(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- PEAK Performances at Montclair State University continues to introduce audiences to new work from today’s most exciting dance artists with the world premiere of Movement, in which celebrated choreographer Netta Yerushalmy intricately quilts together quotations from a vast array of sources: folk dances, traditional dances and ceremonies, modern and contemporary concert dance, commercial dance, sports, and contemporary life. The work draws from over 100 existing dances, stretching the idea of pluralism until it almost snaps. Movement features a new score by award-winning composer Paula Matthusen and is performed by dancers hailing from Korea, Senegal, Israel, Taiwan, and across the U.S.

Performances of Movement take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater March 17, 18, and 19 at 7:30 PM, and March 20 at 3pm. Running time is 65 minutes, with no intermission. Tickets are $40 (and free for MSU undergraduates, with valid ID) and are available for purchase online or by calling 973-655-5112. Tickets are $10 for anyone with proof or purchase of a ticket to her most recent work, Paramodernities, at New York Live Arts. In support of the artistic community, tickets are also $10 for all artists; these discounted tickets can be purchased using the promo code: DanceArts. The Alexander Kasser Theater is located at 1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, NJ, on the Montclair State University campus.

Netta Yerushalmy’s work aims to engage with audiences by imparting the sensation of things as they are perceived, not as they are known, and to challenge how meaning is attributed and constructed. Movement follows Yerushalmy’s Paramodernities, a six-part series generated through reverently and violently dissecting iconic modern choreographies (by Nijinsky, Graham, Ailey, Cunningham, Fosse, and Balanchine). The project explored tenets of modern discourse–sovereignty, race, sexuality, disability–with contributions by scholars from different fields, and was created explicitly in order to provoke dynamic conversations with the past and its legacies. “There’s the total displacement of my authorship. Who’s making this thing? Is it mine?” Netta Yerushalmy asked in a New York Times profile surrounding that work. For Movement, she reopens what she then referred to as the “cabinet of curiosities” of dance. Movement deals with a much greater multitude of much more fragmentary quotational sequences, each bearing their own essential rhythm, time signature, and musicality.

Yerushalmy says of Movement, “When I take a snippet of Israeli folk dance, I know its intrinsic rhythm—I know the song in my head. When I take a snippet of a dance from a well-known contemporary choreographer, I know its timing—I've performed it hundreds of times. When I dance these two snippets in succession, a new kind of rhythmical pattern emerges. This attention to the musicality of movement—when the original music is no longer there—is an exciting and challenging part of working on this piece: the dancers need to shift time-signatures every few seconds. As they dance the radically re-woven/densely juxtaposed material, the rhythmical landscape of MOVEMENT comes to life."

Movement is created with and performed by Burr Johnson, Catie Leasca, Caitlin Scranton, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Hsiao-Jou Tang, Khalifa Babacar Top, and Netta Yerushalmy. The work features original music by Paula Matthusen, dramaturgy by Katherine Profeta, lighting design by Tuçe Yasak, costumes by Magdalena Riley. It is stage managed by Amanda Eno and produced with Miranda Wright and Los Angeles Performance Practice.

Movement is the second of five PEAK Performances presentations that will be captured this season by Alla Kovgan, a filmmaker commensurate with the work being offered—and the state-of-the-art technology used to capture performance—at the Alexander Kasser Theater. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times called Kovgan’s 3D film Merce (2019) “a visual wonder,” and Tomris Laffly, in Variety, deemed it “spectacular,” writing “this is what an artform celebrating the very nature and a practitioner of another artform should look and feel like.” Marina Harss wrote in The New Yorker, “Kovgan’s film succeeds in a way that most dance documentaries do not: as an art object in and of itself.”

Working with Director of Photography Mia Cioffi Henry, Kovgan captured Donald Byrd and Spectrum Dance Theater’s Strange Fruit at the Kasser this month. Following Netta Yerushalmy’s Movement, she’ll capture Gandini Juggling’s Smashed2 (April 21-24), Familie Flöz’s Hotel Paradiso (May 5-8), and Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company’s Curriculum II (June 9-12). The films will eventually screen on PEAK Performances’ PEAK Plus platform, which allows remote audiences to engage with the work of visionaries of contemporary performance.

PEAK Performances’ Commitment to Health and Safety: To help protect the health and safety of audiences, artists, staff, and PEAK’s greater community, patrons are required to wear masks—at all times—for all performances. Additionally, all performances will require proof of full vaccination to attend. Audience members will be asked to show proof of vaccination before entering the theater. These guidelines may evolve depending on health and safety recommendations.

Netta Yerushalmy is a dance artist based in New York City. For her choreographic work, Netta has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Princeton Arts Fellowship, Research Fellowship at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Toulmin Fellowship for Women Leaders in Dance at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, New York City Center Choreography Fellowship, Jerome Robbins Bogliasco Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, National Dance Project Grant, commission from LMCC’s Extended Life program, Six Points Fellowship, and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

Her work has been commissioned and presented by venues such as Danspace Project, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Joyce Theater, American Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Wexner Center for the Arts, La Mama, River to River Festival, Center for the Arts/Buffalo, International Dance (Jerusalem), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Foundation, ‘62 Center for the Arts/Williamstown, ODC & Bridge Project, Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance (Tel Aviv), Harkness Dance Festival, International Solo Festival (Stuttgart), and Roulette.

Her work has been supported by the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Watermill Center, National Center for Choreography/Akron, Djerassi Arts Program, Movement Research, Gibney’s DiP, and Trinity College.

Netta works across genres and disciplines: she contributed to artist Josiah McElheny’s Prismatic Park at Madison Square Park, choreographed a Red Hot Chili Peppers music video, worked with cellist Maya Beiser and composer Julia Wolfe on Spinning, and collaborated on evenings of theory and performance at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI Berlin).

As a guest artist and visiting faculty, Netta has created work with repertory companies and students nationwide at the University of the Arts, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Juilliard School, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Rutgers University, University of Utah, Zenon Dance Company, American Dance Festival, Alvin Ailey School, SUNY Brockport, University of Texas at Austin, James Madison University, Long Island University, UNC Charlotte, Roger Williams University, and Sarah Lawrence College.

As a performer, Netta has worked with Pam Tanowitz Dance, Doug Varone and Dancers, Joanna Kotze, Karinne Keithley, Nancy Bannon, Mark Jarecki, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.

Netta grew up in Galilee, Israel. She received a BFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Alla Kovgan is a Boston-based filmmaker, born in Moscow, Russia. Her films have been presented worldwide. Since 1999, Alla has been involved with interdisciplinary collaborations, creating intermedia performances (with KINODANCE Company), dance films, and documentaries about dance.

Kovgan is the director of Cunningham, a 3D cinematic experience about legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham, orchestrated through his iconic works and performed by the last generation of his dancers. This poetic film tells a story of Merce’s becoming Merce and traces his artistic adventures over three decades of risk and discovery (1944-1972). Integrating live action, archival, animation, and graphics allows the viewers to “step inside” the dance, creating a visceral journey into the choreographer’s world. A breathtaking explosion of dance, music, and never-before-seen archival material, Cunningham is a timely tribute to one of the world’s greatest modern dance artists.

PEAK Performances is a program of the Office of Arts + Cultural Programming (Jedediah Wheeler, Executive Director) at Montclair State University and has been honored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts with previous Arts Citation of Excellence and Designation of Major Impact. Programs in this season are made possible in part by the Alexander Kasser Theater Endowment Fund, PEAK Patrons, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the FACE Foundation.

Movement is co-commissioned by PEAK Performances at Montclair State University (NJ). This project was created, in part, at The Yard, an artist residency and performance center dedicated to contemporary dance and related arts, with additional development support from a City Center Choreography Fellowship, Dance Initiative, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC). Support for Movement came from DanceNYC, New Music USA, NYSCA, The O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, Harkness Foundation, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Movement was developed in residence at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University.

Produced for broadcast and online streaming by Montclair State University (NJ) for PEAK Performances.

Movement is produced by and managed with Los Angeles Performance Practice.

This season of PEAK Performances is made possible, in part, with funds from The Alexander Kasser Theater Endowment Fund, PEAK Performances patrons, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.