Lower East Side Performing Arts presents a special avant-premiere with improvisations from the Zendora dance company based on the second act of The Two-Cents Opera, Elodie Lauten’s new semi-autobiographical fantasy about writing an opera where real, surreal and supernatural coexist.

Zendora Dance Company
Marie Baker-Lee
Sasha Suvorkov
Stephanie Schwartz
Nancy Zendora

Since l977 the Zendora Dance Company has been performing original works in New York, nationally and internationally at festivals, theaters, gardens and alternative spaces including the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, La Plaza Cultural, Movement Research at Judson Church, and the Joyce SoHo Danspace Project. Recent performance highlights includedancing in the Gobi desert at The Roaring Hooves Festival in Outer Mongolia, performing in an art deco theater at the 8th Avante Garde Dance Festival in Merida, Mexico, and performing in the Hall of Monstrosities at the Kunstkamera Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2003 the Zendora Dance Company choreographed and performed one of Elodie Lauten’s classic minimalist electronic pieces from the 1980s, The Soundless Sound at Music Under Construction. They have since collaborated informally and improvised together.

Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times called Zendora: “ a choregrapher with a special sense of ritual magic”.

Website: http//zendoradancecompany.com The Zendora Dance Company will perform at Movement Research Judson Monday night series in the spring 2009.

Elodie Lauten’s opera The Death of Don Juan, was reissued on CD by the label Unseen Worlds in summer 2008. Originally composed and released in 1985, it is now listed in Wikipedia as “one of the major postminimalist works of the 80s” and has been hailed as “a long-lost masterpiece of new music” (Other Music), “compelling” (Sequenza21), “fascinating” (Wire UK). Lauten’s opera Waking in New York was listed in Sequenza21 as one of the most influential works of the last three decades. Her Variations on the Orange Cycle for solo piano was included in Chamber Music America’s Best Works of the 20th century list. In January 2008 Lauten’s music was featured in the Classics of Downtown program in Seattle (WA) along with major names in the industry and in September 2008 she participated in the Howl Festival in New York. In March 2009 Lauten’s digital art work, computer animation and drawings will be part of the “Women Forward show at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center. Official website: http://www.elodielauten.net.