Dance Place in the News: 2009-2010 Season Press

Nejla Yatkin/NY2Dance and Dana Tai Soon Burgess Co.

By Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post (Sunday, October 18, 2009)
--"The strength of this piece lay in Yatkin's smart use of just a few actions and gestures that evoked the denial and the physical and emotional suppression of the times."
--"The stylized simplicity that characterizes Burgess's work was especially effective here...The sense of confinement was so sharp you felt it in your seat."
--"Clearly, there's an appetite for works like these. We should see more of them."

Illstyle & Peace Productions

By Rebecca J. Ritzel, Washington Post (Monday, November 16, 2009)
--"What makes Illstyle & Peace Productions...so across-the-board entertaining is that these performers ditch the violence and the vulgar lyrics, but never dumb-down their dancing."

Dance Place in the News: 2008-2009 Season Press

Tehreema Mitha Dance Company

By Rebecca J. Ritzel, Washington Post(Monday, December 8, 2008)
--"Indian dance gives viewers a chance to appreciate body parts that other dance forms ignore. [[][[]][[][[]]]The dancer]has a gorgeous neck. She can convey a major plot twist by craining a few vertebrae. Her eyes, likewise, are wide expressive windows to a story."

Eiko and Koma

By Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post (Sunday, September, 14, 2008)
--"Look for a full plate in "Hunger," an exploration of want and need by the famously slow-moving and provocative Japanese duo."

By Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post (Monday, September, 22, 2008)
--"Hunger" is of a piece with these productions, depicting life as an unceasing struggle in a heartless world. It is a work of contemplative beauty and sharp ferocity, a poignant meditation on the inseparability of survival and food, both physical and spiritual."

--"Angular and thin, the artists look as if they've been tossed upside down by some violent force, half-resting against the stage on a shoulder or arm, while almost imperceptibly gripping the fence up above with their toes. Their postures bring ot mind listless exhaustion, the emanciation of refugees in a camp - and the sculptural repose of a still life. Gradually they being to stir and inch toward each other, their reward being as much a collapse as an embrace."

Season Opener - "Pure" A Tribute to Hip Hop Legend Rennie Harris

By Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post (Monday, September 15, 2008)
--"...it was Harris' sheer presence, and the piercing emotional impact of his moves - the huge chest pumps that signaled a big heart desperate to break free, the popping so staccato as to appear strobe-lit - that made his story so rich, immediate and raw. Harris shows us that hip hop dance is more than the background of a music video, more than a commercial spectacle. Hip hop digs deep and what it brings up in him feels like nothing less than the unprocessed truth."