Re:borN DANCE INTERACTIVE / JANET ROSTON, MIXED eMOTION THEATRIX / VALERIE MCCANN – Stories in Body

3 NEW WORKS THAT BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN THEATRICAL STORYTELLING AND ABSTRACT DANCE:

Re:borN Dance Interactive’s “Amongst the Fragments,” follows a woman suffering from emotional disarray as depicted by relationships in her life. As her perception falters, her life becomes more incoherent and fragmented. She dances through her memories as we become witnesses to the collapse of the relationship between thought, emotion, and behavior, and how they relate to the world that surrounds us.

Storytelling and personal histories is a focus for Mixed eMotion Theatrix and choreographer Janet Roston. “So Now You Know” brings actors who move and dancers who speak together to tell stories in words and dance of individual discovery; in love, childhood, family and work. Poignant, hilarious and often terrifying this hybrid dance/theater piece is a developing work for the company.

In Valerie McCann’s “Helplessness Makes Patients Hard to Please,” Orestes does her physical therapy exercises.

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Re:borN Dance Interactive is a contemporary dance company and artist collective based in Southern California founded by Boroka Nagy. The company is composed of a group of 21st century artists who strive to go beyond the aesthetics of contemporary modern dance, and delve deeper into the emotional and social content of the work. Re:borN has presented both concert stage and installation work at various dance and theater festivals across the country, and has worked on a number of collaborative performances and cultural events with composers. Re:borN’s mission is to create art that exists as a social and emotional exchange between all participants, experienced as a journey through physical and emotional time and space. To learn more about the company and for dancer bios, visit www.reborndance.org.

Janet Roston is an award-winning Director/Choreographer working in theater, concert dance and many forms of media.  Her recent work “Anaïs, A Dance Opera” was presented in July in France at the Avignon Festival as well as at Greenway Court Theatre in LA, the New Vic Theatre in Santa Barbara and Chapman University. Her concert choreography, “The Tanjore Project” won the Palm Desert Choreography Festival. Her choreography has also been presented at Pasadena Dance Festival, Los Angeles Dance Festival and LA Dance Invitational. Her work has also been presented in London at the Royal Academy of Music, and Cannes, France at Theatre de la Licorne. As a Director/Choreographer of theater credits include  ‘Midsummer Night,” Tennessee Shakespeare Company; “Striking 12,” Laguna Playhouse; “Tonya and Nancy, The Rock Opera” (ART Boston); “CarnEvil” (Sacred Fools Theater) and “The Wanting” (Highways Performance Space).  Theater choreography includes “The Boy From Oz,” (Celebration Theatre) for which she received LA’s top theater award, the Ovation Award, as well as the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for Choreography.  She also received an Ovation Award and LA Weekly Award for her choreography of “The Color Purple” at Celebration Theater. Additional choreography: “Once On this Island,” (International City Theater, NAACP Nomination); “Avenue X,” (Odyssey Theater, Ovation Award Nomination); “Failure, A Love Story,” which was included in Center Theater Group’s Block Party at the Kirk Douglas Theatre (Coeurage Theater, Ovation Award nomination).  She has received two American Choreography Awards and is a member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers. Janet is the Artistic Director of Mixed eMotion Theatrix (MeMT), which produced “Anaïs, A Dance Opera,” “The Wanting” and “A Little Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  MeMT combines music, dance, theater, and multi-media to create hybrid performance experiences in live theater. The company is dedicated to telling stories of the human condition through the use of global folk tales, myths, classic literature, biographies and new histories.

Valerie McCann is a performing artist and embodied practitioner based in Los Angeles. She was part of the international ensemble Dynamika Metamorfozy with NetTheatre at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland.  With the artist Than Hussein Clark, she collaborated on performances at the National Gallery, Prague, MIT List Art Center, Boston and Art Basel.  In collaboration with the Director Samantha Shay/Source Material, Valerie assistant directed I Should Have a Party For All the Thoughts I Didn’t Say at the Old Church in Portland, OR, and A Thousand Tongues, the solo performance of Nini Julia Bang which premiered at the 2016 Theatre Olympics in Wroclaw.  She has trained and performed with members of the SITI company in New York and Los Angeles and is a founding member of ARTEL.  Valerie is also a yoga instructor in the Bishnu Charan Ghosh lineage and is a three time Ghosh Cup champion, having represented the UK and California.