DRAMATIC CLASSICS

photo: Barabara Morgan

Kaddish
(4:45 minutes) female solo
Music: Maurice Ravel

"Kaddish, the most inspired of these (six solos) had the dancer matching every nuance of Sokolow's poignantly perfect, expressionistic modern choreography."
David Ollington, EKC Magazine

Dreams
(23 minutes) large group piece, 1 female child

Section 1 (4:30) 4 or 5 men, 1 woman
Section 2 (5:00) male/female duet
Music: Teo Macero, Johann Sebastian Bach
Section 3 (3:30) male solo
Music: Teo Macero
Section 4 (4:00) female trio
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach
Section 5 (4:00) female solo/ child
Live text reading
Section 6 (2:45) male solo
Section 7 (3:00) male/female duet
Music: Anton Von Webern
Section 8 (4:45) entire cast
Music: Teo Maceo

"Sokolow's vision is of the collective social experience and the power of this experience over the fragile human body. Sokolow's trademark is to distill movement and emotion, paring it down to something so simple that it takes on timeless resonance. These images present human beings mis-shapen by experience. They emerge from history as flesh and blood, eerily unnamed and without the personal stories which can serve to distance their lives from our own."
Alice Naude, Manhattan Spirit

"Dream"

"Panic"
photos: Cylia von Tedman

Rooms
(55 minutes) large group piece

Alone (3:55) entire cast
Dream (4:45) male solo
Escape (5:51) female solo
Going (3:30) male solo
Desire (4:55) male/female sextet
Panic (5:40) male solo
Daydream (3:55) female trio
The End (5:00) female solo
Alone (2:25) entire cast
Total time: 55 minutes with transition music and overture
Music: Kenyon Hopkins

"Rooms is a powerful, deeply penetrating exploration of man's aloneness....Ms Sokolow has given her subjects stunning theatrical treatment through movements which are striking as pure dance action but also revelatory of the individual dreams of each of the participants. Indeed, she makes you care about her characters to the degree that their problems replace your own. And what more effective magic can a choreographer work?"
Walter Terry, Herald Tribune

Ride The Culture Loop
(21:11) large group piece

Section 1 (4:10) large group
Section 2 (2:00) women
Section 3 (3:18) 3-5 male or female
Section 4 (3:33) large group
Section 5 (5:00) male/female duet
Section 6 (3:50) male/female couples
Music: Teo Macero
*Music rights required

"A subway route through New York's patchwork of ethnic neighborhoods was the inspiration for Ride the Culture Loop, but you don't need to know that to pick up on the voyeurism, the hard stares, the jarring moods, the suffocating sense of crowds and the tension, even in the jauntier, Caribbean-flavored moments. Sokolow paired her work to the clashing cords and infectious beats of experimental jazz musician, Teo Macero."
Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post

photo: Johan Elbers

Steps Of Silence
(20 minutes) large group piece
Music: Anatol Vieru

"Steps of Silence carries to a searing extreme with its distorted bodies. Yet the finish to this concentration-camp scene is theatrical and true. Newspapers blow in from the wings and cover the bodies on the floor, history's human debris."
Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times

TIME +
(18 minutes) large group piece

Section 1 (5:13) large group
Section 2 (6:00) 3 or 4 male/female couples
Section 3 (2:45) male/female quartet
Section 4 (4:00) male/female quartet
Music: Teo Macero
*Music rights required

"Time + begins on a deceptively cheerful note, a mob scene of youngsters....The action is an amalgam of insolent gestures, anti-social stances, and current dance crazes. Then in a dazzling dramatic shift, a pack of ragged and bloodied soldiers stumble across the stage, falling into fantastic heaps and finally, into stillness."
Jacqueline Maskey, Dance Magazine

"The theme is timely and the punch line just as emphatic 36 years later."
Janet Anderson, Philadelphia City Paper

OPUS 65
(17 minutes) large group piece

Section 1 (5:00) large group
Section 2 (3:00) 4 or 5 men, 1 woman
Section 3 (3:45) large group
Section 4 (4:15) large group
Music: Teo Macero
*Music rights required

"Opus 65 . . . is typical of a social protest ballet that Ms. Sokolow virtually invented. This is a genre that has been widely copied throughout he world...it is called the 'alienated youth' ballet . . . but there is still no one who can come up with the conviction of the genuine article better than Ms. Sokolow herself."
Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times

Kurt Weill
(23:16 minutes) large group piece

Youkalie Tango (4:36) 4 male/female couples
Surabaya Johnny (3:51) 3 male/female couples
String Quartet No 1, Op. 8 (6:29) 4 male/female couples
Epitaph (1:54) 3 woman
Soldier's Wife (4:18) 3 men, 1 woman
Matrosen Tango (3:28) 4 male/female couples
Music: Kurt Weill
*Music rights required

"Kurt Weill fits the composer's roots in German expressionism with Ms. Sokolow's singular brand of American Expressionism... Ms. Sokolow can sum up a state of being - an entire society - in an arrested pose."
Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times

Sokolow Dance Foundation © 2004