2015 YARD ARTS SEASON ARTS YARD 2015 YARD ARTS 2015 PRESS RELEASE / The Bang Group FOR IMMEDIATE LISTING and RELEASE August 11, 2015 CONTACT Press Inquiries: 415-572-7465 [email protected] Tickets & Groups: 508-645-9662: SURRENDER, DOROTHY! (SURRENDER, AUDIENCE!) THUS SEZ THE BANG GROUP, BRINGING BEATS AND FEET 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] AND A MOZART CONCEIT, NOT TO MENTION OZ AND THE NEW MUSIC CAUSE OF MORTON FELDMAN AND STEVE REICH – TAP THE YARD THESE TWO NIGHTS . The Bang Group WORKS: Two Timing, Song and Dance, Settling Scores, Settling More, 12x4, and Surrender Dorothy Performances will take place at The Yard’s Patricia N. Nanon Theater) Chilmark (note different times): Friday, August 28, at 8:00PM Saturday, August 29, at 6:30PM Tickets: $25 (General); $15 (Seniors, students, active military) “Parker and his Bang partners, Jeff Kazin, Amber Sloan, Nic Petry, and Tommy Seibold, are not only accomplished dancers but smart stylists. They’ve glossed iconic ballets, musical comedies, and popular song. Their irreverent but loving dances incorporate characters and lyrics we all know, inviting us to recognize the references and share the fun.” - Marcia B. Siegel, The Arts Fuse 2015 YARD ART YARD 2015 YARD ARTS 2015 PRESS RELEASE / The Bang Group The Bang Group, directed by David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin, comes to Martha’s Vineyard for the fifth summer in a row to perform in the YARD ARTS season, as a special TapTheYard presentation. The Bang Group's performance will mix tap works with rhythm-driven contemporary works featuring all kinds of percussive dance from en pointe tapping to body percussion, barefoot hoofing and honest-to-goodness tap but always with a twist. Among the six works to be shown: In Song and Dance, choreographer David Parker takes the stage S SEASON S solo to sing and tap Mozart’s “Turkish March.” Settling Scores features veteran tappers Jeffrey Kazin, Nic Petry, Tommy Seibold, and Amber Sloan in a freewheeling, experimental tap dance translation of Morton Feldman’s “For John Cage.” Continuing The Bang Group’s ongoing exploration of iconic musical scores, Surrender Dorothy is set to music from the Wizard of Oz. Part essay, part fantasy, part rumination, this piece mixes a cappella rhythm and body music sections with complex, whimsical and ironic dances set to selections from the movie soundtrack including rehearsal segments and deleted songs. In all six works, body rhythms become a bold but ever so precise means of conversing, with humor and emotion always coloring the danced dialogs. 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] The Bang Group is a New York-based, theatrical dance troupe founded to honor the power of rhythm in the human urge to dance. Creating a kind of theater of rhythm, The Bang Group's choreographer David Parker pares dance rhythm down to its essentials and builds it back up with comic enthusiasm, unleashing an amalgam of tap, body percussion, vaudeville, ballet, and contemporary dance that demands to be heard, as well as seen. The Bang Group has toured widely throughout the United States and Europe, and many of Parker’s works have achieved international acclaim, including his notorious Velcro duet, Slapstuck (2002 Bessie Award for Design), and Nut/Cracked, which has been touring for the past 11 seasons. The Bang Group is the dance company in residence at NYC's West End Theater where it presents a thrice-yearly choreographic series, Soaking WET. ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES David Parker (Co-Director) is a 2013 Guggenheim fellow in choreography. In addition to a body of work for his own company, The Bang Group, he has been commissioned by over 35 dance companies, universities, and festivals. He has received a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for Design, a finalist prize from the 4th International Competition for Choreographers of Contemporary Dance, a Special Citation from the Kurt Jooss Awards Jury (led by Pina Baush), a citation as Emerging Choreographer of Note from the Nijinsky Awards, and a philanthropy prize from Dancers Responding To AIDS. He was also honored by Dance Theater Workshop with a MOVE Award for his steadfast commitment to DTW and its surrounding community and by The Gibney Dance Center with an Art+Action Award. He serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Barnard College. He is a member of the board of directors of Danspace Project in New York and Green Street Studios in Cambridge (MA) and often 2015 YARD ARTS SEASON ARTS YARD 2015 2015 YARD ARTS SEASON ARTS YARD 2015 YARD ARTS 2015 PRESS RELEASE / The Bang Group serves as an adjudicator for the American College Dance Festival Association. In addition to dancing in his own work, Parker has been seen in the works of Sara Rudner (Dancing on View at the ICA in Boston), Nicholas Leichter (The Whiz), The New York Theater Ballet (as a wicked stepsister in Cinderella), Christopher Williams’ The Golden Legend, and—for 5 seasons—as Liesl in Doug Elkins’ Fraulein Maria. Recently, he has curated programs for the Rhythm and Humor Platform at Danspace, Tap the Yard (an annual percussive dance festival on Martha’s Vineyard), Focal Point, a percussive dance concert as part of Gotham Arts’ Focus Dance Festival, and The 92nd Street Y’s Fridays at Noon series. Jeffrey Kazin (Co-Director) spent his youth in many children’s and community theater groups imagining his escape from Waltham, MA. Today he a founding member and director of The Bang Group. He has created and performed signature roles for the company throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. Additionally, he proudly serves as TBG’s CFO and General Factotum. Outside of TBG he has appeared in Italy in the title role of the Arena di Verona Ballet’s production of Dylan Dog choreographed by David 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * info@dancetheyard Parker, as an evil step-sister in New York Theatre Ballet's Cinderella and as Capt. 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] VonTrapp in Doug Elkins’ Fraulein Maria. Mr. Kazin studies ballet with Janet Panetta, voice with Michael Hanko. Mr. Kazin produces the thrice-yearly dance series, Soaking WET at the Upper West Side’s West End Theater, curated by David Parker. He is a board member of the Peculiar Works Project theater company, a member of the Advisory Board for Gibney Dance and often serves on Dance Theater Workshop’s (now NYLA) Fresh Tracks curating panel. Kazin is a graduate of Connecticut College and the National Theater Institute. What Makes The Yard Possible: Cronig’s Market Dr. Marianne Goldberg’s Pathways Projects Institute Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Doug Cramer Farm Neck Foundation Feldman Family Fund Ford Foundation Hugh Bush Sica/McMahon Foundation The Jerome Robbins Foundation Massachusetts Cultural Council Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank Ms. Foundation for Women National Endowment for the arts National Performance Network New England Foundation for the Arts Newman Assistance Fund Permanent Endowment for Martha’s Vineyard The Tower Foundation The Woolner/Nanon Family .org Anonymous SEED. GROW. REAP. REPEAT: THE NATURE OF THE ARTIST. 2015 YARD ARTS SEASON ARTS YARD 2015 SEASON ARTS YARD 2015 2015 YARD ARTS SEASON ARTS YARD 2015 YARD ARTS 2015 PRESS RELEASE / The Bang Group YARD ARTS SEASON Mission: The Yard promotes creation, education, and community building through artistic practices, specifically contemporary dance and related collaborative forms, across the rural/island environment of Martha’s Vineyard. The Yard supports artists and their instrumentality through paid creative research and on-island residency, public performance, and long-term educational application and community engagement across all ages and cultural populations. The Yard acts, on behalf of these core commitments, as an active collaborator with other leadership institutions in an island/regional/national context to raise up a "culture of cultures" ecology that reflects - and benefits - the demographic life and times of the island of Martha’s Vineyard, and the nation. Directions: Driving to The Yard from Vineyard Haven Head south on Water Street toward Beach Road. Take the 3rd right onto Beach Road. Continue onto State Road. Turn right onto Middle Road. Take the 2nd left into The Yard. Driving to The Yard from Edgartown Head southwest on Water Street toward Davis Lane. Take your 2nd right onto Cooke Street. Turn left onto Edgartown West Tisbury Road. Turn left on State Road. Continue onto South Road. Make a left onto Middle Road. Take your second left into The Yard. 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] Bus 508.645.9662 * DanceTheYard.org * [email protected] There is a public bus service on Martha’s Vineyard that connects to all of the towns on the island. There is a bus stop just a short walk from The Yard in front of the Community Center, which runs every hour. Fare $1 per town, each way. ### David R. White Artistic Director & Producer Alison Manning Executive Director & Co-Producer .