Joyce Master Class: Abby Z

THE JOYCE MASTER CLASS SERIES AT GIBNEY: ABBY Z
WITH ABBY ZBIKOWSKI

Price: $25

In this highly physical workshop dancers will experiment with pushing their bodies past perceived limits of speed, range of motion, strength, coordination, and endurance, as well as challenge their own held views on conventions of established forms. In her classes, Abby Z utilizes an intercultural approach to the practice of contemporary dance, placing her methods in direct dialogue with the African Diasporic and African forms that have shaped her perspective as a dance-maker and educator, as a means to identify the confluence of aesthetic worlds and cultural information embedded in the practice of contemporary dance. Dancers should expect a full-bodied rhythmically driven class and should wear sneakers, pants, and knee pads.

About Abby Zbikowski

Abby Zbikowski created her company, Abby Z and the New Utility, in 2012. Her work utilizes both the physical aspects and psyche-emotional experience of rigorously training in African and Afro-diasporic forms, as well as playing sports and performing other acts manual labor. In 2017 she received the Juried Bessie Award for her “unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary in complex and demanding structures to create works of great energy, intensity, surprise, and danger” and in 2018 was selected by Dance Umbrella UK for a “Choreographer of the Future” commission. She is an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-In-Residence at the Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University(2017-19), a current artist in residence at New York Live Arts(2018-20) and has been in residence at Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics. Zbikowski is an Assistant Professor of dance at the University of Illinois and on faculty at American Dance Festival. She has taught at the Academy of Culture in Riga, Latvia as part of Movement Research’s Global Practice Sharing and studied intensively at Germaine Acogny’s L’École de Sables in Senegal. Abby holds a BFA in dance from Temple University and an MFA in dance from Ohio State University. As a performer she has worked with Charles O. Anderson/Dance theater X, Vincent Mantsoe, and the Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project and in 2018 she was commissioned by American Dance Festival to create a new work for the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. The next work with her company, RADIOACTIVE PRACTICE, will premiere in March 2020 at New York Live Arts.

At the Joyce Theater: American Dance Platform – January 7-12, 2020 – Program A on Tue, Jan 7 and Sun, Jan 12 at 7:30pm will feature Urban Bush Women and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company DCDC will perform Abby Zbikowski’s Indestructible (2018). The American Dance Platform showcases some of the most captivating American companies performing today. Created as a way to celebrate and promote companies from across the United States, each platform is programmed by a different curator appointed by The Joyce. This year’s offerings have been selected by Christy Bolingbroke, founding executive/artistic director at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. For more info visit: www.joyce.org/performances/american-dance-platform

Photo by Effy Grey.

ACCESSIBILITY
Gibney 280 Broadway is accessible via elevator from the main entrance at 53A Chambers Street.

We welcome the opportunity to make this event more accessible. Please refrain from wearing scented products, so that people with chemical sensitivities can join us. Please request ASL interpreting, audio description, or open captioning 30 days before the event or submit other requests by completing our Access Requests and Inquiries Form or calling 646.837.6809 (Voice only).