For Immediate Release
Zoé Dance presents
Abandon
Choreographed by Callie Chapman Korn
At Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center
(41 Second Street, Cambridge, MA 02139)

September 29 + 30, 2006 at 8:00pm

Tickets are $22 general admission and $17 students, seniors and BDA members
Tickets can be purchased at www.ticketweb.com and at the door
For more information / reservations: tickets@zoedance.org

Zoé Dance will present an evening-length work, Abandon, September 29 + 30, 2006 at 8:00 at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center. Tickets are $22 general admission and $17 students, seniors and BDA members.

“ Korn and Chapman are forging a style that is truly integrative. Zoé Dance's intent is mostly poetic, with grand themes centered on passion, the natural world, and physical and spiritual redemption.” – Theodore Bale, The Boston Herald

Zoé Dance has presented its work since 2002 in various venues around Boston such as: World Music/CRASH Art's "Ten's the Limit" at Green Street Studios, the Somerville Theatre [ArtBeat 2004], The Julie Ince Thompson Theatre ["Virgin", produced by the Dance Renewal Project, self produced concerts and the Dance Complex's Shared Choreographers Concert], Harvard Square [May Fair 2004], Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center [the Choreographers Group, 2004], Tower Auditorium at Massachusetts College of Art [2003], Earth Dance [Outdoor Performance Festival, 2002].

Callie Chapman Korn [Artistic Director, Choreographer], holds a B.F.A. in dance from the Boston Conservatory. She is a dancer with Prometheus Dance and has presented her work both independently and as part of Zoé Dance, most recently in an independently produced concert "Piel contra piel" at the Dance Complex. She has worked with choreographers such as Nicola Hawkins, Mariela Cerda Villablanca [Chile], Frente de Danza Independiente [Ecuador], Sean Curran and Colin Conor.

First performed as a work-in-progress (March 31, 2006 and April 1, 2006 at the Dance Complex) Abandon explores many facets of human relationships as we grow and develop in society. The animosity of the child turns into teenage rebellion and eventually into the sexual frustration and insecurity of the adult.

ARTIST STATEMENT: “As a person grows and develops from a child to an adult, the standpoint of human relationships changes continually. When you were a child it didn’t matter what the other child who was throwing stones into the river looked like, you wanted to throw stones into the river too. So you did. And all the while no judgment passed your mind about that other human being, he was enjoying life and you were too. Living in the moment.

As we grow older, we grow more judgmental and cruel to one another. Thus starting the vicious cycle of the importance of status, race, ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, sex, income, fashion, lifestyle, etc. This judgment starts possibly because that’s how we are taught to survive. We don’t show our vulnerabilities because the judgment we place on others hides this part of ourselves. To be kind to another human being is harder for some of us than to ignore or balk at one another.

What if a world existed where our instinctual emotional selves remained naïve like that of a child’s?”

In the first performance of Abandon, themes of social insecurity; fear of the dark and a metaphorical fear of a ‘support system’ played out with three men, a woman and a swing came together in a 25 minute long journey that could have touched on so many other facets.

In the expanded version of Abandon, three new sections will be added; Child-like patterning reminiscent of a playground, a scene that faces tension between insecurities of physical versus emotional intimacy, solidarity and the complexities of existing in one’s ‘own world’ completely, and an addition to the previous ending in which the current characters are replaced by child-like versions of themselves.

Abandon will use video projection to create ‘environments’ to surround the dance of a world of it’s own. Utilizing the mediums of dance and video, Abandon will be a self-contained theatrical experience that will make the audience feel as if they are, too in the dance themselves.
Abandon is choreographed by Callie Chapman Korn.

Dancers are: Sarah Ackley, Tamara Butts Sullivan, Ivan Korn, Jon Peck and Callie Chapman Korn.