Dzul Dance Presents Reincarnations - Teatro IATI PAM 2012 Festival August 4, 2012

New York nonprofit performing arts institution Teatro IATI presents internationally acclaimed dance and aerial company Dzul Dance to kick off the 2012 Performing Arts Marathon (PAM). The festival opens with the revival of Artistic Director Javier Dzul’s 2007 choreography, Reincarnations, at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue (at 25 Street) in Manhattan, on Friday, August 3rd & Saturday, August 4th at 7:00 pm.
PAM 2012, dedicated to promoting Latin culture and established Latin artists, features 11 cutting-edge performances across a three week span offering the City’s best of dance, music and theater. The festival opens with Dzul Dance’s, Reincarnations, which portrays pre-Hispanic mythology alongside Mexican cultural icons and traditions as a way to explore ideas of destiny and life after death.

Reincarnations is based on two souls that meet and form different relationships over the course of several lifetimes. The choreography fuses dance with aerial arts as a means to communicate indigenous pre-Hispanic and Mexican culture. By transforming bodies into earthbound and airborne forces of nature Dzul creates a bridge between contemporary art and historical heritage while simultaneously illuminating cultural ideals related to life, death and rebirth.

Dzul highlights Ih Can Cavil, the Mayan guardian of souls, and illustrates the Mayan celestial plane and the descent of the souls to earth using innovative aerial dance. Mexican icons such as Emiliano Zapata, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are used as catalysts to explore the traditional Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) and ‘la Catrina’, the Mexican personification of death.

The choreography features performances by Artistic Director Javier Dzul along with Dzul Dance company members Kyla Ernst-Alper, Ji Hyeun Bang, Chellamar Bernard, Cornelius Brown, Robin Taylor Dzul, Yoo Sik Kim, Courtney Jackson, Nicole Lichau, Orlando Martinez, Steven Melendez and Naomi Relnick. Original score by Guatemalan composer and musician Sergio Reyes, lighting design by Mike Inwood and costume design by Javier Dzul, brings the magic of pre-Hispanic and Mexican culture to life.

Tickets are $30 online and $35 at the door. Tickets for seniors and students are $28 online and $35 at the theater door. Tickets may be purchased online at www.teatroiati.org, or call (212) 505-6757.