Your Move: Modern Dance Festival Returns for 9th Year

Art House Productions in partnership with Friends of Loew's proudly present the 9th annual Your Move: Modern Dance Festival featuring Bessie Jury Award recipient Kyle Marshall at The Landmark Loew's Jersey Theater, 54 Journal Square Plaza, Jersey City, NJ, 07306, adjacent to the Journal Square PATH Station, on Friday November 2 at 7:30 pm and Sunday November 4 at 2:00 pm and 5:00pm. Tickets are $18 in advance ($25 at the door). For tickets and further information please visit www.arthouseproduction.org

Your Move: Modern Dance Festival is New Jersey's preeminent annual modern dance festival, designed to support choreographers from New Jersey, New York, and beyond. Morgan Refakis, Christie Freeman and Meagan Woods co-produce a festival consistently recognized for high-caliber modern dance. Now in its 9th season, Your Move is thrilled to continue its partnership with Friends of the Loew's at The Landmark Loew's Jersey Theater.The festival is proudly sponsored by Harwood Properties and The KRE Group. 

The 2018 festival features Kyle Marshall Choreography (KMC). Other choreographers include: Felicia Avalos, Lauren Connolly, Gwendolyn Gussman, Joe Monteleone, Patrick O'Brien, Javier Padilla, Ambika Raina, Morgan Refakis, Jordan Ryder, Phoebe Sandford, Adriana Santoro and Shannon Yu ???.

Kyle Marshall is a 2018 NY Dance and Performance "Bessie" Jury Award recipient and a 2017 NJ State Council of the Arts Fellow. His dance company, Kyle Marshall Choreography (KMC) sees the dancing body as a site for celebration, an igniter of social change and a container of history. KMC has performed at venues including: Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out, Joe's Pub at the Public, Actors Fund Arts Center, NJPAC, NYC Summerstage, Wassaic Arts Project, and Conduit Dance (PDX). Commissions have included: "Dance on the Lawn" Montclair's Dance Festival, NJPAC and Harlem Stage. Kyle currently dances with the Trisha Brown Dance Company and Doug Elkins choreography. Kyle is a graduate of Rutgers University with a BFA in Dance.

"I am thrilled to be returning to Your Move as the featured choreographer. In the beginning of my career, this festival was a wonderful opportunity to share some of my first works in Jersey City. As an audience member, it was a chance to see some new, fresh voices in dance. I am excited to be sharing a new dance at Your Move." -Kyle Marshall

Felicia B Avalos is a choreographer, educator, performer, and published writer based in New York City. She received her MFA from The George Washington University in Dance and recently completed a residency in Melbourne, Australia where she created a new work about the water crisis in Mexico. Avalos focuses her work on Mexican and Central American political topics and merges her choreography with MMA fighting, Mexican ballet folklórico, and Argentine tango.

Lauren Connolly (Artistic Director, Connolly & Co.) is a choreographer, arts administrator, and dance educator from New Jersey. She is a recipient of the 2017 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship Award, the Dance on the Lawn 2017 Emerging Commissioned Choreographer Award and the 2015/2017 Jersey (New) Moves Emerging Choreographers Fellowship. Connolly & Co. is invested in how dance can initiate physical, intellectual, emotional, and spatial transformations. Her work has been described as, "sublime...full of surprises, admirably original ....and engaging..." Lauren has shown her work throughout the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Jersey area.

Gwendolyn Gussman graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Dance and is currently performing with Sean Curran Company, Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance, Vanessa Walters, Heidi Latsky Dance, and Roger C. Jeffrey. Gwendolyn's choreography has been presented at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Yale University, James Madison University, Denver School of the Arts, The Dance Collective, and others. Gwendolyn loves collaborating with artists in different disciplines, most notably touring with The Warp Trio (NYC), Jett Kwong (LA), Meredith Rose/The Dance Collective (CT), and Hallie Spoor (CO). Gwendolyn is the Artistic Director of a project called Nourishment; immersive and site-specific performances multi-sensory, evening-length experience blending dance, theater, live music, visual arts, and new media, with food and drink. More info at thisisnourishment.com

Joe Monteleone, the "Andy Warhol of modern dance" (The Moving Beauty Series) is "A one-man-band soloist and choreographer who mixes his own music, video art, records monologues, and controls his own lighting - the rare control freak who can do it all and come out with a dazzlingly realized project" (Huffington Post). His multimedia solo work and company (Monteleone Dance) have been presented extensively in New York City, nationally and internationally to great acclaim, listed in the Huffington Post's "Best Dance Performances of 2017". Joe is at the forefront of movement invention and incorporates this cutting-edge movement style with his prose, sound design, and multimedia worlds to create cerebral dance theatre.

Patrick O'Brien attended The Joffrey Ballet School and is currently a freelance choreographer, dancer, and teaching artist living in NYC. Patrick has presented works that challenge definitions of precision and complexity using a distinctly detailed choreographic language. His choreography has been commissioned and curated for performances at multiple venues in the greater New York area including The Ailey Citigroup Theatre, The Brooklyn Museum, The 14th St Y, Dixon Place, Socrates Sculpture Park, Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, Earl Mosley's Intensive of the Arts, and many others. His work has toured to Connecticut, New Jersey, Philadelphia, PA, and Seaside Panama City, FL. Patrick has set commissioned work on CelloPointe, Joffrey Ballet School, The Movement Center (Honolulu, Hawaii), and others.

Javier Padilla is a movement based artist from San Juan, Puerto Rico. His choreographic work has been presented in venues such as Judson Memorial Church, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and The Inside/Out Stage at Jacob's Pillow. Through his choreographic endeavor, The Movement Playground, Padilla has garnered residencies through Bucknell University, West Chester University, and the CUNY Dance Initiative. Padilla is currently the 2018 NJ Emerging Choreographer through Dance on The Lawn Montclair.

Ambika Raina is a dancer/performance maker/director whose work is rooted in an experimental foundation growing toward a pop sensibility. In NYC, Ambika has presented work at Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, NYU's Jack Crystal Theater, Westbeth, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Triskelion Arts and more. She has performed as a dancer at Madison Square Garden, HERE Arts Center, Triskelion Arts, and a residency showing at Jacob's Pillow. ambikaraina.com

Morgan Hill Refakis graduated from Rutgers University where she received a Jerome and Lorraine Aresty Research Scholarship for choreography. Representing Northeast Indiana, Morgan performed and presented in Mexico through a performing arts cultural exchange with Rotary International. She has performed with Liz Lerman, Dance Exchange, Isabel Lewis, Insurgo Stage Project, The Dancing Georgina Project, Daniel Flores Dance, and Meagan Woods & Co. Since 2015, Morgan has collaborated with artist Nancy Nowacek. Their collaborations have been performed at Your Move Dance Festival, Judson Church, Central Park, Industry City and Freshkills Park. Morgan is a founding co-Producer of Your Move Dance Festival and an Area Pilates Manager for Equinox.

Jordan Ryder graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Dance and a double minor in Sociology and Business. Her notable performances include works by Crystal Pite, James Martin, Paul Taylor, and Pamela Pietro. Jordan's choreography has been presented across NYC, and in her final year at NYU, Jordan's piece, STEADFAST, was voted by students and faculty to be presented in the Second Avenue Dance Company's Major Dance Concert. Her company, RyderDance, made its first debut July 9th, 2018 at Triskelion Arts.

Phoebe Rose Sandford, director of Copy that Dance, has presented work at Dixon Place, The Woods, Triskelion Arts, NYU's Jack Crystal Theater, Threes Brewing, Beulahland, and Green Space. Phoebe has performed with Anne Zuerner, mishiDance, MoveWorks, Alice Gosti, RedCurrant Collective, Jonathan Matthews, This is Not a Theatre Company, The Charles Weidman Foundation, Patricia Hoffbauer, and AMS Project.

Adriana Santoro graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University with her BFA in Dance. Santoro has presented at The Actors Fund Arts Center, Bickford Theater at Morris Museum, Dixon Place, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, Hudson Guild Theater, Judson Memorial Church, Landmark Loew's Jersey Theater, Loree Dance Theater, Mark Morris Dance Center, Ritz Performing Arts Stage, Triskelion Art's Muriel Schulman Theater, Victoria J. Mastrobuono Theater, and Vorhees Chapel at Rutgers.

Shannon Yu ??? is Taipei Born, New York-based choreographer/ dancer/creator. Having a background of Civil Engineering, Shannon Yu tends to gain intimacy with space, transforming and illuminating the elements of the space using her own point of view and a wide range of movement vocabulary. Shannon is an observer of life, and often seek through ordinary sounds and scenes for inspiration.

Art House Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to the development and presentation of performing and visual arts programs in Jersey City, NJ. Art House Productions presents original theater, music events, visual arts, experimental performance, classes, video/new media and the quarterly citywide arts festival, JC Fridays. For more information about our programs, please visit our website at www.arthouseproductions.org.