The Ailey Citigroup Theater / The Joan Weill Center for Dance

With her electrifying trio Ghosts, Sperling transports the billowing undulations and iridescent illuminations of modern-dance pioneer Loie Fuller into an experimental 21st-century context. Quentin Chiappetta composed a gamelan-inspired score to be performed live. The evening also includes the world premiere of Sperling’s Bang for the Buck, a comic circus-collage that probes the relationship between a performer’s effort and the audience’s “payoff.Students from Barnard College guest with the company to perform Sperling’s delightful re-take on Fuller’s 1908 original Ballet of Light. This work is a cinematic spectacle that takes the viewer on a geographic voyage through the sea, the frozen north, blazing fires, the heavens and finally into a garden of butterflies. Rounding out the program is a revival of Sperling’s trio A Leg Up, which riffs on the exuberant antics of acrobats and contortionists captured in early films.

CHOREOGRAPHY: Jody Sperling
DANCERS: Emily Lutin, Andrea Skurr, Jody Sperling & Chriselle Tidrick
COMPOSER: Quentin Chiappetta
MUSICIANS: Erik Jacobson & Jeffrey Middleton
LIGHTING: David Ferri
COSTUMES: Michelle Ferranti
COSTUME TECHNOLOGISTS: Jenny Chowdhury & Alex Kowal
MEDIA DESIGN: Roger Hanna
GUESTS: students from Barnard College (in Ballet of Light)

This program is made possible in part with funding from the American Music Center's Live Music for Dance Program, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The Harkness Foundation for Dance.

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