Dance Events Announced For TNC's Dream Up Festival

Theater for the New City's second Dream Up Festival, an annual festival of new works from across the country and abroad, will offer premieres of three choreographed productions: "M. - Solo for Three Minds (Dialogues with Marcel Proust)," devised and performed by Miloš Sofrenovic, text re-translated and spoken by Sheila Sofrenovic (August 19 to 26); "own, Owned," choreographed by Jesse Phillips-Fein (August 24 to 28) and "I Don't Have a Title Yet!" by Regina Nejman (August 14 to 21).

Dance is an important component of the Dream Up Festival, which features new works of many disciplines from across the country and abroad. The concept of the festival is to be an anthology of wide-ranging and original theatrical visions embracing drama, poetry, music and dance. This year, there will be a total of 22 productions of various genres, of which 17 are world premieres, two are US premieres and three are NY premieres.

All performances of the festival are at Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (at E. 10th Street). The Box office is (212) 254-1109. Online ticketing available at www.theaterforthenewcity.net. The festival website is www.dreamupfestival.org.

DETAILS ON THE FESTIVAL'S DANCE PRODUCTIONS:

"M. - Solo for Three Minds (Dialogues with Marcel Proust)," devised and performed by Miloš Sofrenovic, text re-translated and spoken by Sheila Sofrenovic
Johnson Theater
Friday, August 19 at 7:00PM; Saturday, August 20 at 5:00PM; Sunday, August 21 at 7:00PM; Wednesday, August 24 at 7:00PM; Friday, August 26 at 7:00PM.
Running Time: 63 minutes | Tickets $15

"I only know who I am and what I am when I find out who I was and who I was surrounded by." -- Marcel Proust

Live movement -- performed and perceived in the present -- is actually a temporal experience, in the sense that, once executed, it is constantly analyzed and processed as a revisitation of past experience. Through Miloš Sofrenovic's encounter with Marcel Proust's capital work "Remembrance of Things Past," he discovered a strong relationship between three discourses -- Memory, Movement and Monologue. This solo piece, "M. - Solo For Three Minds" (Dialogues with Marcel Proust), investigates this relationship as it is being established and questions it. The subsequent questions became the dramaturgical building blocks upon which this solo performance in 12 scenes is based. It was a three year project and Sofrenovic gave each one the name "season" to designate its year. Each project has its own name as well.

"M. - Solo For Three Minds" (Dialogues with Marcel Proust) by Miloš Sofrenovic, a performance artist, pedagogue and director who is originally from Loindon and now working in Vienna. It is the second part of a three part trilogy and the second full length piece from Sofrenovic's choreographic tryptich, "Three Seasons." He devised and performed his First Season (2009/2010) : "Solo For Three Visions" (Visions of Peter Hanke, Samuel Beckett & Virginia Woolf) to high critical acclaim, bringing him a nomination for the most prestigious state award in choreography "Dimitrije Parlic" at The National Theatre in Belgrade in 2010. Third Season (2011/2012)"Solo for Two Cities" (Imaginary dialogue between Milos Crnjanski's "A Novel About London" and Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandrian Quartet") will close this cycle of solo works exploring the relationship between movement and literature, again devised and performed by the artist himself. Sofrenovic received his dance and choreographic education as a scholarship student of the distinguished Laban Centre in London. He is also a recipient of several international scholarships from the Serbian Ministry of Culture, Soros Foundation (Belgrade), Dance Web Program (Vienna), Dance Omi Programe (United States of America), Odyssey Dance Theatre (Singapore). Among others he has collaborated successfully with choreographers Ana Sanchez Colberg (London), Kitt Johnson (Copenhagen), Liz King (Vienna), Danny Tan (Singapore), Mikhail Honesseau (Berlin), Pina Bausch (London), Filippo Armati (Locarno), Sonja Vukicevic (Belgrade). He has presented his works at festivals in Belgrade, Zagreb, Skopje, Zemun, Novi Sad, Edinburgh, London, Vienna, Istanbul, Singapore, Stockholm, Graz, to name a few.

"own, Owned," choreographed by Jesse Phillips-Fein
Cino Theater
Wednesday, August 24 at 9:00PM; Thursday, August 25 at 7:00PM; Friday, August 26 at 7:00PM; Saturday, August 27 at 5:00PM; Sunday, August 28 at 5:00PM.
Running Time: 40 minutes | Tickets: $15

Inspired by the uninspired, "own, Owned" reflects on how pleasure is constructed and controlled in our post-Hope political landscape. Focusing on small daily acts of pleasurable choices, the piece engages with the unrecognized creative possibility in eating, dressing/primping the self, sex, and modes of entertainment, as well as how these acts become substitutes for an absent collective political power. At the heart of the piece is anxiety about, but craving for desire--our longings for more meaningful ownership of the self. The intention of the piece is to question the significance of where our libidos are focused. It challenges our reliance on these small daily choices to blot out the reality of dehumanized work through empty play but it does not choose sides. Instead, it operates from a "both/and" perspective. It heralds the daily acts of pleasure where we find creative potential in what we often take as banal and repetitive. Exposing that "business does not have to continue as usual," the possible freedom in these acts attempts to acquire a political dimension, but unsuccessfully. In this piece, failure is guaranteed. As a result, it simultaneously denigrates these "mini-choices" as substitutes and distractions from more genuine power. It mourns the way our pleasures are hijacked, packaged and sold back to us. In this process, the piece embraces a troubling of our beliefs about hope and hopelessness in our current global situation.

Jesse Phillips-Fein is a dancer, choreographer, dance educator and producer of multi-genre shows. She grew up in Brooklyn NY, where she studied dance at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange and The Dalton School in Manhattan. She earned a B.A. in Dance & Cultural Anthropology from Smith College and a Diploma in Dance Studies from the Laban Centre in London. Her work has been presented at BRICstudio, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Chashama, Connelly Theater, DNA/Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, GreenSpace, Movement Research at Judson Church, Williamsburg Arts Nexus, and White Wave. In addition, she has performed with Shannon Hummel/CORA Dance, Cassie Mey, Sarah Sibley, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, and Layard Thompson, and collaborated with Adam Matta, Box By Three Dance Co., Shana Bloomstein/State Eighteen on Women's Works in Central Maine. She is a co-founder of White Folks Soul: By Any Dance Necessary, using movement and language to unpack white privilege, and Square One Collective, creating performance meditations in unusual spaces. She received the Outer/Space rehearsal space grant from Dance Theater Workshop in 2008 and was the 2007 Poretsky Artist-in-Residence at the Havurah Summer Institute. She is a past recipient of the Individual Artist grant recipient from the Brooklyn Arts Council in 2005 and was awarded the Community Arts Regrant in 2005 and 2006 for her projects "Sea Stories," an inter-generational project about migration with Sheepshead Bay residents of different backgrounds, and "Root & Branch," an exploration of identity with Arab and Jewish teenagers. She has also received funding from the Puffin Foundation, and a space grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has taught dance to all ages, pre-school to senior citizens and currently teaches Middle and High School Dance at the Brooklyn Friends School.

"I Don't Have a Title Yet!" by Regina Nejman
Johnson Theater
Sunday, August 14 at 5:00PM; Tuesday, August 16 at 7:00PM; Thursday, August 18 at 7:00PM; Saturday, August 20 at 2:00PM; Sunday, August 21 at 5:00PM.
Running Time: 45-60 minutes | Tickets: $15

Not having a title and a concept is the guiding force of this piece, where stream of consciousness evokes unexpected desires and motivation. The work is derived and driven by its four inhabitants and follows a kinetic logic supported by eclectic compositions including Bach, Brazilian pop and Mio Morales' deconstructed sounds as well as text created in collaboration with the dancers. The overall effect is a reflection on the collapse of systems and relationships through the exploration of uncertainty, waiting, mischief and creation. By mixing the various influences that inspire her choreography, Regina Nejman has created a fresh work which stimulates audiences to think, feel and to question these turbulent times.

The New York Times (Jennifer Dunning) called Regina Nejman "a modern-dance choreographer with a piquant imagination and visual sense to match." She grew up in Rio de Janeiro and is based in New York, where she has been creating her own choreography since 1993 and founded her own company in 1997. Her company has toured in Brazil twice and she has been presented at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Joyce SoHo, Symphony Space, New York International Fringe Festival (where she was awarded the 2005 outstanding choreography award), DNA, DTW's Fresh Tracks, Merce Cunningham Studio, and more. She has received support from The Greenwall Foundation, Puffin Foundation, LMCC/ MCAF; Meet the Composer, MFTA; space grants from 92nd St Y, Queens Museum of Art, Abrons Arts Center, and Joyce Theater Residency. Nejman has received commissions from Princeton University, The Yard, NJCU and most recently received a Mondo Cane Commisssion from Dixon Place, where she premiered "Annette." Nejman received her BA from SUNY/ Empire State College in 1998. She was as a teaching artist for HAI and was a guest artist at Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and was an adjunct teacher at NJCU. She taught master classes at NYU Common Hour Class, Harvard Summer Dance, and LaGuardia Performing Arts High School. As a dancer, she has worked with Donald Byrd/ The Group, Ze' eva Cohen, Sean Curran, Des Moines Ballet and Bat-Dor Dance Company, among others. http://reginanejmancompany.blogspot.com/