Don't miss Fall Falls with Brian Brooks and Wendy Whelan on January 9 and 13, 2013 during FOCUS Dance at the Joyce Theatre.

They'll be performing on Program B with the Brian Brooks Moving Company.

http://www.focusdance.us/#!focus-dance/vstc18=program-b

Our colleague David Persky captured the team's bliss after the December 3rd's rehearsal.

From left to right: Wendy Whelan, Brian Brooks, Ilter Ibrahimof (producer)

"This is exciting news indeed. Whelan, now in the latter part of her career at NYCB, is one of the most intriguing, soulful dancers around. Watching her, one sees the mental impulse that makes dance into more than a mere physical exercise, as well as the hunger to explore new territory." 

A few words from Marina Harss on Restless Creature, premièring in August at Jacob's Pillow. Read the full article here:

http://marinaharss.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/wendy-whelan-and-dance-theatre-of-harlem-at-jacobs-pillow/

Enjoy a few images of Wendy and Josh, working on their piece together earlier this week. 

Dear All, 

I am writing to let you know how incredibly lucky I feel to be connected and working with each and every one of you. I am so grateful and honored to have such a stellar group of artists, managers and presenters working with me. I am so grateful for your excitement and focus toward this project. What a fantastic feeling of joy filled energy I have already gotten from just the first few months of our process.

My guys... Brian, Alejandro, Josh and Kyle,  I love my time in the studio with each of you. I have such respect and awe for your artistry, and I love the unique chemistries we are each building together !

With this, I wanted to share the title I have chosen for the project. I am simply calling it Restless Creature. I have had the word "creature" in mind for years about this project because I look so forward to CREATE-ing something living and different and crackling with it's own personality, toward morphing myself, the best I can into each of your specific designs without fear or vanity. The word "restless" comes into the title because not only has that word described me to a tee for ALL of my life ( my mom first took me to a dance class at age 3 in hopes of finding an outlet for me ), but more importantly now because my creativity (body and soul) after 28 years as a ballerina is feeling this restlessness,  there is  a deep level of crazy/ beauty yet to be tapped in me :)

 I am ready to jump off the high dive with you into our Restless Creature. 

let the games begin! 

With love and admiration,

Wendy

I Love set of pictures ... It makes me think of how strong I am ! 

It also makes me smile as soon as I see it because Alejandro and I had so much fun playing and coming up with ideas in the studio. We spent 21 hours labor day weekend working together at the Hubbard Street Studios in Chicago. We knew we had only 4 days to get to know each other and figure each other out artistically as much as we could so it was literally a creative crash course which ended up being more fun and invigorating than I could have ever hoped for ... We wound up making a supremely fun little dance,  just a few minutes long,  to get our piece on its path - we have a ton of other material to build on - for what it will eventually become, but to start we made one of the most fun and happiest little dance numbers I've ever experienced. 

- Wendy 

A few words from Wendy on her first day of work with Alejandro Cerrudo in Chicago.

Day 1 ... Got picked up at 9am by this tall, dark stranger at Chicago airport ... He was very shy and took amazing care of me, then he danced with me for 5 hours ..... We ended Day 1 laughing and trying crazy things - talking over ideas and sharing a few life stories ..... 

 New friends and artistic collaborators -

All in all,  it was a pretty awesome day ! 

XO 

Ww