REDCAT: The fifth annual NOW Festival encourages risk and invention to foster new dance, theater, music and hybrid performance works from artists throughout Los Angeles. For three weeks beginning in July, REDCAT launches innovative and interdisciplinary projects that bend traditions and investigate new visions of work for the stage.

Holly Johnston: Politics of Intimacy
Johnston’s uniquely powerful movement style--built on muscle and risk and visceral thrill--prompted Dance Magazine to name her one of “25 to Watch” just last year. In Politics of Intimacy, the four dancers of Ledges and Bones Dance Project deliver rapid-fire responses and pure dynamic force as they move in and out of contact, exploring closeness, safety and trust in an intricate dance accompanied by an original score by Joseph Harvey, Julie Pusch and Peter Volk.

“Powerful limbs and endless passion.” Dance Magazine

Poor Dog Group: Hey. Hey, man. Hey.
Wild and humorous and nearly chaotic, the work of this young performance collective tramples theatrical expectations to reveal a surprising emotional honesty at the core of its absurdist antics. In Hey. Hey, man. Hey, Poor Dog Group greets its fast-growing cult following with a staged “introduction” that works through biographical monologue and spastic variety show to create a deadpan reflection on the banality of labor.

Lionel Popkin: Your Hand / My Mouth
Awkward and compelling physical explorations are the inspiration for Your Hand/My Mouth, an extended duet that invites a close look at the implications of seemingly trivial constraints. Set to an original score by Robert Een and performed by Lionel Popkin and Noellie Bordelet, the dance uses self-imposed restraint and literal interconnection to complicate the movements of two masterful dancers, revealing the uncomfortable moments of choice that surround a shifting state of freedom.

“Turns critical analysis into kinesthetic movement.” The Bulletin, Philadelphia

See: http://redcat.org/season/0708/dan/now2.php ($)

See the complete 2008 NOW Festival schedule: http://redcat.org/season/0708/dan/now.php