New York University: Gallatin School of Individualized Study Tisch School of the Arts

NYU will host “The Alchemy and Effort of Restaging Dance,” a virtual symposium that will explore the many facets of bringing a past performance to the contemporary stage.


Stephen Petronio Company dancers Davalois Fearon and Nicholas Sciscione in “If the Dancer Dances”.
New York University will host “The Alchemy and Effort of Restaging Dance,” a virtual symposium in March that will explore the many facets of bringing a past performance to the contemporary stage.

The symposium, to be held March 5, 6, 12, and 13, will address restaging from the perspectives of choreographers, stagers, and dancers working in a broad spectrum of genres.

“In any comprehensive restaging, a dance work has the possibility to exist squarely in the present and, at the same time, offer audiences a unique perspective on a choreographer’s past,” explains Lise Friedman, a professor at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and co-producer of If the Dancer Dances, a documentary on the restaging of Merce Cunningham’s iconic RainForest (1968).

Symposium panel topics will address restaging works of choreographers from the past versus the present; the responsibility of inheriting a piece or a particular role; the economics and legalities of setting a work; and methods of imparting the technique, vocabulary, and style underlying a choreographer’s vision and company culture.

The symposium will also include a screening of If the Dancer Dances and performances by renowned dancers of various works that have been successfully restaged.

The event is organized by Friedman, along with Gallatin Professor Julie Malnig, a historian of theater and dance performance and author of Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dance (NYU Press), Seán Curran, chair and professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts whose performances as a choreographer and a director range from As You Like It to Nixon in China, and Patricia Beaman, an instructor at Wesleyan University and the Tisch School of the Arts who is the author of World Dance Cultures: From Ritual to Spectacle.

An RSVP required at the symposium’s website. For more information, please call 917.916.5080.

For an image, please visit the photo page (caption: Stephen Petronio Company dancers Davalois Fearon and Nicholas Sciscione in If the Dancer Dances).

The Alchemy and Effort of Restaging Dance is hosted by NYU’s Gallatin School and Wesleyan University’s Arts and Humanities Division, Wesleyan’s Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and Wesleyan Dance and co-sponsored by GIBNEY, NYU Institute of Performing Arts, NYU Tisch Department of Performance Studies, Tisch Open Arts Program, the Dance Education Program at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.