The Music Center launches Moves After Dark

The Music Center in Los Angeles will “break down the walls” of the conventional concert dance stage with Moves After Dark, a new site-specific series that juxtaposes contemporary dance performances with architecture and space.

Held on Monday and Tuesday nights when The Music Center theatres are typically “dark,” or not in use, the inaugural season of Moves After Dark will feature four L.A.-based contemporary dance companies led by female directors. Audiences will traverse a variety of different spaces around The Music Center to see compelling and inventive performances and works by Ana María Alvarez (artistic director of CONTRA-TIEMPO), Ate9, Lula Washington Dance Theatre and BODYTRAFFIC. Moves After Dark, which will be held on July 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 8:30 p.m. each night, is sponsored by Center Dance Arts.

With The Music Center’s commitment to being a focal point for dance, Moves After Dark complements the performing arts center’s highly acclaimed series, Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center, which brings distinct dance experiences from around the world to The Music Center’s stages. In this new series, audiences will travel to where the dancers are performing and will select their own vantage point to bring them closer to the performance.

“While Moves After Dark has been in the planning phase for quite some time, I am thrilled to see it come to life with some of L.A.’s contemporary dance leaders, who all happen to be females,” said Renae Williams Niles, vice president of programming for The Music Center. “Los Angeles has an extraordinary dance history, especially for concert stage work and training, and we owe so much of that to great pioneering women such as Ruth St. Denis, Bronislava Nijinska, Bella Lewitsky and Lula Washington, among many others. It is thrilling to be able to highlight the current vibrancy and diversity of aesthetics and movement by our tremendous artists who, in part, represent today’s Los Angeles as they all tour the globe,” she explained.

“With Moves After Dark, we will work with each company and artist who do not traditionally present site-specific work, creating a challenge and opportunity for their dancers to explore what happens when they are in close proximity to their audience. Each choreographer selected their locale on The Music Center campus; some have been inspired to create new work based on the surroundings, while others are reimagining existing work in a completely different environment,” Williams Niles added.

Catharine Soros, board president of Center Dance Arts, said, “What were once considered strict rules in dance are rapidly disappearing, allowing artists and audiences alike to collectively define the experience. Moves After Dark capitalizes on that by creating a heightened level of proximity between audience and artists in an evening dance lovers, and those new to dance, will never forget.”

Each evening of the engagement will feature the same companies and works with performances lasting 15-20 minutes for a total of approximately two hours. Audiences will gather in groups and follow three different paths around The Music Center’s campus that lead to each of the four performances; all groups will end with a culminating presentation in The Music Center Plaza.

For more information on Moves After Dark, visit musiccenter.org/moves.

Photo: BODYTRAFFIC’s Tina Finkelman Berkett and Guzmán Rosado perform Restructure, a co-commission by The Music Center and Dance Camera West choreographed by Victor Quijada. Photo courtesy of The Music Center.