Flashback Friday: Punk Yankees

Punk Yankees (2009 & 2012) explores ideas about authenticity, originality, and the ownership of dance in the digital age. The work takes complicated topics including sampling, stylistic referencing, cultural appropriation, and ideas about "fair use" in dance. Featured in the Chicago Reader's "Best of Chicago 2010" for Best Commentary on Modern Technology by a Choreographer, "the fast-paced, witty Punk Yankees…is fundamentally paradoxical, tongue-in-cheek, subversive, and, best of all, great fun.”

Punk Yankees is a provocative and entertaining dance theater work that combines live performance, video, and the internet to unpack ideas about authenticity, originality, and the ownership of dance in the digital age. With the controversial nature of dealing with issues of intellectual property, the work takes on challenging topics including sampling, mash-ups, stylistic referencing, impersonation, unconscious theft, lineage, cultural appropriation, and ideas about "fair use" in dance. Featured in the Chicago Reader's "Best of Chicago 2010" for Best Commentary on Modern Technology by a Choreographer, "the fast-paced, witty Punk Yankees…is fundamentally paradoxical, tongue-in-cheek, subversive, and, best of all, great fun." Visit our website http://www.StealThisDance.com, a virtual stage for our research and experiments for Punk Yankees, and a place where you can steal, buy, and share some dance moves! For more information visit our website at: http://www.LuckyPlush.com/shows.

We-Support Wednesday: Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre is perfectly suited to adding context, responding, and bringing joy in this moment. Audiences know that Cerqua Rivera tackles big issues and never shies away from challenging conversations. They also know that uniting people in a common humanity is the organization’s goal. This unique company finds common bonds where others only see divisions.

The company's 2020 new work creatively responds to the times and utilizes social distancing. 

  • AMERICAN CATRACHO and ROOT (updated excerpts) – The company is reimagining sections of these critically acclaimed audience favorites informed by the current times. AMERICAN CATRACHO Directed and Curated 2016-2019 by Wilfredo Rivera featuring choreography by Christian Denice and Noelle Kayser and music by Joe Cerqua; ROOT created 2018-2019 by Monique Haley and Joe Cerqua

  • IDENTITY CITY – Directed and Curated by Wilfredo Rivera, featuring choreography by Shannon Alvis, Katlin Bourgeois, A. Raheim White and music by Joe Cerqua – This new project examines evolving concepts and acceptance (or not) of gender identity (year one of a four-year process) – This year’s work focuses on feelings of isolation and metamorphosis

  • MOOD SWING – Artistic Director Wilfredo Rivera will lead four choreographers (Shannon Alvis, Katlin Bourgeois, Monique Haley, A. Raheim White) and composer Joe Cerqua in developing duets between musicians and dancers that respond to the current pandemic crisis and social justice movement

October 25 is the Benefit Performance - tickets $75 - 150. It will be a livestreamed concert - our only live concert of the year. November 5-7 we'll broadcast the full concert online - tickets $30-50.

A link will be emailed to ticket buyers 24-48 hours in advance of event. Tickets will be on sale through each event - but Cerqua Rivera advises buying them at least 1 hour before showtime and logging in at least 15 minutes before show time to allow time to address technical difficulties (i.e. reboot your device and convince your kids to stop downloading a movie).  

Tickets and details at https://www.cerquarivera.org/schedule

You can donate to Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre online (including setting up a monthly gift to make art every single month!) here or while purchasing a ticket. You can also donate directly through venmo @cerquarivera

Since we couldn't do a 2020 Season Kickoff in person this spring, stay connected with us from a safe distance! Here is an excerpt from last year's epic work ...

Enjoy this excerpt from ROOT by Monique Haley & Joe Cerqua - performed in part by our Dance Ensemble from home, with soundtrack by our Jazz Band and footage ...

Flashback Friday: The Sky Hangs Down Too Close

Created for Lucky Plush in 2008 by Peter Carpenter, The Sky Hangs Down Too Close is a darkly satirical dance-theater work that responds to the themes of conflict and desire in Bertolt Brecht's "In the Jungle of Cities" (1924). Created the work in collaboration with the ensemble, Carpenter focused on the concept of "unmotivated struggle”—a key theme for Brecht—as a way to understand the ways in which we move and are moved.

We-Support Wednesday: The Neo-Futurists

While The Infinite Wrench is Away…OUR ON-GOING, EVER CHANGING ATTEMPT TO PERFORM 30 PLAYS IN 60 MINUTES TRANSCENDS TO A HIGHER PLANE AND FLOATS YOUR WAY VIA THE DIGITAL DUST –

Every weekend.

A secret link sent directly to your inbox.

30 Digital Plays. 60 Analog Minutes. The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral. 

ALWAYS IN CONTACT, NEVER CONTAGIOUS. 

Watch the The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral and receive discount codes for Neo-Toolbox workshops + our Digital Prime Time shows for as little as $3/week @ https://www.patreon.com/theneofuturists

Donations @ neofuturists.org and/or via our Hot Sauce Stage Cross Club https://neofuturists.org/hotsaucestagecrossclub/

Making-It Monday

This material was not created for anything other than process. It’s one of a countless number of dances made through improvisation, repetition, and accumulation for the sole purpose of ensemble-building through nonverbal composing. The point is never to be “audience worthy,” but rather to listen, respond, and make proposals as the material is being learned and changed in real-time. Whether the dance is strange, hilarious, technically satisfying, or utterly forgettable, we always learn something from the process. 

Flashback Friday: Cinderbox 18

Cinderbox 18 takes its cue from the media’s voyeuristic approach to “reality” to explore the comedy and anxiety in our hyper-networked culture. The work premiered in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times called the work “a visually, kinetically, sonically and intellectually dazzling piece of dance theater that comments brilliantly on the whole process of creating, rehearsing, performing, viewing and critiquing dance.”

Cinderbox 18 takes its cue from the media’s voyeuristic approach to “reality” to explore the comedy and anxiety in our hyper-networked culture. Athletic choreography, improvisation, and a fragmented narrative characterize this witty dance theater work created by Julia Rhoads, and set to an original score by David Pavkovic. Responding to the purportedly unscripted and fly-on-the-wall observational style of reality TV, the work both exploits and makes indistinct the live and virtual, private and public, observer and observed, and the highly presentational and minutely subtle. Cinderbox 18 integrates video and clever dialogue to create a “show within a show,” wherein the performers become part of the audience. The result is an interactive environment shaped by the media technologies that alter our perception of how reality is generated. In response to its premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times notes: “Cinderbox 18… [is] a visually, kinetically, sonically and intellectually dazzling piece of dance theater that comments brilliantly on the whole process of creating, rehearsing, performing, viewing and critiquing dance. A deceptively difficult work that the eight members of Lucky Plush carry off as if it were the most easeful of long-form improvisations, the piece has a bit of Pirandello-like absurdism about it, as well as plenty of post-modern self-consciousness that has been neatly twisted into the most charming, self-mocking bits of playful humor.”

We-Support Wednesday: Deeply Rooted Dance Theater

Deeply25---social-media.jpg

Deeply 25: Beyond Dance...The Celebration Begins launches the celebration of the company’s 25th year with a virtual fundraiser that cinematically reflects on the company’s founding and inspiration, evolution to the present, and plans for the future under new leadership. Accessible via livestream and for a limited live audience observing pandemic restrictions, the evening includes video highlights, interviews, and COVID-19-compliant performances at the Athenaeum Theatre (2936 N. Southport Ave Chicago, IL).

In-person and virtual premium ticket holders are invited to participate in the Continuum, a discussion with the company’s Artistic Team. Proceeds will benefit Deeply Rooted Dance Theater's 25th Anniversary season performances and educational programming.

Tickets start at $25

Use the links below to buy tickets:
Virtual tickets: https://deeplyrooted.home.qtego.net/
In-person at Athenaeum Theatre - LIMITED SEATING: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe.c/10571557

You can also support Deeply Rooted by making a donation directly through their website at deeplyrooteddancetheater.org

Thank you to our partners & supporters

Lucky Plush’s work is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Lucky Plush Productions is 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Lucky Plush Productions–3825 N Bell Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Cart (0)