The Photographer

Nir Arieli was born in Israel and now is based in New York, NY. With a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and a background as a photographer for the Israeli military, he is now a portrait artist working closely with dancers. Nir is an admirer of beauty and gentleness, these qualities are the heart of his work. Visit Nir's website here!

The Photo Shoot

We wanted to shoot the promotional material for "You'll Never Be Alone" in a way that was fitting for the show. This proved to be a challenge since the dance is not choreographed, the set is not built, the costumes are not made, and the story is not clear yet. So what do we have to work with? A time. Since we know "You'll Never Be Alone" is an ode to the destruction of silent film we have a clear time period that we are working in. With a time comes a fashion and with a fashion comes a personality.

For the shoot itself we worked on the idea of, what we coined, "one liners".

One liner- Noun: A catchphrase or quick exclamatory thought that derives a clear emotion, action, or intention. For instance: 

                     "Oh, hey there!"        "I've got it!"      "No! Please don't!"

We would start with the initial reaction of the one liner and then intensify it until a point of sheer ridiculousness. We found that typically the ridiculous reactions were the photos that read with glamour and drama that we needed to create a silent film poster.

                           Good                       Better                         Best

We shot primarily in solos but played a bit with some group stuff playing with a three stooges idea. We noticed that in our inspiration photos (thanks to google image) typically there was a mix of emotions; One person was interested while the other was disinterested, or one person was happy and the other is terrified. 

The Photos

The goal is to create a movie poster with the idea of possibly hinting at a multiple personality disorder.

Buy tickets for the world premiere of "You'll Never Be Alone" on June 29th at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in NYC at LungeDance.com

It's a girl!

A Show Is Born!

Pop the cork and fill the glasses to the rim! We have a name for the 2012 New Creation! From this point on instead of referring to this new work as the very ominous "2012 New Creation" it will be known as it's actual name, "You'll Never Be Alone". After much deliberation I have decided to title this New Creation the same as the work it is based off of. The former "You'll Never Be Alone" was only a character study for what is to become the New Creation version of "You'll Never Be Alone", a work that is to explore the ideas of technology dissolving our relationship and the ever looming factors of temptation, all while being in the theme of silent film. The former work will now be called "A Study of Character" and will be a shortened playful version of the full work. I know it's a bit confusing, but what's art if it makes sense?!?

That's not all!

Not only is the title of the show confirmed, but so are the dates that all of you fantastic people can view it! "You'll Never Be Alone" will premier at the Ailey Citigroup Theater on June 29th at 8:30 pm. Ticket information is soon to come and will be posted everywhere including here, our Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as on our official website. I am very excited to be announcing that this isn't all we are doing! We will also be presenting an excerpt of "You'll Never Be Alone" at the Roseland Ballroom in Times Square on July 26-28 and at the Boulder Fringe Festival August 10-26. Specific show times and ticket information for all of this is to come at a later date! 

 Just as a little teaser I have put together a rather fitting preview of "You'll Never Be Alone" in it's proper style announcing the New Creations title as well as the Premier date and time. Please feel free to share!!i

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Fitted for the 40's!

Welcome to the team...

Every new work is more than just choreography, the success of the project largely depends on the coordination of all of the collaborating artists. Costuming is one of the most effective ways to transport an audience into a time period. As our entire New Creation is set in the 1930's-1940's I felt it was necessary to bring in a Costume Designer with a lot of experience in creating characters. This leads me to introducing Marion Talan! Marion is an incredible designer who I met when I attended The Juilliard School, where she currently works designing costumes for dance, opera, and theater. She has worked on many interesting projects as well as with the Merce Cunningham Company. I am very excited to be sharing this project with Marion and her amazing talents.

Playing Dress Up

One of the first steps other than fitting the dancers, was for Marion to throw some dresses on one of our dancers and discuss with me which of the cuts and shapes we like the best. We went into the Juilliard stock and played drew up for a while. Shelby was loving being put into all of the dresses. Not all of them were fit for her obviously, but we were looking still to see patterns and types of dresses. Tell us your thoughts in the comments below! Which one is your favorite? Here are the results: 

(excuse the poor picture quality from my phone)