At 8:30 pm on August 16th & 17th, 2024, Highways Performance Space presents “Closer To…HYSTERIA,” a split bill program featuring new works by Dani Burd and Leah Zeiger. Burd is the artistic director of the newly founded Indigo Dance Company and Zeiger is a dancer, choreographer, activist, and the creator of the Body Memory Method. Tickets are on sale now HERE. https://www.highwaysperformance.org
The program opens with Closer To choreographed and directed by Dani Burd and marks the debut of Indigo Dance Company. According to the press release, Closer To challenges our notions of escapism as a form of running from and considers the very human impulse to search for a way to bring us closer to our life source.” This is followed by Leah Zeiger’s most recent work, HYSTERIA “exposing the maddening, crazy-making experience of being in an abusive relationship and being forced to re-experience that dynamic in the context of daily life as a woman living in a patriarchal society.”
Dani Burd has choreographed for dance and film. She performed with Geometry Dance Company, Diag0nal Studios Duomo, Marjani Forte Saunders, Tristian Eckerson, Rebecca Lemme, and Keith Johnson. Burd’s choreography has been commissioned by Robot Koch, A.I.R. Gallery Performance Arts Resident 2023, Insomniac Events, Tristian Eckerson, and others.
“Closer To” by Dani Burd – Photo by Madison Stonefield.
Closer To is described as a multimedia performance that follows “ individual movers’ as they traverse their experiences, battles, breakdowns with, and ultimate surrender to, escapism. Regardless of our chosen form of escapism, our society views these attempts as feeble endeavors to run farther from life.” The work was choreographed by Dani Burd and Indigo Dance Company Movement Collaborators Erika “Rik” Soto, Kaelie Osorio, Madi Thomas, Melissa Valenzuela, and Savanna Rae Gonzalez. The music for Closer To is by various artists.
Based in Los Angeles, Leah Zeiger is the founder of The Sunflower Project and her powerful and very personal work You Live In My Spine was presented on Dance at the Odyssey. Her Body Memory Method honors and investigates the body’s knowledge through movement. Her work is often inspired by her lived experience as a survivor of a teenage abusive relationship.
“HYSTERIA” by Leah Zeiger – Photo by Celia Zeiger.
Zeiger’s HYSTERIA, with performances and additional choreography by Katey Besser, Maggie Canady, and Felicia St. Cyr was set to an original score composed by Max Berlin and Adam Schwartz. She explains that it explores “both women’s relationship to anger and the fear that much of the world (women included) hold towards women’s bodies.”
Both dance artists offer very unique and powerful choreography that focuses on all too real human experiences and emotions.
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WHAT: Highways Performance Space presents “Closer To…HYSTERIA”
WHO: New works by Dani Burd and Leah Zeiger
WHEN: August 16th & 17th, 2024 at 8:30 PM.
WHERE: Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404.
TICKETS: $30 General; $20 Student/Senior; $40 Pay-It-Forward.
For more information about Highways Performance Space and to purchase tickets, please visit their website.
For more information about Dani Burd, please visit her website.
For more information about Leah Zeiger, please visit her website.
Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Closer To by Dani Burd – Photo by Madison Stonefield
