JANE COMFORT: 40TH ANNIVERSARY RETROSPECTIVE
Jane Comfort and Company celebrated its 40th anniversary with a retrospective concert in April 2018. Over 23 former and current company members performed excerpts of seminal works ranging from 1978 to 2018, including the gender and race reversed Clarence Thomas hearings from S/He, scenes from the Bessie award winning Underground River, ‘The Glass Menagerie”-based Faith Healing, the spoken word opera Asphalt, created with Carl Hancock Rux and Toshi Reagon, among many others.
Jane Comfort and Company’s 40th Anniversary Retrospective premiered April 5, 2018 at La MaMa E.T.C. | Presented in association with Lumberyard
The piece received the 2018 BESSIE Award for Outstanding Revival
Artistic Director: Jane Comfort
Lighting Design: Joe Levasseur
Video Design: Lianne Arnold
Documentary Video: Alexandra Nikolchev
Costume Design: Liz Prince
Cast:
Jane Comfort (1978 – present)
Nancy Alfaro (1985 – 1996)
Auchee Lee (1982-1985)
Mark Dendy (1989 – 1994; 2010-2011)
David Neumann (1991 – 1994)
Christina Redd Johnson (1994-1997)
Edisa Weeks (1994-1997)
Stephanie McKay (1995 – 2002)
Stephen Nunley (1995-2004)
Cynthia Svigals (1997-2005)
Julius Hollingsworth (2000-2003)
Peter Sciscioli (2004 – 2011)
Darrin Wright (2004-present)
Leslie Cuyjet (2005 – present)
Ellen Smith (2006 – 2015)
Sean Donovan (2006 – present)
Heather Christian (2009 – 2011)
Petra van Noort (2011 – present)
Javier Perez (2013 – present)
Gabrielle Revlock (2014-present)
Paul Hamilton (2015 – present)
Cori Marquis (2015 – present)
Brandon Washington (2018)
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“Jane Comfort and Company’s 40th Anniversary Retrospective demonstrated how the
choreographer’s work engages with audiences, while proving its wide-range and resistance to
definition.”
—Susan Yung, THE BROOKLYN RAIL (2018)
“As relevant as ever, S/He recasts the genders and races of the protagonists and antagonists of
Anita Hill’s testimony during Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings. The brutal interrogation of
Hill (Sean Donovan, who ends naked in a pile of pale limbs and crushed objectives) by Black
women playing white male senators seems even more harrowing in the deluge of #MeToo stories.”
—Erin Bomboy, The Dance Enthusiast (2018)
“Few of Comfort’s peers who are into dance drama have her gift for melding singing, vocalizing, speech and movement into an inseparable whole…Words, music and movement seethe together; united, their rhythms whirl the morsels of meaning into life stories.”
—Deborah Jowitt, THE VILLAGE VOICE (2011)
“As a choreographer and performer, Miss Comfort comes from the generation for whom “process” or the organizing principle of a dance is its material. She has taken life processes here, however, and made of them engaging dance.”
—Jennifer Dunning, THE NEW YORK TIMES (1980)
“I couldn’t help but remember Jane Comfort’s film about her pregnancy. She did a short phrase each month, at two weeks and at nine months after the birth of her son—a wild solo, full of tricky balances and weight shifts, done in leotards and sweat pants. There she was, all that flesh in close tight shots, moving at you, defiling our image of dancer as slight, virginal, and androgynous. A travesty, and like drag it provoked discomfort—no it provoked fear: of the omnipotent, engulfing mommy each of us had, of being subsumed by her flesh and affection, of losing our selves within her. There she was, a woman of abundant proportions and superabundant power, and Comfort was damn well ready to throw her weight around. Needless to say, the men squirmed and tittered the most…"
—Marcia Pally, IN STEP (1981)
“The guiding spirits behind the theater of mixed forms are often choreographers. Theatrical directors may not be able to choreograph, but a dance-trained artist is used to conceiving the integration of movement with rhythm: the rhythm of music and even words, spoken or sung. That is what Jane Comfort, one of the most fertile minds in this genre, has realized so effectively.”
—Anna Kisselgoff, THE NEW YORK TIMES (2000)
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