THE PEARL DIVER'S DAUGHTER
A partnership with the U.S. Mission to Qatar
SPRING 2024
The history of Pearl Diving is intricately entwined with the Persian Gulf. For centuries, long before the discovery of oil, pearling was a central way of life. The Pearl Diver's Daughter, originally commissioned by the U.S. Mission to the United Arab Emirates, takes a new turn, enfoling Qatari art and artists into its mix with this edition.
Company | E returns to NYC with "Where from Here" by Ukrainian choreographer Anastasiia Kharchenko. The 2024 Festival marks Company | E's fourth consecutive appearance at this juried NYC festival.
WHO LET THE DOGS OUT
@ The Richmond Film Festival
October 1, 2023
The Company returns to the city that feels like its second home, Richmond, Virginia at the invitation of the Richmond Film Festival, which has turned into one of the signature arts events on the East Coast, with amazing films, exceptional live music and, this year, dance.
Who Let the Dogs Out, one of Company E's signature repertory works, moves from the stage to a site-specific experience as a part of the Closing Day of the Festival on October 1.
@ The HOUSE OF SWEDEN
A World Premiere by Fredrik Quinones
NOVEMBER 18, 2023
In partnership with the Embassy of Sweden to the United States and the House of Sweden, Company E presents the World Premiere of visionary young choreographer Fredrik Quinones of Stockholm. An imaginative and immersive evening at the unique House of Sweden on the DC waterfront awaits.
LETTERS TO EARTH
Concerts For Young Audiences | DC
MARCH - MAY 2024
The existential challenge of climate change is the center of this program for young audiences. This 2024 edition for DC Public School audiences takes the message that we all live on one interconnected earth and shares it in a delightful, imaginative way. Drawing on letters written by sixth graders to Mother Earth, Company | E creates a work to inspire and challenge the youngest audiences -- K - 2.
LETTERS TO EARTH '24 is made possible with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
IN THE SEAM: The Miner's Journey
Sunderland, U.K.
SUMMER 2024
Company | E continues its journey with DC Sister City Sunderland, England with an exploration of the cultural history of the men and women who mined the coal that drove the insdustrial revolution. Created in partnership with the Sunderland City Council and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, "In the Seam" is the fourth program in Company | E's rich partnership with Sunderland.
PREMIERED APRIL 2020
The Coronovirus Pandemic caused all our touring and concerts to come to a stop. They stopped, but we didn't. We launched SHELTER and ON CUE and turned to our 18 years of film-making history to create and commission 16 films (and counting). ON CUE, is our platform for premiering those films, interviewing artists, diplomats and leaders in the arts.
AN EVENING OF MOVEMENT ON AIR
ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | DC
ONLINE
Company | E brings together an exceptional array of artists for an evening of dance, music and performance art as a part of the Atlas Performing Arts Center's "Atlas Arts On Air."
Featuring Amikaeyla Gaston, Tuyet Pham, Boris Willis, Howard University premiering a new work by Royce Zachary, the Movement Theater of Tbilisi, Georgia and Company | E premiering a work by Robert J. Priore, the concert showcases all new works made in 2021.
NEXT: WARMER
The Company | E choreography commission on the Climate Crisis
Climate change has been a part of Company | E's choreographic mission since the first WARMER concert in 2008.
In 2021 the Company, seeking to spur a return to live performance, commissions five new works in an open call to choreographers around the world. The works chosen came from India, Hungary, Canada and right here at home in DC. Together, the form a snapshot of the concerns and questions confronting us through human induced climate change - sea level rise, the need for sustainable building practices, our obsession with acquisition and the trash which comes from it, and our abuse of our planet.
"A Tamada In Manhattan" brought together deep Georgian traditions with shared questions of freedom of expression and aspiration for a better world in times of conflict. Transporting a traditional Toastmaster - a "Tamada" from Georgia and dropping him into the chaos and aspiration of 1960s New York, "Tamada" used the classic songs of the era to ask "what does freedom really mean, and what are we prepared to do to fight for it."
Sponsored by the Embassy of the United States in Tbilisi, and in partnership with the Movement Theater of Tbilisi, "Tamada" was one of our favorite expressions of the power of Cultural Diplomacy.
We toss the word around so casually, but how do we we, as individuals, as artists, as a culture, as a society and as a country define freedom? Does that universal word have universal meaning, or is it different for every person, every society, every country? For 200 years the United States has been held up as "the land of the free," yet the story of America is bound up in contradiction and conflict of the meaning of that word.
The Republic of Georgia has rarely been free -- in the way freedom is defined as an independent State. Forcibly absorbed into the Soviet Union, occupied and alternately briefly free for centuries, now a fractured country, how do the people and artists of Georgia define freedom?
That's the subject, and raison d'etre of The Freedom Project, a cross-cultural exploration between artists from the U.S. and their counterparts in the Republic of Georgia.
It's a unique opportunity to take art and use it to explore not just culture, but the meaning of a word we often use, but rarely understand.
The Freedom Project is funded by the U.S. Department of State, Embassy Tbilisi.
VOYAGERS -
A DANCE AMONG THE PLANETS
WASHINGTON, DC
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts commissioned Company | E, for the fourth time in 24 months, to create a journey through the Solar System for its Theater for Young Audiences 2018-2019 season. On the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Gustav Holst's "THE PLANETS" the Center brought in composer arranger Eric Shimelonis to reimagine the classic orchestral work as a jazz quintet to be played live for a ten show run in March, 2019 before an audience of 3,500 young concert-goers.
Partnering with educators from NASA, and using the astonishing imagery from the remarkable journeys of man and machine in the past 50 years, Directors Paul Emerson, Kathryn Pilkington and Mr. Shimelonis created a journey through the Solar System by imagining the Kennedy Center Family Theater as a Planetarium.
INNOVATION
Expanding the possibiltiies for performance across the world. Company | E's deep dive into Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality.
SCHOOL'S OPEN
"The MC builds and supports whole-child learning...instilling the values of self-discipline and team building."
- Roseanna B. MC Parent
The Company | E Movement Center for Dance Education teaches the next generation both the technique and the joy of movement.
"...exactly the kind of work we had imagined when creating the Performances for Young Audiences series, elegantly combining multiple art forms including modern dance, classical music, storytelling, visual arts, and theater."
-- David Kilpatrick, Director, Education Programs and Productions. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
@ The Dance Institute of Washington
3400 14th Street NW | Washington, DC 20010
Email: info@companye.org
Phone: 202.930.2207
© Paul Gordon Emerson
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Images © Paul Gordon Emerson
