Tina Croll + Company to Present
A NEW CHOREOGRAPHIC WORK
"BALKAN BACCHANAL"
THURSDAY, AUGUST 18
at the 41st Annual Battery Dance Festival
in Battery Park City
L-R –Tina Croll & Company, Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band. Photos Courtesy Tina Croll.
New York, NY, July 20, 2022 – Tina Croll + Company will present Balkan Bacchanal, a new hybrid choreographic work combining modern dance and Balkan folk dance at the 41st Annual Battery Dance Festival in Battery Park City, Thursday, August 18, Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park. The performance will include nine Company dancers and 15 musicians from the Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band. The Battery Park Dance Festival, 7-9pm, is free and open to the public.
Balkan Bacchanal explores the intricate rhythms and moods found in music from Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Romania. The dances are often rituals – some wild and playful, some slow and stately, some harsh and driven, others gentle, almost trance-like. Seven dances will be shown, with modern dance and traditional Balkan folk dance presented separately and in combination.
Tina Croll has always loved Balkan folk dancing, beginning more than 50 years ago. She started collaborating with Zlatne Uste in 2000 and they worked together to produce the critically acclaimed "Balkan Dreams," which premiered at Danspace Project in 2002. "Balkan Bacchanal" is an expansion of that work. The rich inspiration that Croll has found in Balkan music has resulted in a body of innovative and fresh, rhythmically complex, high-energy choreography. With a blend of folk and contemporary styles, the dance delivers unexpected twists of rhythm, space, and time.
BALKAN BACCHANAL, A SEVEN-PART DANCE WORK:
· Aman, Aman, Momče Bre - This title has no simple translation. "Aman" is an expression used in the Balkans and the Middle East. It can mean pleasure, satisfaction, pain, distress, longing, God, and many emotions in between.
· Rumelaj – This is a Romanian folk song sung in a Hungarian-Rom dialect. This song was first heard in a recording by the Hungarian group Kalyi Jag ("Black Fire"). Since this recording it has traveled to Turkey where it was taught to a group of musicians by Steve Kotansky
· Floričica Olteneasca – This Romanian piece is played on the drymba (jew's harp)
· Petrunino – a dance from West Central Bulgaria. The song asks Petrunina why she is so beautiful: "…did you fall from heaven or spring up in a garden?"
· Balada Za Trubače - "Ballad for Trumpeters" is a Rom dance tune in 9/8 time.
· Kojcovata – This music, "Kojco's dance," comes from the region of Veliko Tamovo in North Bulgaria. It belongs to the. "Dajcovo" family.
· Kopanica – A well-known Bulgarian dance tune in 11/16 time, also found in Slavic and Greek Macedonia and Serbia.
Tina Croll & Company Dancers: Andrew Barna, Erin DeLucia-Benson, Michelle Durante, Kendra Dushac, Michelle Gilligan, Michael Ginsburg, Noel Kropf, Heather Panikkar, and Bard Rosell.
Musicians: Belle Birchfield, Morgan Clark, Marian Eines, Sarah Ferholt, Catherine Foster, Emily Geller, Michael Ginsburg, Don Godwin, Emerson Hawley, Melinda Hunt, Jerry Kisslinger, Andriy Milavsky, Seido Salifoski, Matt Smith, and Daniel Stern.
Also appearing at Battery Dance Festival on August 18 will be Demi Remick & Dancers, Floyd McLean Jr., Fairul Zahid & Lasalle Dance Singapore, TeaTime Company and Battery Dance.
ABOUT TINA CROLL
A pioneer in the New York dance community, Tina Croll is a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop and co-founder of From the Horse's Mouth, the ongoing celebratory dance/theater production celebrating its 25th year. She studied with Merce Cunningham and Erick Hawkins; performed with Jeff Duncan, Jamie Cunningham and Judith Dunn and established Tina Croll + Company in NYC. Her evening-length works produced by Danspace Project include: "Ancient Springs" with a cast of 20, and "Balkan Dreams", a collaboration with Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band. The Improvisation group, "the Gang of Four," included Wendy Perron, Douglas Dunn, and Kenneth King. She has performed with her company at Judson Church, Dance Theater Workshop, the Theatre of the Riverside Church, Clark Center, and other theaters in the city. The company also toured extensively throughout the United States. From the Horse's Mouth, has received standing ovations for its captivating story-telling and exceptional dancing, with rave reviews from critics around the United States.
ABOUT ZLATNE USTE, THE BALKAN BRASS BAND
Zlatne Uste (Golden Lips) is an internationally known group of American-born musicians playing traditional music of the Balkans, primarily representing Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Romany (Gypsy) traditions. Many melodies build on non-Western scales, reflecting the influences of Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Indian music. Four-time invited guest at the Dragachevo Brass Festival in Gucha, Serbia, the 12-piece band is among the foremost presenters of traditional Balkan dance music in the United States.
ABOUT BATTERY DANCE
The Battery Dance Festival is New York City's longest-running free public dance festival. Each year, the Festival draws a combined audience of over 12,000 in-person and over 35,000 virtual viewers. Battery Dance is a community-spirited presenter which has introduced New Yorkers to over 350 dance companies in more than 40 years.
*All programming at Wagner Park will be live-streamed on YouTube
Location: Robert F. Wagner Park Jr., NYC (20 Battery Pl, New York, NY 10280)
Cost: All performances at Wagner Park are free to the public!
"Stunning permutations of heel-and-toe, twist, kick, and stamp." - Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice
"Tina Croll herself is an exquisitely calm, controlled mover, with the courage to be simple on stage." - L.A. Herald Examiner
"Croll's new work appeared full of interesting and refreshing ideas." - Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times
"(Balkan Dreams) Croll is serenely lovely, a 1960s adventuress who travels into the subject of spiritual experience and taps her feet in Balkan folk dancing... Nothing can quite match the joy of 11 brass instruments and drums blasting you to heaven, or of watching a line of men—stout and skinny, young and graying—grasp one another's belts and whip through the tricky moves of the Kopanica in 11/16 meter, feet stamping and hopping, knees pumping faster than you'd believe reasonable. The audience couldn't wait to jam with them." Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice
"(Balkan Dreams) … one of the best modern dance performances I've seen… a daring experiment in many ways." - Robert Abrams, ExploreDance.com
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