We would like to congratulate our colleague Susan Rethorst for her Bessie (New York's Downtown Dance and Performance Award) awarded for her 'sustained creative achievement', specifically noting her recent piece: 208 East Broadway part 2: Suitcase Dreams
On behalf of the SNDO...
Congratulations Sue!
For more information:
http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/bessies
Review at New York Times last May.
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: May 23, 2008
Full reviews of recent performances: nytimes.com/dance.
SUSAN RETHORST In April of last year, Susan Rethorst's "208 East Broadway" was the star of Tere O'Connor's Nothing Festival at Dance Theater Workshop. Having lost her studio space to the rising tide of development, Ms. Rethorst worked with what she had: her living room and seven of the best dancers around, including Vicky Shick and Jeanine Durning. The resulting all-female performance, in which she recreated her living room in the theater, was magical: a commentary on the dire economic state of contemporary dance in New York that completely trumped its impoverished conditions and offered a portrait of human relations that was at once utterly mysterious and unerringly true.
In "208 East Broadway, Part 2: Suitcase Dreams," which will have its premiere at Danspace Project on Thursday, Ms. Rethorst has branched out — sort of. Using video, she has widened her scope by incorporating choreography created in the park that is visible through her living room window.
"Suitcase Dreams" also draws on workshops and projects developed in locations as far flung as Ohio and Helsinki, Finland. (To the average geography-challenged New Yorker, such places often seem equally far away.) Such is the life of a peripatetic independent choreographer. And such is our luck that we get to peer in through this delicious window. Ms. Rethorst, seated above, with Taryn Griggs, foreground, and Deborah Black, has largely reconstituted her cast, and Carol Mullins will be lighting the work. Let us hope Parts 3, 4 and 11 come soon. (Thursday through May 31 at 8:30 p.m., St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street East Village, 212-674-8194, danspaceproject.org; $20.) CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
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