We are human first, dancers second” – says choreographer/dancer Stanley Love and this universal declaration seems to be the key to reading his work produced with the Stanley Love Performance Group.
Active on the NYC dance scene for almost 25 years, Love has made his mark as a driving force behind large-scale dances involving large casts and extremely dense, energetic movement, drawing from various social and modern dance idioms and coordinated in perfect unison to a truly orchestral effect. However, while most of the contemporary choreographers working with large ensembles invest in uniformity of look and movement, Love sees value in the individuality of each of his dancers and builds his ensemble as an embodiment of the underlying principle of diversity, both of culture and body types.
This unity-in-diversity approach is among the most important aspects of Love’s newest work. Phoenix Force is premiering at JACK. Conceived as a dance for 17 performers, the piece will saturate the space at JACK with dance and fill it wall to wall with full-throttle movement, accompanied by an eclectic mix of songs. What these, as Love calls them, “classics” (ranging from Meredith Monk through Journey to Barry White and beyond) have in common is an uplifting mood, corresponding to the deepest inspiration of this piece – an idea of destruction and rebirth, imagined as a constant, recurring flow.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
FRIDAY & SATURDAY @ 8 PM
SUNDAY @ 3 & 7 PM
