LYRICAL DANCES

Preludes
(4:34 minutes) female solo

Section 1 (2:32)
Section 2 (2:02)
Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff

   photo: Jeffrey Benning

photo: Suellen Haag

Quartertones
(10:35 mintues) female solo or 3 female solos

Section 1 (3:45)
Section 2 (2:50)
Section 3 (4:00)
Music: Charles Ives
*Music rights required

"This solo seemed at first to recall Martha Graham's solo works, but with its quick-snap tempo changes and sultry hip-slides to the tangy, disorienting soundscape of a Charles Ives work for quartertone-tuned piano, this piece developed it own distinctive personality."
Miriam Seidel, The Inquirer

As I Remember
(11:45 minutes) 3 female solos

These three solos were reconstructed from Anna Sokolow's extraordinary repertory when she was a solo performer in the 1930's and 1940's.

LAMENT FOR THE DEATH OF A BULLFIGHTER
(5:00) 1945
Music: Silvestre Revueltas

"The soloist doesn't move from her spot...her formal salutations define a dancer zone, her tightly coiling maneuvers wind the bull around her."
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice

BALLAD IN A POPULAR STYLE
(2:00) 1936
Music: Chick Corea

"...a wistful, lyrical excursion into jazz, at once subtle and exuberant, pure dance with no reason for being other than its rhythm and beauty of motion."
Larry Warren, The Rebellious Spirit

KADDISH
(4:45) 1945
Music: Maurice Ravel

"Ms. Sokolow's gift for summing up loss and loneliness is captured in Kaddish with a searing simplicity and intensity."
Jennifer Dunning, New York Times

September Sonnet
(16:16 minutes) male/female duet

Section 1 (5:44) duet
Music: Avro Part
Section 2 (3:52) male solo
Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff
Section 3 (4:11) female solo
Music: Francis Poulenc
Coda (3:09) duet
Music: Robert Schumann

"It was a love duet - though not an ordinary one. Ms. Sokolow avoided choreographically rhyming moon with June or idealizing dewy-eyed youth."
Jack Anderson, New York Times

"...pedestrian gestures of reaching and touching evoke powerful feelings of emotional bonding."
Lisa Jo Sagolla, Backstage

Ballade
(10 minutes) 2 men, 2 women
Music: Alexander Scriabin

"Ballade plays the age old game of youth and its discoveries, with a touching grace and understanding straight out of their own youngness."
Ann Barzel, Dance News

photo: David Fullard

Four Songs
(10:20) large group of women

Nocturn (4:20)
Music: Paul Ben-Hair
Polka (1:15)
Music: Marc Lavry
Love Song (2:45)
Music: Ladino Traditional
The Land of Laltadam (2:00)
Music: Naome Shemer

"Essentially a muted ritual for four (or more) women, girlish yet age-old."
Jennifer Dunning, New York Times

Lyric Suite
(27:33 minutes) large group work

Allegretto Gioviale (2:50) male solo
Andante Amoroso (5:50) female solo
Allegro Misterioso (3:00) female solo
Largo Desolato (6:10) male/female duet
Presto Delirando Tenebroso (4:23) male solo
Adagio Appassionato (6:00) female quartet
Music: Alban Berg
*Music rights required

"It is one of the finest examples of lyric theater dance seen in many a season...it speaks in abstract and stark simplicity, translating the qualitative moods of the music into penetrating and evocative movement designs. Superbly choreographed and thoroughly integrated, its beauty has a direct appeal to kinesthetic response."
Louis Horst, Dance Observer

photo: David Fullard

Scenes From The Music Of Charles Ives
(20 minutes) large group piece

Halloween (2:15) large group
Central Park in the Dark (6:50) large group
The Pond and the Cage (5:55) male solo
The Unanswered Question (5:30) large group
Music: Charles Ives
*Music rights required

"Take the Charles Ives piece, full of gestural images used as steps, loaded with dance metaphors carrying the kinetic weight dance movement. Sokolow's concentration on individual expression is shown perfectly here in a pin-pointed male solo of anguish."
Clive Barnes, New York Post

Sokolow Dance Foundation © 2004