Nuts! at Dance Theater Workshop, December, 1989:
Choreographed by Stephan Koplowitz
Music: excerpts from the The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky
Performers: Anthony Castro, Tyler Maroney, Hillary Green, Chuck Salloum, William Turner (at the time, High School students attending the Packer Collegiate Institute)
Special thanks to Samantha Ross for her creative contributions
Nuts!
(1989)
Nuts! was especially commissioned by DTW's FIRST LIGHT project through the Fund of Dom Ruinart.
Backstory:
Nuts! was part of what became a series of works I created that featured young performers in works that spoke to specific themes of youth. My life, at the time as dance faculty at the Packer Collegiate Institute (Brooklyn Heights) had inspired previous works (I'm Growing (1985), Untitled (Ethopian Suite, 1986)To My Anatomy (1987). My interest in working with young dancers and intergenerational casts continued into the 1990's.
"Where will he (Koplowitz) go from here? one wonders after each new performance of his theater-dances. And then he does himself one better, mining the same vein in deeper and more poignantly funny ways.
Mr. Koplowitz did just that on Sunday afternoon in a program at Dance Theater Workshop...his subjects ranged from agreeable silliness about boy-girl flirtations to excerpts from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" to sexuality, death and how life turns us into less than the best selves we were as children.......he uses trained and amateur performers and gives them not just movement but often quite complex texts to speak and sing..."
Jennifer Dunning- New York Times- December 6, 1989
Nuts! Photos by Tom Brazil - 1989
