September 21, 2004 -

OTTAWA -- New York City’s highly acclaimed Stephen Petronio Company inaugurates the National Arts Centre’s 2004-2005 Dance season with its ‘Gotham Suite’ trilogy -- Broken Man, City of Twist, and The Island of Misfit Toys -- in the Theatre of the NAC on Tuesday October 5, 2004 at 20:30.

This fascinating trilogy -- charged with a specifically urban energy -- is choreographer-dancer Petronio’s answer to the tragedy of 9/11; the terrorist attacks are not the subject of the works, but they were the inspiration. Stephen Petronio’s response to 9/11 was to stay close to home – lower Manhattan, the epicentre of the attacks – and create work that is personal and intimate, brainy and visceral, using as his collaborators his friends and neighbours. Fortunately for audiences, Stephen Petronio’s neighbours include astonishing artists such as Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Cindy Sherman, and Tara Subkoff. “I was wrecked during that period,” Petronio has said. “Going to work was the only thing that kept me going. There’s nothing like that kind of devastation to make you do what’s right, and put your best foot forward.” Inevitably, he says, the dance’s emotional tone shifted “from being noir and cheeky to knife-in-heart. I’ve been a lot of things in my life,” Petronio continues, “but never wildly grateful. Yet there I was, feeling privileged that I’m able to make dances with people I adore in a city I love.”

Broken Man is a short solo in which the barefoot, shaven-headed Petronio resembles a rumpled businessman expressing a troubling psychic split. The tensely atmospheric City of Twist, graced by a percussive, viola-laced score from live-art legend Laurie Anderson, explores the loneliness of urban life -- the tension, the expectation, the anger, the glitter, the beautiful despair, and the superficiality. The tumultuous movement in gothic nursery rhyme The Island of Misfit Toys is driven by rock icon Lou Reed’s music and visual artist Cindy Sherman’s sculptural set elements.

“The most fearlessly inventive, most audaciously virtuosic dancer-choreographer of his generation.”

“Impeccable formal structures and indisputable movement invention…the dancing is fast, furious and fabulous.”

“His silky, noirish allure was subsumed by the really heartbreaking allusions he conjured…Petronio threw himself through a rich tumult of activity with his usual pantherine attack…As ever, he was demonically lyrical, or lyrically demonic, swift, muscular”

“They fall into embraces, assist one another, make gestures that hint at emotions. But always they dance, as if their lives depended on it, as if even while connections sever and structures spin apart, this world's fragments carry the DNA of wholeness.”

2004 marks the 20^th Anniversary Season of Stephen Petronio Company. Petronio is one of the most innovative choreographers of his generation. His groundbreaking works have been widely acclaimed by critics and audiences throughout North America, Europe, and South America. He creates a movement language that is uniquely his own. Athletic, intuitive and sensual, this language speaks with raw and virtuosic force. New music, visual art and fashion collide with Petronio’s dances, producing powerfully modern landscapes for the senses. Petronio has built a body of work with some of the most talented and provocative artists in the world. He has collaborated with composers, visual artists, and fashion designers; his long time collaborator and resident lighting designer is Ken Tabachnick. Stephen Petronio Company has performed, and been commissioned to create new works, from companies around the world.

Stephen Petronio Company performs Broken Man, City of Twist, and The Island of Misfit Toys in the Theatre of the National Arts Centre on Tuesday, October 5, 2004 at 20:30. Tickets are $41, $38 and $29, and $21.50, $20 and $15.50 for students (upon presentation of a valid student ID card). Tickets are available at the NAC Box Office (in person) and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at (613) 755-1111; Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC’s web-site at www.nac-cna.ca. Last-minute tickets (subject to availability) for full-time students are $9.50 at the Live Rush Centre in the NAC Foyer after 18:00 on the day of performance only, upon presentation of a valid ‘Live Rush’ card.

Photos for all dance events can be viewed and downloaded at: www.nac-cna.ca/media/

Information:
Gerald Morris
Marketing and Media Relations,
NAC Dance Department
(613) 947-7000, ext. 249
gmorris@nac-cna.ca

STEPHEN PETRONIO
Stephen Petronio (Artistic Director/Choreographer, Stephen Petronio Company) was born in Newark, New Jersey, and received a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he began dancing in 1974. Petronio was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Company, where he danced from 1979 to 1986. He founded Stephen Petronio Company in 1984. Since then, Petronio has received international acclaim for his ground-breaking choreography and the company has toured extensively across the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Russia. Petronio has collaborated with visual artists Cindy Sherman, Anish Kapoor, Donald Baechler, Stephen Hannock, Justin Terzi, Charles Atlas, Tal Yarden and Trisha Fox; composers Michael Nyman, James Lavelle, Wire, Yoko Ono, Beastie Boys, Diamanda Galás, Sheila Chandra, Lenny Pickett, and on numerous works with David Linton; fashion designers Imitation of Christ, Leigh Bowery, Manolo, Paul Compitus and Tanya Sarne/Ghost; and long time collaborator and lighting designer Ken Tabachnick.

Petronio has been awarded choreography fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts from 1985 to 1988, and company grants from the NEA and the New York State Council on the Arts since 1988. He is also the recipient of numerous awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts award, the first American Choreographers award in 1987, and a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for his dance Walk-In in 1986.

He has been commissioned to create new works for companies including William Forsythe's Frankfurt Ballet (1987), the Tulsa Opera (1990), the Deutsche Opera Berlin (1992), the Lyon Opera Ballet (1994), the Maggio Danza Florence (1996), and the Ricochet Dance Company of London (1998 and 2001), Axis Dance (2002) and A-Quo Danza Contemporanea in Mexico (2002). In 2003, Petronio created a full evening length work, Underland, for Sydney Dance Company, to be followed by commissions in Sweden, Denmark, France, and England through 2005.