7th LA Dance Festival Announces April 2019 Dates

Celebrating its 7th year of bringing attention to the best contemporary dance in LA, Los Angeles Dance Festival (LADF) - this year partnering with the Luckman Fine Arts Complex and California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) gives the community programming over a month's time - and an annual gathering place where the public can experience curated programs featuring the wide range of concert dance that is produced here. LADF also offers ways for the public to participate directly with the creators who work in this vibrant art form.

LADF features top talent in the dance scene who are recognized locally, nationally and internationally. The dancers and choreographers in LADF work in both the concert and commercial, Hollywood industry. Their work is featured onstage around the world in theaters and in feature films, television shows, music videos, commercials and concert tours.

The companies of the main stage at The Luckman include Ate9, Backhausdance, BE MOVING, BODYTRAFFIC, BrockusRED, Bryn Cohn + Artists, CARLON, DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion®, HD Theater, Ido Tadmor, Invertigo Dance Theatre, Iris Company, Kevin Williamson + Rosanna Tavarez/ LA DANSA DANSA, Sarah Elgart /Arrogant Elbow, and String Theory.

The Fringe companies include Akomi Dance, Benevolence, Fabe Dance, Mecca Vazie Andrews, SiZa Dance Company, THE ASSEMBLY, Project21Dance, Bernard Brown/bbmoves, Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre, Ken Morris Project, Bodies in Play, FUSE Dance Company, Charlotte Katherine & Co, JESS HARPER & Dancers, Eternity Dance Theatre, S A U M A | m v m t , Pony Box Dance Theatre, Emergent, Deborah Rosen and Dancers, Carpool Dance Collective, Nancy Evans Dance Theatre and Seoul International Dance Festival .

LADF main stage takes place April 12 -14 at the Luckman Theatre, in the Luckman Fine Arts Complex, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles CA 90032. Tickets are available through luckmanarts.org. VIP packages and Student Discount tickets are only available through the Box Office.

LADF Fringe festival takes place April 26 - 28 at the Diavolo Studio Black Box in the Arts District, 616 Moulton Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90031. In addition, LADF connects to the community with an array of dance classes and workshops mixing different dance styles from modern to avant-garde in a festival setting - April 5-17 and April 27-28. For Fringe and master class information, please visit ladancefest.org or call 562-412-7429.

LADF was founded in partnership with Diavolo; the dance company is LADF's neighbor and is widely known from its series of appearances on America's Got Talent. Diavolo was the co-producer, with LADF, for the first two years of the festival.

Deborah Brockus, LADF artistic director, said "We celebrate and draw attention to the voices of SoCal artists in the LA dance community - and are about making dance accessible and affordable to all audiences. In 2012 the then Diavolo Company manager and I had a drink during winter break and decided to do a festival in our spaces. I had been seeing a lot of regional US dance and was beginning to understand how different we are here in Los Angeles and how unrecognized in the establishment of American dance we are out here. With the film and television culture so prominent here, we even felt unknown by our own local public. I wanted to see how that could change."

"There was an immediate response from the dance community here. Four months later the first LADFD - in co-production of Diavolo Dance Theatre, which is still a participant -- happened with 16 companies performing over the course of two shows. This year - featuring fifty companies over eight evenings in three venues during four weeks -- LADF has its largest, most diverse offering in our history, coming out of the LA dance industry that is constantly growing. The Festival gives its audience and its participants a true snapshot of place and time, and represents the city itself -- people from so many different ways of living, cultures, and counties make art in their voices here. There is such a bounty of dance making here that we have the luxury of rotating companies - which helps us stay fresh."

"This year, working with the Luckman Theatre at Cal State LA, which is under the direction of Wendy Baker, we have arrived to a major stage at the Luckman Theater, which has welcomed dance throughout its entire history. Increasingly we are aware that more and more of our audience are people who have travelled here to check out the city's dance scene taking advantage of one massive gathering under the one umbrella of LA Dance, both to watch shows, also to audition for companies, and engage with choreographers here."

LADF at the Luckman Theater will also feature an LA Dance Photography exhibit and pre- show performances by some of the pre-professional students that we train in local colleges and high schools. LADF Fringe at Diavolo Space will host the Seoul International Dance Festival as four choreographers are visiting Los Angeles. Previously the New Zealand Dance Festival (LA's Sister City) had attended the festival in 2017.

The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department provides some funding support for LADF.