2025 world premiere
truce songs Program
THE SPACE AT IRONDALE
our 1 question post-performance survey
Run Time: approximately 70 minutes
Please note there are flashing lights and a few strobing effects throughout the performance.
Conceived and Directed by David Dorfman
Choreography and Text by David Dorfman Dance
Performers Jack Blackmon, David Dorfman, Michaela Ellingson, Lily Gelfand, Kashia Kancey, Nik Owens, Lisa Race, Claudia-Lynn Rightmire
Music Composed and Performed by Sam Crawford, Lizzy de Lise
Song “Dragging” Written and Performed by David Dorfman with Sam Crawford, lyrics here
Musical Direction and Sound Mixing Sam Crawford
Sound Engineer Kiefer Cure
Visual Design Andrew Schneider
Associate Lighting and Visual Designer and Supervisor Peter Leibold
Costume Design Naoko Nagata
Dramaturg Anne Davison
Stage Manager Tarythe Albrecht
Creative Producers Journee Hardaway, Erin Roy
Technical Crew Mohammed “Moqu” Alquadah, Des Amaiya, Kae Lawrence
Scholar-in-Residence Nevin Aiken
Poet-in-Residence Matt Daly
Notable Collaborators Alexander Diaz, Diamond Laurant, Corinne Lohner, Kellie Ann Lynch, Jovick Pavajeau-Orostegui, Myssi Robinson, Francesca Romo, Curtis Thomas, Luke Dakota Zender
Abstract from “Rethinking Resistance as an Act of Improvisation: Lessons from the 1914 Christmas Truce” from Sage Journals written by Nicolás J. B. Wiedemann, Miguel Pina e Cunha, and Stewart R. Clegg; read by Ian Albanese.
This work was commissioned by Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson Hole, WY.
Additional funding provided by Connecticut College, Harkness Foundation for Dance, New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2024-25, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.
The work was researched and created in residence at American Dance Festival, Barnard College, Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Arts, Muhlenberg College, NC State University, LEAP of New Haven, NYU Tisch Summer Residency Program, Rhode Island College, San Jose State University, The Maya Brin Institute for New Performance at the University of Maryland, The Neltje Center for Excellence and Creativity in the Arts, and University of Wyoming.
A note from David:
Welcome.
truce, as a concept, could serve as a beacon of hope. So I decided to make some dances and songs about it. In fact I think of our truce dancing this time around as a collection of songs. A truce is loosely defined as an agreement to pause a dispute for a moment. Maybe two. Longer? Throughout the process of creating our dance the slipperiness of truce has revealed itself. When was the last time you made a truce? Was it with yourself? Another?
Could you adhere to the defined terms or were you clamoring to return consciously, or not, to a place of hostility and rancor? Who, or what, are you yearning to enact one with? Can we link one moment to a next to a next and then another until we’ve redefined truce forever? Let’s do it now!
I, along with DDD, wish to thank Max Cerci, Dom Galiotto, Terri Greiss, Jacqueline Joncas, Kennon Rothchild, Renata Soares, and the entire team at Irondale Center for supporting us in performing truce songs. In addition, we extend thanks to the following people for their guidance and love along truce song’s journey: Emery Amtmann, Owen Burnham, Babs Case, Ethan Chin, Anne Davison, Bella Donatelli, Joanna Futral, Sandy Garcia, Maura Keefe, Kayla Laufner, Haley Lowenthal, Dan Froot and Victoria Marks, Aidan O’Conner, Josh Paquette, Mitchell Rose, Chloe Schlesselman, Beth Venn, Sam Walker, to our donors and Board of Directors and last, but not least, our Interns Extraordinaire: Thy-Lan Alcalay, Mohammed “Moqu” Alquadah, Paulina Bartholomew, Mia Bernstein, Alyssa Bodmer, Cat Evans, Melle Lowenthal, Julia Ramirez, and Andrew Solomon.
Enjoy!
- DD
ABOUT THE COMPANY
David Dorfman Dance
For almost 40 years, David Dorfman Dance has created movement that seeks to de-stigmatize the notion of accessibility and interaction in post-modern dance by embracing audiences with visceral, meaningful dance, music and text. By sustaining a vision to create innovative, inclusive, movement-based performance that is radically humanistic, DDD maintains a core commitment to examine and unearth issues and ideas that enliven, incite, and excite audiences in dialogue and debate about social change and a myriad of other topics. In advocating his mission “to get the whole world dancing,” Dorfman’s work has enjoyed broad and diverse audiences nationally and internationally.
DDD has performed extensively throughout North and South America, the UK, Europe, and Central Asia and regularly performs in NYC at major venues including BAM’s Next Wave Festival, The Joyce, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Harkness Center at 92NY, and The Met Breuer. Highlights from the past summer include performances at Jacob’s Pillow and Bryant Park and a choreographic residency at American Dance Festival. David, the company’s dancers, and artistic collaborators have also been honored with eight NY Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards. DDD celebrates its 17th year as Company-in-Residence at Connecticut College.
DDD’s works include truce songs (World Premiere 2025); (A)Way Out of My Body (2022) examining out of body experiences; and Aroundtown (2017), which paints the varied, unique and sometimes divided notions of love. truce songs and (A)Way Out of My Body feature lighting and visual designs by artist Andrew Schneider. All three of these most recent works have original scores composed and performed by Lizzy de Lise and Sam Crawford. Prior to that, the company created Come, and Back Again (2013); Prophets of Funk (2011), set to the music of Sly and the Family Stone; Disavowal (2009), inspired by radical abolitionist John Brown; underground (2006), inspired by The Weather Underground; Older Testaments (2005), set to music by composer/trumpeter Frank London of The Klezmatics; Lightbulb Theory (2004); Impending Joy (2004); See Level (2003), and more.
Since 1987, DDD has engaged audiences worldwide, with community-based projects playing an important role, starting in the 1990s. In Out of Season (The Athletes Project) and Familiar Movements (The Family Project), the members of the company rehearsed and performed with groups of volunteer athletes or family members selected in the communities to which the company toured. In No Roles Barred, DDD examined the personal roles assumed, formed, and interwoven in our modern social construct, engaging groups ranging from corporate executives and underserved youths to college administrators, doctors, carpenters, and social dance enthusiasts. These three community projects and additional collaborations with Glasswing International and the United States Agency for International Development, have been presented over 30 times in 18 states and numerous international countries. These efforts help DDD promote its mission of Kinetic Diplomacy: the idea that if you’re dancing, you’re not harming another human being.
Artist Bios
David Dorfman (Artistic Director and Founder of David Dorfman Dance, 1987), earned his MFA in dance at Connecticut College in 1981 and then returned as Professor of Dance in 2004. Dorfman received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue his research and choreography in the topics of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissidence, and underground movements. DD has been honored with four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, an American Choreographer's Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard, and a New York Dance & Performance “Bessie” Award. David was a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Dance. His work has been commissioned widely in the U.S. and in Europe, by Dancing Wheels (Cleveland), AXIS Dance Company (Oakland), and Bedlam Dance Company (London).
His forays into theater include choreography for the Tony Award-winning play, Indecent, by Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman, for which DD received a Lucille Lortel Award and Chita Rivera Nomination for best choreography for the play’s Off-Broadway run. David traveled to London in March 2020 to set choreography for Indecent’s UK premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In addition, David has contributed his choreography for Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People at Yale Rep; Our Town, a co-production of Deaf West and Pasadena Playhouse; Assassins at Yale Rep; and the original musical Green Violin at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, for which he won a 2003 Barrymore Award for best choreography.
Dorfman toured an evening of solos and duets, Live Sax Acts, with dear friend and collaborator Dan Froot, most recently in New York City and at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe. As a performer, he toured internationally with Kei Takei's Moving Earth and Susan Marshall & Co. DD hails from Chicago and holds a BS in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis (1977). He appeared on several episodes of A Chance to Dance, a reality show on OvationTV starring Dorfman’s pals, the BalletBoyz who invited David Dorfman Dance to make a three minute video for RandomAct/Channel 4UK. We Don’t Own a Dog came out of that invitation.
DD continually thanks the spirits of Martha Myers and Daniel Nagrin, for being his dance mom and dad; his parents, Oscar and Jeanette, for inspiring him to dance to heal and instilling the importance of a good joke; and his in-house “family project”, Lisa and Samson, for sharing with him the practice of unconditional love.
Jack Blackmon (Company Member) (they/he) was born and raised in the mountains that surround Lake Tahoe, where they received their early dance training. They went on to attend NYU Tisch School of the Arts before working for contemporary choreographers throughout New York City, including Sean Curran, Paul Singh, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Emily Schoen, Nicole Wolcott, among others. They have also toured their choreographic work to Austin Dance Festival, Dance Gallery Festival, WestFest Dance Festival, ChaShaMa Gallery, Arte e Vistas, and the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival. Their immersive theater credits include Punchdrunk NYC’s “Sleep No More,” Company XIV’s “Nutcracker Rouge,” and many nightlife spaces throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. Jack is thrilled to be working with DDD for the premiere of truce songs.
Michaela Ellingson (Guest Artist) is a dancer, choreographer, educator, aspiring poet and outdoor enthusiast. She is from and is currently based in Jackson, Wyoming. She received her BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase and MA from London Contemporary Dance School. She danced with EDge Postgraduate Company and performed work by Itamar Serussi, Robert Clark, Eleesha Drennan and Siobhan Davies. In London she also performed with multi-disciplinary companies Bittersuite and Flavour & Some. She is a member of Contemporary Dance Wyoming and has performed work by Babs Case, Francesca Romo, Gina Patterson, Lauren Edson, Andrea Miller, Robyn Mineko Wiliams and Luke Dakota Zender. She is a guest artist with David Dorfman Dance. She is the Junior Company Director at Dancers' Workshop and teaches Pilates.
Lily Gelfand (Company Member) Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, Lily Gelfand is a Brooklyn based dancer, cellist, and teaching artist. Lily received a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio in 2018. In addition to DDD, Lily has danced with Baye & Asa and Saxyn Dance Works. As a cellist, she has accompanied for dance at The Juilliard School and NYU Tisch as well as performing with Parsons Dance at The Joyce. She has collaborated and composed for/with Jasmine Hearn, Michael Wall, Christina Robson, and the Gibney Company, and has had the pleasure of live-scoring for NPR Radio Diaries. Her favorite color is green.
Kashia Kancey (Company Member) is a Miami-born performer and choreographer, who earned her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts. She has been commissioned by Peter London Global Dance Company, and has had work presented in The Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place and CreateART Performance. Kashia has performed in spaces like Perez Art Museum Miami, South-Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, Dance Place DC, the American Dance Festival, The Yard, and New York Live Arts. She has danced with Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Adele Myers and Dancers, and Abby Z and the New Utility. Kashia was most recently an apprentice with Urban Bush Women and is a company member with David Dorfman Dance. She is based in Brooklyn, NY, and continues to pursue her career as a performer and choreographer.
Nik Owens (Company Member) is from Los Angeles, CA and began his movement experience as a competitive gymnast for 15 years. He began his dance training in his senior year of high school and continued at Wesleyan University, where he received a B.A. in Dance and a certificate in Environmental Studies. He has had the pleasure of studying under Nicholas Leichter, Tania Isaac, Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, The Dance Exchange, and others. He lived in New York City for 11 years where he was a company member/collaborator with and performed works by Raja Kelly/The Feath3r Theory, Bryn Cohn and Artists, Hélène Simoneau Danse, The Bang Group, Kayla Farrish-Decent Structures Arts, Dual Rivet, 10 Hairy Legs, Tiffany Mills Company, Kyle Marshall Choreography, and others. Currently, he collaborates, performs, and teaches with David Dorfman Dance. He has been afforded the opportunity to teach at institutions such as Wesleyan University, Gibney Dance Center, Rivertown Dance Academy, Dancewave, and many others. Between 2021 – 2023, Nik was commissioned to choreograph and perform his 25-minute solo work, The Right Kind, at Rivertown Dance Academy, Wesleyan University, and Arts on Site. He has choreographed other works for Rivertown Dance Academy and The Wooden Floor in California in 2018 (under David Dorfman Dance alongside Kendra Portier). Currently, he is pursuing his MFA at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Lisa Race (Company Member) performed, choreographed and taught in NYC for many years before moving in 2004 to Connecticut, where she is a Professor of Dance at Connecticut College. She danced with David Dorfman Dance from 1989-2000, having received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) in 1995 for her dancing with the company. She then took a pause when her and Dorfman’s son was young before rejoining the company in 2013. While in NYC she also danced with Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig & Co. and Ronald K. Brown. Under the guise of RaceDance, her choreography was seen at the former Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dancenow and MR at the Judson Church while in NYC. She has been fortunate to teach at Bates (ME) and ImPulsTanz (Vienna) Dance Festivals, as well as the American Dance Festival (NC) multiple times, and has given classes and workshops at many locations here in the US and around the globe. Race has collaborated with Shawn Hove on three dance films, which collectively have been screened at the Sans Souci Festival (CO), Dance For Reel, Light Moves Festival of Screendance (Ireland) and Motion State Arts (RI). She most recently collaborated with Hove and Rachel Boggia on a performance project at Connecticut College.
Claudia-Lynn Rightmire (Company Member) is a multidisciplinary artist, creating within mediums of dance, writing, theater, and visual art. Claudia-Lynn holds an Honors summa cum laude BA from Roger Williams University, is a certified health coach, and is currently teaching at Gibney Dance. Claudia is an artist with David Dorfman Dance, Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, and INSPIRIT Dance with Christal Brown, and has worked with NYC Children’s Theater, Third Rail Projects, Kinesis Project, Sarasota Contemporary, and Moving Ethos. She has been a guest artist and educator at many institutions, nationally and internationally. In 2021, she formed cs movement projects, a performance art company, alongside her partner, Simon Thomas-Train. She is driven by storytelling, voice, shadow, and being a new parent.
Designers and Collaborators
Tarythe Albrecht (Stage Manager) graduated from the University of Maryland, summa cum laude in 2010. Since then she has spent her time freelancing in DC (stage managing both in the performing arts and corporate worlds) and trying to keep up with her 12-year-old and twin 4-year-olds (all boys!). Select stage management credits: Lounge Regime: 100 Years of Ambient Music and Of Land and Sea (Kennedy Center); Foolish Fairytales (Faction of Fools); Zaubernacht and Mahagonny: Songspiel at UMD's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, where she has also done Noises Off and many, many dance shows. Tarythe has also worked for Project ChArma, Orange Grove Dance, UpRooted Dance, Dana Tai Soon Burgess, Maida Withers, Howard Community College, Happenstance Theatre, and Round House Theatre, among others.
Sam Crawford (Composer/Musician) completed degrees in English and Audio Engineering at Indiana University in 2003. His compositions and sound designs have included works for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company (Venice Biennale, 2010), A.I.M by Kyle Abraham (Untitled Love, 2022), Camille A. Brown and Dancers (BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, 2016), and David Dorfman Dance (Aroundtown, 2017). La Medea, a live film collaboration with director Yara Travieso for which he composed the music and wrote the libretto, premiered at P.S.122’s Coil Festival in 2017. Crawford is a lecturer in sound design at the University of Maryland's School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.
Peter Leibold VI (Associate Lighting and Visual Designer and Supervisor) is a lighting and projection designer based in New York City. Peter has worked across the country at theatres including The Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Ford’s Theatre Society, Sierra Repertory Theatre, Andy’s Summer Playhouse, The Spoleto Festival, and many more. Peter won the New Hampshire Theatre Alliance award for Best Lighting for his work with Orange Grove Dance at Andy’s Summer Playhouse and was a finalist for Live Design’s Design Achievement Awards, also for his work with Orange Grove Dance. See more of his work at www.peterleibold.com
Lizzy de Lise (Composer/Musician) is an interdisciplinary, gender queer artist who plays with otherworldly textures and tones to invite, envelope, and transport. They compose / perform music for dance, theater, podcast, and film. Lizzy’s work has been featured on NPR’s Invisibilia, at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn, and on PBS. Their Philadelphia-based band, Lizdelise, releases their next record Sept 2023 on Sheer Luck Records. Lizzy currently performs with: David Dorfman Dance; Canadian indie band, Housewife; and Yara Travieso.
Naoko Nagata (Costume Designer) was born and raised in Kobe Japan. She worked as a biochemist before moving to New York in 1991. Since then with no formal training, she has been creating costumes for award-winning choreographers and dancers non-stop (Urban Bush Women, Kyle Abraham, Doug Elkins, Ralph Lemon, amongst many others). Her work with Co-Designer Enver Chakartash for Reggie Wilsons/Fist & Heel’s POWER has been placed in the permanent collection of Jacob’s Pillow. Most recently Naoko and Enver co-designed costumes for Raja Feather Kelly’s play FIRES. She also has just completed costumes for Ralph Lemon’s Ceremonies Out of the Air. Naoko first started creating costumes for David Dorfman in 1998 with In the Company of Men and designed and constructed costumes for DDD’s Subverse, To Lie Tenderly, Seven Deadly Sins (Sloth), SEE LEVEL, Impending Joy and Older Testaments. Naoko enjoys working closely with collaborators and is excited to be working with David Dorfman Dance again on truce songs.
Andrew Schneider (Visual Designer) is mostly interested in how humans telling stories about ourselves to each other can make us better at being humans. And how much the second law of thermodynamics and grief have in common. He is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, dance, sound, video, and installation since 2003. Original work includes: »remains« (2020 - Sasha Waltz & Guests commission); AFTER (2018 – Under the Radar, The Public Theater); YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award, 2016 Drama Desk nom); among others. Upcoming: time-based immersive light / sound installation dealing with grief, loss, and presentness, “N O W I S W H E N W E A R E” (2023 anticipated). www.andrewjs.com
February 8, 2025
David Dorfman Dance at 92NY
Downtown to Uptown. Past to Forward.
DDD returns to 92NY with a performance featuring restaged works, Lightbulb Theory and Impending Joy.
We are honored to celebrate Harkness Dance Center’s 90th anniversary!
DDD Board of Directors
Rudy Nickens, President
Solunis Nicole Bay
David Dorfman
Jillian Foley Cusano
Mitchell Karp
David Kyuman Kim
Kellie Ann Lynch
Celeste Myers
Matt Oldani, Treasurer
Tom Schweizer
Mark Utterback
Karen Waltuck
Chloe Carlson, Emeritus
Paul O'Neil, Emeritus
DDD Staff & Administration
Artistic Director: David Dorfman
Executive Director: Erin Roy
Company Manager: Journee Hardaway
Bookkeeping: Quant Solutions
Exclusive USA Tour Representation:
PENTACLE
Sandy Garcia
sandyg@pentacle.org
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Share your thoughts and experience of truce songs with us by emailing them to info@daviddorfmandance.org.
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