REPERTORY
We have highlighted five of Sokolow's most popular classical dances. For more information about her extensive repertory please feel free to contact us.
Lyric Suite
1953
(30 minutes)
large group work
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
As I Remember
(11:45 minutes)
3 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.
"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
"...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
"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
Dreams
1961
(40 minutes)
8 to large group piece, 1 child
"Almost 50 years after its debut, Anna Sokolow's Dreams looks as fresh as ever. Sokolow's choreography strikes just the right note: she manages to capture the terror and the magnitude of that event without veering into the melodramatic. For much of the dance, the stage is dark save for a single square of light, making the dancers constantly appear confined. The music intentionally skips on and off, abruptly leaving them to push through uncomfortable silence. The piece closes with the dancers huddling close together and dropping slowly to their knees. In unison, they let out a quiet, chilling whimper."
Sarah Halzack ~ Washinton Post (May 10, 2009)
"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 misshapen 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
Rooms
1955
(55 minutes)
6 to 12 dancers
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 Times
Steps of Silence
1968
(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
