BIG DANCE: SHORT FORM

BIG DANCE THEATER

Big Dance: Short Form is Big Dance Theater, distilled. BDT returns to its dance roots for its 25th anniversary celebration, theatrically re-imagining the conventions of a dance repertory program and presenting the company’s unique blend of dance-theater on an intimate scale.

Inspired by disciplines of the concise — novellas, folk tales, diary entries, pencil drawings, thumbnail sketches and the single page of a notebook — Big Dance performs five distinct short works, that embrace the brief, granular, close range, anecdotal and microscopic. Downsizing is prized.

Solos, duets, and group work feature the beloved, veteran Big Dance performers who, under the artistic leadership of Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, have honed a distinctive performance style that has influenced the downtown scene in NYC for the last 25 years.

2016 performances of Big Dance: Short Form are supported, in part, by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Big Dance: Short Form premiered on November 6, 2015 at American Dance Institute (ADI), as part of ADI’s Incubator program, and was developed in part during residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and The Kitchen. A creative residency was also provided by the Chocolate Factory Theater, as part of the Hatchery Project, with lead support by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional funding by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additionally, the production received funding from the Starry Night Fund; the W Trust; the McGue Millhiser Family Trust; Mertz Gilmore Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York Theater Program; and was also funded, in part, by the Big Dance Theater Creation Circle, lead individual contributors committed to the development and support of the company’s newest works: Jill Abbott, Anthony Bowe, Lisa Lee, and Martha Sherman.

This project is made possible in part by support from the NPN Performance Residency Program. Major contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org