November 30 and December 1, St. Joseph’s Performance Hall at Hayti Heritage Center
Tickets: $15 adults/ $10 student w/id and Senior Citizens
This project is funded by St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation, National Performance Network, Southern Arts Federation, North Carolina Arts Council, City of Durham and PennPAT.When Tania Isaac broke free from the cagelike apparatus in Rennie Harris Puremovement’s Facing Mekka to perform the show’s exhilarating solo, the dancer anointed herself a rising star in the city’s modern dance community. Effectively incorporating ethnic and Western dance forms as well as text, video and movement, Isaac shows herself to be a multitalented artist whose work both explores and expands the boundaries of contemporary Dance Theater.
-J. Cooper Robb, Philadelphia Weekly
Tania Isaac loves flying: the innate joy of sweeping through the air across open spaces. Standpipe, her latest evening-length work, combines supple, sensuous dancing with a raw physicality that weds the post-modern to the Caribbean. Drawn from a “raconteur� (storyteller) style of Caribbean folk theater, Standpipe melds movement with video and an original score by Grisha Coleman, inspired by folk songs of St. Lucia, reggae, lullabies and Bach. The main water source in rural areas of the Caribbean, the standpipe serves as a community gathering place. For Isaac, it represents sustenance and an environment that portrays alternate realities of the “third world.� Here “having� and “not having� do not center on wealth or poverty but on the existence of different priorities and the search for control and dignity in the face of larger global forces.
“It is interesting to hear details of my suffering as told by others. I wonder why no one ever let me know how difficult my life had been.â€? – Excerpt from Standpipe
Standpipe is the culminating event in Isaac’s two years as the Resident Bride Artist. A co-commissioning project by Painted Bride in partnership with Dance Place and the National Performance Network Creation Fund. The Creation Fund is sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Altria, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). Also supported by a grant from the National Performance Network Community Fund. Major contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). Tania Isaac Dance is supported in part by Dance Advance, a program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Drexel University .
Tania Isaac Dance (TID) is a physically explosive, sensual marriage of Modern and Caribbean esthetics: part personal documentary and part social commentary. Contemporary dance with a raga-socio blend of movement, ideas, words and images, TID also aims to develop extensive residencies that create a cultural bridge to the dance and music of the eastern Caribbean and to contemporary art as a catalyst for civic dialogue.
Originally from St. Lucia, West Indies, Tania is currently based in Philadelphia, PA where she continues to explore the esthetic, kinesiologic, cultural, political bases of contemporary dance. Her work has been presented at venues throughout the U.S., England and the Caribbean and is also a part of Urban Bushwomen Repertory in “Soul Deep to the Bone�. Her collaborative video work has been screened at the ADF Dancing for the Camera Festival of International Film and Video Dance in North Carolina, at the International Festival of Video Dance, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at the Prince Theater in Philadelphia. A graduate with honors from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Tania received her MFA from Temple University where she was a Teaching Assistant and University Fellow. Tania is a former Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and a former member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, Urban Bush Women and Li Chiao-Ping Dance.
For information on repertory programs please contact: taniaisaacdance@earthlink.net
