Arts Council Grants Choreographer A Dance Invasion of NYC Subway

NEW YORK - Feb. 16, 2015 - PRLog -- Brooklyn Arts Council awarded a Community Arts Fund grant to choreographer Jamie Benson for his dance take-over of the New York Transit Museum (Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY 11201) on April 1, 2015 at 6:30pm. Benson will receive $1700 dollars to cover the cost of rehearsal space, costuming, props and to pay participants a small honorarium.

Real People, Real Stories: Benson recruited people of all shapes, ages and experience levels to perform choreography adapted from real life transit stories collected from the general public. New recruits will dance with Benson's inclusive dance collective, The Shakedown, and perform on the Museum's platform and inside the historic subway cars. The work will touch base on man-spreading, public drunkenness, mobile tech, gross things on the floor and more.

Benson calls the piece “both a love letter and shaking fist to one of the most dynamic cities on earth.”

Fun Fact: Last year, the Shakedown’s planned guerrilla take-over of the NYC subway system was shut down by the MTA (http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140225/chinatown/mta-sh...) for being too dangerous. (Understandably so, we WERE being a little mischeivous)

Jamie Benson, proclaimed as “one of the strongest, hottest contemporary dancers of his generation" by LA Times’ Lewis Segal, is a New York-based dancer, choreographer and Alumnus of Cornish College of Art. Called "Chaplin-like” by Backstage West, Benson has performed in LATC’s Shag with a Twist, the film Rent, McDonald's Mario commercial, TV show Dance360 and Rudy Perez Ensemble. Described as “insightful and irreverent” by LA Weekly’s Ann Haskins, Benson's lowbrow-meets-highbrow choreographic work (http://www.jamiebenson.com/repertory/) has been presented at the Luckman Complex, Highways, Bootleg Theater, New York Transit Museum, Triskelion and Dixon Place. His work has been featured in the NY and LA Times as well as the Phaidon Press book Wild Art. His short films were official selections of the 2014 Cinedans Film Festival and 2015 Athens Video Dance Project in Greece. Learn more at jamiebenson.com.

BAC Community Arts Grants help fund project-based work by individual artists. Grants are made possible through the support of the New York Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Governor Cuomo, New York Legislature, New York Arts Development Fund, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), NYC Council, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. BAC supports artists and cultural groups, reaching hundreds of thousands of artists and audience members each year through music, dance, film and visual arts programs, web-based directories, arts education and initiatives, and artists services.