to experience and engage with artistic expression in bold and evocative ways.

Dance Theater Workshop’s 2009-2010 Season Supporters   (as of July 1, 2009)

Private support provided by: American Masterpieces: Dance Initiative of the New England Foundation for the Arts; The Carnegie Corporation of New York; Chervenak-Nunnalle Foundation; The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Ford Foundation; French United States Exchange in Dance of the New England Foundation for the Arts; The Howard Gilman Foundation; The Mertz Gilmore Foundation; The Greenwall Foundation; The William Randolph Hearst Foundations; The Jerome Foundation; The Lambent Foundation; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; National Performance Network; The New York Community Trust; New York State DanceForce; The Jerome Robbins Foundation; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; The Scherman Foundation; The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation; The Shubert Foundation, Inc.; The Trust for Mutual Understanding; and The Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund.

Corporate support provided by: Bloomberg L.P. and Consolidated Edison Company of New York.

Public support provided by the following government agencies and elected representatives: National Endowment for the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; Kate D. Levin, Commissioner; Speaker Christine C. Quinn; New York City Council; New York State Council on the Arts; New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; Senator Thomas K. Duane, New York State Senate.

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