PROGRAM 1
Thursday, February 5 @ 7:30 pm
• Freespace Dance, NJ
• Yaroque Dance Theatre, NY
• Emilia Hamburg, CA
• Julia Bentkowska x Julia Litwin, Poland
• Limón2, NY
• Charlie Leung, Hong Kong
• milkleaf, CA
• Feathers Dance Company, NY
• Brian Lawson & Aaron Loux, WI
• Well Seasoned Works, VA
• WHITE WAVE Dance, NY
Freespace Dance © Julie Lemberger
Freespace Dance, under the artistic direction of Donna Scro Samori, a former principal dancer with the Nikolais/Louis Dance Company and a founding member of Sean Curran Company, is renowned for creating emotionally driven work with a bold, athletic signature style. The company's performance credits include Citi Center, Ailey Citigroup, DTW, Joyce SoHo, Peridance, St. Mark's Church, NJPAC, SOPAC, OSPAC, Fringe Festival Edinburgh, Solo/Duo Festival, DUMBO, and Jacob’s Pillow. The duet from Inner Intricacies showcases the athleticism that is signature to Freespace Dance’s work. FSD is grateful for the following support: The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, NJSCA, Hyde & Watson Foundation, NJ Cultural Trust, New Music USA, and Capezio.
Yaroque Dance Theatre is a New York City–based contemporary dance company founded by Shelby Green (they/them) in 2024. Blending drag, clowning, and mime with the movement languages of Graham, Balanchine, and Gaga, Yaroque creates work that is both satirical and sincere, extravagant and emotionally raw. The company explores identity, perception, and contradiction—merging high concept with high camp. In addition to showing work around New York City, Yaroque recently provided movement for plays “Big Wave”, “A Comedy of Errors”, and “Night Witches” and for music videos by artists Natalie Livingston, Under High Street, and LXE. The dance theatre solo “Aghhh!” has been slowly developing since early 2024 and is an exploration of learning about world changing historical events on your TV from the comfort and safety of your couch. The roller coaster of emotions that current media has taken us on and the dichotomy of not feeling a larger sense of safety even when you are in your safe space.
Yaroque Dance Theatre ©Jess Cavender
Emilia Hamburg © John Eng
Emilia Hamburg is a dancer and choreographer with a versatile background in performance and creation. A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, she has performed repertory by Gallim, Doug Varone, Gibney, Sean Curran Co., and Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, among others, and worked professionally with Sahlala Dance Company as well as choreographers such as Monika Feliz Smith, “Bounce”, and Emily Lavengood. Her choreographic work explores the intersections of identity, emotion, and human connection through movement, film, and immersive experience. Her piece An Unseen Village delves into the role of community within mental health struggles. Though only one dancer appears on stage, every element (music, costuming, lighting) embodies the unseen support systems that sustain us. The work reflects how, even in solitude, the echo of our loved ones’ care and words enables us to move forward. Through it, Hamburg reveals the quiet resilience that grows from both vulnerability and collective strength.
We are an artistic duo combining stage experience with passion for conceptual work and the exploration of contemporary dance in its social, emotional, and philosophical contexts. Together, we seek new forms of expression that move both the body and the viewer. With our first piece Trofea we toured through the major dance festivals in Poland, including 2nd Body and Time Festival in Carcow, 2025 Solo Duo Festival in the ROZBARK Theater in Bytom, 10th Sfera Ruchu Festival 2025 in Torun, MOVE Festival 2025 in Zielona Gora, 4th Choreographers' Evening at the Konin Dance Theater in Konin.
Trofea: The inspiration for our piece was Olga Tokarczuk's novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Through language, humans transform the world — taming nature, enforcing the role of things on creatures. Where nature builds relationships and balance, we introduce brutal simplicity — predator and prey. What truly is a trophy? Does its capture have value? Or perhaps nature imposes conditions — and takes away more than it allows?
TROFEA © Robert Siwek
Limón2 © AnthonyCollins
The Limón Dance Company, founded 80 years ago, has been at the vanguard of American Modern dance since its inception and is considered one of the world’s greatest dance companies. Limón2, celebrating its 5th season this year, will perform an iconic piece from the Limón repertoire.
The mission of Limón2 is to support the Foundation’s efforts to perpetuate the legacy of José Limón through innovative programming, accessible community engagement and the development and nurturing of emerging professionals for a sustainable career and lasting contributions to the field of dance.
Chaconne premiered in 1942, and continues to be celebrated today for its musicality and emotional power. Originally a solo that José created for himself, this version has been recreated as a stunning duet.
Leung Shun Yin (Charlie) is a Hong Kong–born dancer and choreographer whose work blends minimalist, image driven dramaturgy with rigorous physicality. Trained at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, he performed with Noism Company Niigata (2018–2021) under Jo Kanamori, and has worked with City Contemporary Dance Company and as Artistic Director of Beyond Dance Theatre 2. His solo “EMPTY” investigates solitude, identity, and cultural dissonance through cycles of rupture and re formation. For SoloDuo, “EMPTY” will be presented as a concise 6 minute festival cut that distills its signature motif vocabulary, chair based scenography, and breath driven pacing for maximum impact on a shared bill.
Charlie Leungze © Ah Sze
Charlotte Griffin, from Durham, North Carolina, is a California-based contemporary choreographer and the Artistic Director of milkleaf, a dance company illuminating the tender and enduring nature of the human experience. Founded in 2020, milkleaf cultivates adventurous and collaborative dancemaking across a broad aesthetic, imaginative, and technological landscape.
milkleaf © Jim Coleman
History of Her, featuring renowned dancers Meredith Webster and Ariel Freedman, grapples with spatiotemporal displacement and personal memoir echoing the modernist cadence of author Gertrude Stein’s experimental writing. Created collaboratively with the dancers and distilled into a sparse kinetic exchange, this contemplative duet unfolds through gestural streams of consciousness, revealing connections that are at once poignant and elusive.
Feathers Dance Company © Robin Michals
Feathers Dance Company pursues freedom of expression through the joy of creation. Our artistic process values the collective voice born from the integrity and amplification of the collaborators. Through our creative work, we aim to move people’s hearts and offer moments of inspiration and emotional connection in everyday life.
Our mission is to connect culture and people through dance. We strive to expand the possibilities of contemporary dance while honoring the rhythms, sensibilities, and refined aesthetic values unique to Japan. Through international performances, we aim to build connections that transcend borders and languages, to share the joy and power of expression with a broader audience, and to contribute to the growth and enrichment of the global dance community.
What If We're Beautiful imagines our friendship, born from years of performing together with the Mark Morris Dance Group, into our parallel childhood memories of dressing in our mother's clothes when home alone, experiences tinged with play but also shame and the fear of being caught. What if we had a friend in those moments to see us then as we see each other now? Brian Lawson (assistant professor, Skidmore College) was born in Toronto and graduated summa cum laude with a BFA from Purchase College. He obtained his MFA from University of Washington in 2020 and subsequently taught at Cornish College for the Arts.
Aaron Loux (instructor, Marymount Manhattan College) was introduced to modern dance as a child by pioneering dance educator Anne Greene Gilbert and received his BFA from Juilliard in 2009. In 2025, he graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University with a BA in American Studies.
Brian Lawson & Aaron Loux © Joseph Lambert
Well Seasoned Works © Dray Washington
James Morrow and Megan Thompson are co-directors of Well Seasoned Works and dance professors at Old Dominion University. Well Seasoned Works creates performance opportunities for experienced dancers and celebrates the depth and vitality that come with time in the field. Morrow, a Chicago native, is founder and artistic director of James Morrow/The Movement. Thompson is co-founder and artistic director of the Jen Stone and Megan Thompson Dance Project. Their collaboration in Mapping, choreographed by Mike Esperanza, reflects on connection, memory, and how shared experience shapes the spaces between us.
MoreMeant, founded in 2022 by the artistic direction of Gregory Lev, is a boundary-pushing dance-theater company that fuses provocative storytelling with innovative choreography. Lev's background in diverse dance styles and his keen eye for social critique inform the company's unique aesthetic, blending surrealism, humor, and raw human emotion.
The duet, performed by Lev and dancer Andrea Frankfurt, is an energetic display of colliding ideas and theatrical associations that opens with Frankfurt's solo section. She leaps, spins, falls, and contorts powerfully between various states of consciousness, emotions, and physical conditions to the sound of a loud, and at times even alarming, soundtrack. Later, Frankfurt and Lev unite and perform a tense movement sequence that gradually becomes lighter, one that outlines a relationship of trust and partnership between the two." - Joy Bernard, Portfolio Magazine, 2022.
Moremeant Dance-theater © ASYA SKORIK
Moremeant Dance-theater © ASYA SKORIK
WHITE WAVE Dance © Steven Schreiber
Young Soon Kim, Artistic Director of WHITE WAVE Dance, is a recipient of the 2023 Bessies Angel Honoree Award, and is a nationally and internationally acclaimed choreographer, whose work has been hailed for its exhilarating, visually stunning, and emotionally rich phrases and textures.
In August and September 2025, WHITE WAVE has been invited to perform at the prestigious ChangMu International Dance Festival, with engagements at the Sejong Art Center in Sejong City and the Post Theater at ChangMu Art Center in Seoul, Korea. The company also toured to São Paulo, Brazil and performed at the Mostra Internacional de Dança de São Paulo (MID SP 2025)— where the company received enthusiastic acclaim for its performances.
The Company is looking forward to this upcoming season, with a Multimedia Dance/Theater production “Here NOW So Long” at New York Live Arts, May 21st-24th. For more information and to read more about WHITE WAVE Dance, please visit our website. www.whitewavedance.org.
“There are people who simply have a lot of energy, and the Korean-born choreographer Young Soon Kim is clearly one of them.” – Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times
WHITE WAVE Dance © Steven Schreiber