Young Dance Collective

Performing at PS122 on Thursday, June 5th through Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Come experience a dance-exploration into the art of becoming one’s self as interpreted by seven inspired and inspiring teen artists. The Young Dance Collective hurtles against and through expectations of where they are in the scheme of life. Alert, ardent, open and decisive, this sophisticated company offers a formative investigation that reveals the intelligence and intensity of our youth.

“Don’t think about the past. Don’t think about the future.

Don’t think about what you are going to do the next day. Invest yourself entirely in the here and now.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Ticket Information
You can purchase tickets at www.ps122.org or call 212-352-3101

General Admission $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (PS122 members)

Showtimes
Thursday, June 5th 7:30pm
Friday, June 6th 7:30pm (reception to follow)
Saturday, June 7th 4:00pm and 7:30pm
Sunday, June 8th 4:00pm

Location
Performance Space 122
150 First Avenue @ 9th Street

Subway
L train to 1st Avenue
F/V train to 2nd Avenue
N/R to 8th Street 
6 to Astor Place

Bus
M15 at St. Mark’s/9th St.

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Merce Cummingham and The Young Dance Collective, originally uploaded by youngdancecollective.

The Young Dance Collective gets to meet Merce Cunningham at the annual STREB benefit at the STREB Labs for Action Mechanics

Photo by Yk Hong

A choreographic game for one thousand bodies

Dates: September 13 – 30 2006, Wednesday – Saturday, 8:00 PM
Previews: (No Press Review): September 6-8 2006

The Young Dance Collective has been invited to perform in the continuation of the site-specific piece AGORA originally created and directed by Noémie Lafrance in 2005 in the abandoned McCarren Park pool in Brooklyn. Inspired by the “Agora,” the center of town or marketplace in ancient Greece, AGORA II investigates the role of public space in contemporary urban life. In this years performance the audience is invited to participate.

Site: McCarren Park Pool, Greenpoint/Williamsburg
Main Arch (Lorimer St. between Driggs & Bayard Ave.)

Tickets are player or viewer. Player allows you to participate in the dance.

Excerpts of Ask will be presented in Noémie Lafrance’s Agora.
September 13-October 1, 2005

Agora:
In celebration of the historic McCarren Park pool site, a 50,000 square foot empty pool in Williamsburg, Noémie Lafrance is creating a site-specific dance performance that invites the community to re-experience a moment in movement of this monumental public space. Agora is a site-specific dance performance inspired by the McCarren pool site and performed by 30 dancers to a multi-channel score with theatrical lighting transforming the 50,000 square foot pool into a vast staging area. Performed inside the large pool, the overlapping narratives of Agora will produce the illusion of travel through the different layers of visceral urban experiences and explore the phenomenon of agoraphobia as a social and physical reaction to urban architecture.

Ask is an evening of work by Young Dance Collective. Asking questions about their world, their lives and their art form, the members of Young Dance Collective embarked on a creative process which is presented in Ask.

Of their performance in the Oct ’04 Terry Dean & Katie Present* DANCEOFF!, at PS122, Quinn Batson of Culturebot.org wrote:

“Young Dance Collective, a group of protodancers with an average age of ten, gave every fiber of themselves to performing. It was a joy to watch these kids give staple dance movements fresh life, and their enthusiasm was contagious.”

Young Dance Collective wants to know what questions you ask yourselves, what do you think about art, about life, about the possibilities for change or if change is even necessary. Can art make a difference in peoples’ lives

We ask questions. Join us and ask questions about your world, your life and the possibility for art to “make a difference” in peoples lives and the life of our planet. We are looking for questions to encoorporate into the performance of Ask.

Ask your own questions… send them to ydcinfo@youngdancecollective.com

Ask is a new evening of work by the Young Dance Collective.
We are a group of young, serious dancers asking questions about our world, our lives and our art form. These questions are reflected in the content of a new evening of work which includes three group pieces, a trio, a few duets and a number of solos all of which have been choroegraphed by the company under the direction of Kimberly Cullen our Artistic Director. We also have one piece which was choreographed in part by a guest choreographer Julie Garfolo.

MAY 20, 2005 at 7:30 pm
MAY 21 & 22 at 4:00 pm
at DANCE FORUM
20 East 17th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10003
$15 ADULTS $10 KIDS
to reserve tickets:
call 212.352.3101 OR
www.theatermania.com

On Sunday October 16 get ready for eight minute bursts of the weird, bizarre, out-there performances that made PS 122 and AVANT-GARDE-ARAMA famous but this time there’s a twist. Every performace is either by, for, or about kids! So load up the mini-van (6 train) and don’t forget the kids- or grownups who act like kids- and come on down to the East Village for an afternoon of fun and performance for the whole Avant-Garde-A-Family.
Sunday, October 16 will include dance from the Young Dance Collective and Magma – the junior company of Sarah East Johnson’s Lava; theater from the students of the Wooster Group Summer Institute; found-object puppetry -and a short puppet workshop – from Searls Puppetry as well as music from Lucian Buscemi’s band Stungun.

Young Dance Collective’s will be performing Be There For Me Danced and Choreographed by: Hannah Cullen, Sophia Orlow, Liana Ray, Isa Reisner, Cosmo Scharf, Kassandra Thatcher