The Sarah & Whitney Show
August 16, 2018
Celebrating effort, excess, risk, and gigantic messes, The Sarah & Whitney Show is devoted to all things FUN! Choreographers Sarah Weber Gallo and Whitney Jacobs invite audiences to Mile Square Theatre for three evenings of free-range dance in celebration of our collective need to seek pleasure, companionship, debauchery, and laughter.
Jacobs Dance Collective will debut their new work You're Full of Air, which features performers Whitney Jacobs, Adrienne Misko, and Lauren Slivosky.
August 16-18, 2018
@ 8pm
Mile Square Theatre
Hoboken, NJ
Jacobs Dance Collective at Brooklyn Ballet's 2016 First Look
A Collaborative Diptych
Premiered June 2-4, 2016 - 7:30pm
Good Shepherd - Faith Presbyterian Church
Presented by Music & More
About The Works
You're Full of Air
You're Full of Air is rooted in the movements of air dancers, also known as the delightful blow up creatures often displayed outside a used car lot. Three air dancers are incorporated in the piece, and inspired the particular quality of movements and breath seen throughout the work. The dance aims to be light-hearted and fun as the performers move in tandem with the air dancers, and careen through layers of excess, effort, risk, messiness, and laughter.
However, underneath the mishaps and debauchery, You're Full of Air is really about empathy, and embodying the movements and experiences of another to gain a greater appreciation for their reality and our collective world.
The piece was conceived by Whitney Jacobs, and collaboratively choreographed by performers Whitney Jacobs, Adrienne Misko, and Lauren Slivosky. The work debuts as part of The Sarah and Whitney Show, August 16-18, 2018 at The Mile Square Theater in Hoboken, NJ.
No Realists Allowed
No Realists Allowed explores the extremities of optimism and pessimism, and the duality of circumstance versus perspective within individual thought and relationship dynamics.
Inspired by M.C. Escher’s 1944 lithograph Encounter, the choreography translates Escher’s use of tessellations, or repetitive interlocking patterns of shapes, circular cycles of events, and push and pull subtleties.
The dance suggests one perceives a circumstance in primarily a negative or positive viewpoint, i.e. stable vs. unstable, global vs. local, or internal vs. external. As the piece unfolds, we come to see that one is not primarily a pessimist or an optimist, but that one is constantly shifting their thought in a single experience.
Through writings and discussions with the dancers, the movements developed as a result of the emotional context. Performed as a duet, dancers Lauren Serrano and Erika Marte reveal their vulnerability and strength in their electric performances. Set to the original composition titled Dark and Light Adagios, by Ionel Petroi, No Realist Allowed seeks to uncover the triggers that dictate one’s frame of mind.
It's Not A Competition
It’s Not A Competition first premiered at the 14th Street Y Theater in December 2013. The catalyst for the piece was derived from Jacobs’ desire to explore comedy in dance and female competitiveness in relation to her own competitive nature. The choreographic structure is designed to build emotional tension through relationship development and kinesthetic experiences, and then sever that tension through various comedic approaches.
Inspired by the comedic stylings of Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, Jacobs researched the two actors methods, one of being the clown and one of provoking the clown, as well as various types of laughs as defined by John Wright’s book, Why is That So Funny?: A Practical Guide to Physical Comedy.
The all female cast of five performers experience competitiveness through periods of exclusivity, improvised games, and attempts (and often failures) to maintain one’s composure. The dance is set in a series of vignettes, each one marking a different expression of female competiveness.
It’s Not a Competition was the first collaborative effort between composer Ionel Petroi and choreographer Whitney Jacobs. Petroi’s light and elusive score, Dancing Sounds, combines live piano performed onstage by Petroi, and pre-recorded electronic tracks. Petroi’s masterful performance remains intrinsic to the work, and is evident in the subtle exchanges between him and the performers on stage.
