TAKE Dance presents ‘Anamnesis’ in May

TAKE Dance, the New York City-based contemporary dance troupe led by Artistic Director/Founder Takehiro Ueyama, emerges again as a luminary force with Anamnesis. This moody and exhilarating evening of dance highlights the choreographic voices of three members of the TAKE Dance family: Takehiro Ueyama (Artistic Director), Jill Echo (Associate Director) and Brynt Beitman (Company Member).

TAKE Dance’s first NYC season since it’s successful There and Here, Anamnesis will run for three days (May 23-25) at The West End Theatre.

Anamnesis unearths three emotionally potent interpretations of how memory affects the psyche. TAKE Dance’s commanding performers will accentuate powerful choreographies. Phillip Gardener of Oberon’s Grove said of the company, “Take’s dancers are outstanding, both as performers and personalities.”

Ueyama, whose work has been described by the New York Times as “a bold tribute to modernity, with just enough originality,” is creating Landscape 2 for this evening. It is a deeply poignant kinetic landscape set to an original composition by Hiroya Miura.

Echo will present My heart is pounding, it’s all I can hear, a thoughtful reconnaissance of four women unable to free themselves from the asylum in which they live and the psychological fragmentations caused by inescapable traumas. 

Beitman’s WAKE, inspired by tenor Jeffrey Thompson’s lush interpretation of the 13th century French hymn Le Bouvier, considers the alchemic properties of memory through the lens of abstractions of love, grief and loss.

TAKE Dance is led by Ueyama, who graduated from The Juilliard School and toured with Paul Taylor Dance Company for eight years. TAKE Dance has performed in New York at Central Park SummerStage, Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, Judson Memorial Church, The Ailey Citigroup Theater, Cunningham Studio, Galapagos Art Space, Joe’s Pub, The Rose Nagleberg Theater at Baruch Performing Arts Center, The Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, Schimmel Center at Pace University and at PS/21 in Chatham, NY for four consecutive seasons. In November 2011, TAKE Dance performed in Italy as featured artists in the Festival Internazionale Nuova Danza of Calgari, Sardinia. Then 2016 brought the company to Costa Rica to headline as company-in-residence at the Festival Brinca Brunca in San Isidro. Other festival appearances have included Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Downtown Dance Festival, WestFest Dance Festival, DanceNOW [NYC], DanceNOW Steel Stacks, National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C., SaratogaArtsFest and San Francisco’s WestWave Dance Festival. Additional venues include Dance Place in Washington DC, The Lewis Center at Princeton University, New Noises Festival at Perry-Mansfield in Colorado, Kaatsbaan International Dance Festival and Nort Maar Fete de Danse. TAKE Dance was recently company-in-residence at Skidmore College, University at Albany and Randolph College.   

Tickets to Anamnesis are available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3383305. For more information on TAKE Dance, visit www.takedance.org.

Photo by Brynt Beitman.