Henning Rübsam's SENSEDANCE Plays MMAC 11/5-7

Henning Rübsam's SENSEDANCE will present three premieres celebrating his twentieth year as founding artistic director of his nine-member ensemble on Saturday, November 5th, Sunday, November 6th and Monday, November 7th at 8:00 pm at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center (MMAC), 248 West 60th Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues).

Advance tickets are: General Admission: $31.00; Prime Seating: $41.00; Student w/ ID: $21.00. The tickets that day are $1.00 more for each ticket. They can be bought at http://www.manhattanmovement.com/event/sensedance/

The premieres will include, "HALF-LIFE," expressing some of the anxiety that Rübsam felt after The Combined catastrophic events of earthquake, tsunami and reactor melt-down earlier this year. "TENANCY," is a new company collaboration with composer Beata Moon. The two artists have been working together since the ensemble's inaugural season. It is inspired by James Merrill's poem but does not aim to illustrate it. Composer Ricardo Llorca is one of the other frequent collaborators, whose work has been a mainstay in the company's repertoire for the past ten years. There will be a new work (t b a) to his music.

www.sensedance.org

Henning Rübsam is the artistic director of SENSEDANCE, a resident choreographer for Hartford City Ballet, on faculty at The Juilliard School and a visiting guest artist at Texas Academy of Ballet. He earned his BFA in dance from The Juilliard School, where mentors included Martha Hill and Elizabeth Keen. While there, he performed as the Faun in the Nijinsky/Debussy ballet, worked extensively with Anna Sokolow, and toured internationally with the Limón Dance Company. Upon graduation he founded his own ensemble SENSEDANCE and continued to dance with other choreographers, namely Duncan Macfarland, Murray Louis, and Alwin Nikolais. Rübsam appeared as a guest dancer with a myriad of contemporary choreographers, and in works of dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Doris Humphrey. Among Rübsam's citations are a Jerome L. Greene Fellowship, a Lincoln Center Fellowship, a Manhattan Spirit Award as "best male dancer," a choreography award from Stephens College, an award for his advocacy from Dancers Responding to AIDS, and the Distinguished Artist Award from Bergen College, the first time this award was given to a dance artist. Last year, he and his company represented the United States at the Danza Nueva Festival in Lima. Rübsam also is works choreographer and director for theatre and opera. He has been a guest choreographer and teacher for numerous companies and universities throughout the Americas as well as in Australasia and Europe. A writer, historian and advocate for his art form, he is a long-time board member of the Martha Hill Dance Fund, has implemented a dance appreciation program at Juilliard for the general public, taught dance history at SUNY Purchase, has given lectures for the Young Patrons Program at Lincoln Center. He created a solo for his late mentor, Prima Ballerina Assoluta Eva Evdokimova. Rübsam, who has presented annual performances with SENSEDANCE and has toured internationally, appears in several television documentaries about his work - produced by Dancevista - and in the documentary feature Behind the Curtain. A documentary (by director Greg Vander Veer) about his company's 2010 tour through Peru is forthcoming.