Brooklyn Arts Exchange Presents LIVING PROOF, 5/18-19

BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange presents LIVING PROOF, a performance featuring student, director & guest choreography with DPW III and BAXco Youth Dance Company, tonight & Saturday, May 18-19, 2012 at 7:30pm. Tickets cost $5 and can be purchased at https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/912541.

Helen Styring Tocci of SPW III directs. Donna Costello & Penelope McCourty of BAXco co-direct.

This evening length performance features short works created by the advanced young dancers/choreographers of BAX's Dance Performing Workshop (DPW) Level III. These works incorporate various modern dance techniques, ballet, acrobatics and partnering to articulately express their individual artistic voices. DPWIII Director Helen Tocci's collaboratively made piece, Living Proof, highlights glimpses into the private worlds of 9 young female performers. The show also includes dance works created by BAXco Guest Choreographers Kelly Bartnik and Pam Pietro as well as BAXco Co-Director Penelope McCourty. LIVING PROOF is sure to make you laugh, make you think, inspire you, and perhaps even move you.

DANCE PERFORMING WORKSHOPS at BAX are full-year programs intended for motivated young people (ages 9-17) who are ready to commit to comprehensive study.

Dance Performance Workshops (DPWs) emphasize:
Performance skills and improvisation
Student-directed choreography
Multiple performance opportunities

DPW admission and advancement is evaluated based on ability, commitment, potential and progress. Interested students new to BAX are encouraged to call the Education Department. Currently enrolled BAX students are invited to join DPW I from Modern III or Modern IV.

BAXco, BAX's youth dance company, is a repertory company that performs work by professional choreographers both guest and faculty and is a pre-professional model for young dancers wishing to expand their experiences in the dance community. The company members are also ambassadors for BAX programs, performing throughout NYC and beyond.

KELLY BARTNIK, BAXco Guest Choreographer
Kelly Bartnik is a New York based choreographer, performer and teacher. She has danced with Melissa Briggs Dance, the WrightNow! Performance Xperience, Carl Hancock Rux, Nicki Marshall & Helen Tocci, Katherine Longstreth and Cora Dance. Her own work has been presented at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BRIC Studio, Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place, Joyce Soho, James Madison University, Long Island University, Williamsburg Arts Nexus as well as Arena Stage in Washington DC and The Publick Playhouse in Maryland. She was a guest professor at Sarah Lawrence College and co-director of BAXco, the resident teen repertory dance company at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange. She is one of three founding members of GK1 Productions, a video Production Company specializing in dance films. Additionally, Kelly is a new member of Switch-N-Play, New York's premiere drag king performing group. She is currently performing with and is an original cast member of the NY production of Sleep No More, co-produced by Emursive and London-based company Punchdrunk.

DONNA COSTELLO, Co-Director, BAXco Youth Dance Company
Donna Costello is a project-based dance artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She has built rich relationships dancing for Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance (founding member), jill sigman/thinkdance, Mollie O'Brien and Jimena Paz. Ms. Costello's performance in Carrie Ahern's 3-hour installation, SeNSATE, was picked as a 2009 favorite by writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In 2010 she taught and performed throughout Germany with the program Dancing to Connect for Aviva Geismar's Drastic Action. She has also danced for Pele Bauch, Barbara Mahler, the Human Company, composer Anne Hege, The Vagabond Inventions and many others. She is a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute and PS 154. As a guest artist she has worked for Dance New Amsterdam, the Liz Gerring Company, Rebecca Davis and at James Madison University. She is currently developing a new work titled, L. Hartke and collaborating with Collision Ensemble on an original devised movement/theater work. At BAX, she is a teaching artist for Brooklyn New School, co-directs BAXco and is the director of Dance Performance Workshop I and the Youthworks program.