Douglas Dunn + Dancers presents Garden Party, a new dance by Douglas Dunn with design by Mimi Gross and Lauren Parrish.
7 performances: Monday-Sunday, April 24-30, 2023, 8pm 541 Broadway, NYC
Limited seating. Doors open at 7:15pm. Running time approximately 1 hour. No late seating. Seats must be claimed no later than 5 minutes before 8pm each night. Tickets: $20 chairs; $15 cushions on floor Elevator Access
Choreography: Douglas Dunn Set & Costume design: Mimi Gross Lighting & Projection: Lauren Parrish Sound: Jacob Burckhardt
Dancers: Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston, Grazia Della-Terza, Douglas Dunn, Vanessa Knouse, Emily Pope, Paul Singh, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Timothy Ward, Christopher Williams
Douglas Dunn’s new work, Garden Party, is a series of vignettes, each with its own elegant and playful interaction of movement, visual art, music, and language. Dunn partners with longtime collaborator Mimi Gross to transform his loft space into a verdant haven. Ten members of Douglas Dunn + Dancers, including Dunn himself, frolic within this lush garden landscape while lighting and projections by Lauren Parrish illuminate each scene and its interruptions. In this hour-long work, Dunn’s steps are interwoven with poetry (John Keats, Anne Waldman, and others) and music (Robert de Visée and John Lennon, to name a few).
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Douglas Dunn is a New York-based dancer and choreographer working since 1971. He was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1969 to 1973, and a founding member of Grand Union from 1970 to 1976. Following duet, solo, and film work in the 1970s, he formed Douglas Dunn + Dancers in 1978, and in 1980 set Stravinsky’s Pulcinella on the Paris Opera Ballet. He is Board Member Emeritus of the New York City presenting organization Danspace Project. He likes to collaborate with poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, composers, and playwrights to offer a multifaceted theatrical experience. In 1998 he was awarded a NY Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for Sustained Achievement, and in 2008 was honored by the French government as Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. While continuing to lead Douglas Dunn + Dancers, he teaches Open Structures at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and presents salons at his studio at 541 Broadway in Manhattan. His book of collected writings, Dancer Out of Sight, is available at Amazon.com.
Mimi Gross is a painter, set and costume designer, and teacher. Working in a variety of media, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in numerous significant public and private collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, the Jewish Museum, le Musée des Art Decoratifs in Paris, the Nagoya Museum of Art, the Onasch Collection in Berlin, and the Lannan Foundation, as well as the Fukuoko Bank in Japan, and New York’s Bellevue Hospital. The Minneapolis Museum of Art recently acquired several works. Ms. Gross is the recipient of countless awards and grants including from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for Visual Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a “Bessie” for sets and costumes. She has collaborated with Douglas Dunn + Dancers since 1979, making sets and/or costumes for more than 25 of Mr. Dunn's dances. Currently she is non-exclusively represented by Eric Firestone Gallery in New York. Forthcoming exhibition: North Norwegian Art Centre, Norway, late spring/summer 2023.
Lauren Parrish is a lighting and projection designer who has created designs for companies such as Ailey II, American Repertory Ballet, Flux Theater Ensemble, Keigwin + Company, Loni Landon Dance, Megan Williams Dance Project, The New York Neo-Futurists, TAKE Dance, and Teatro SEA. Finding flexibility and inspiration in the limitations of space and time, Parrish’s work is founded on the concept that collaboration that respects everyone in the room and the audience is key to making the best art possible. She is currently the associate director of production at Abrons Arts Center and lives in the Bronx.
All the while making underground movies, Jacob Burckhardt has worked at a variety of jobs: Blueberry picker, Steel Mill laborer, grape harvester, Fuller Brush man, Truck driver, Taxi driver, camera repairman, adjunct professor and sound engineer. He did sound recording and mixing from North Africa to the porn industry. After making two features, he went back to making shorts, in film and video, where it is possible to preserve a direct relationship between the film and the film maker. He enjoys collaborating with Douglas, and they are currently shooting a movie called “Disappearances.”
