Asia Society NYC upper east side things to do

Check It Dance Festival

5th Annual Dance Festival Moves To The Waterfront

July 20, 2015 / Upper West Side UWS Neighborhood & Midtown Manhattan Neighborhood / Manhattan Dance / Manhattan Buzz NYC.

Last year I stumbled upon the Check It Dance Festival on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The festival was performed at Summit Rock in Central Park. Summit Rock is hidden behind the greenery that one encounters when entering Central Park at West 82nd Street and Central Park West.

It was an idyllic location for the festival and both the dancers and the audience were surrounded by nature, surrounded by the dense concrete urban jungle. I sat for a while and enjoyed the performances which were a mix of aesthetic human form and beauty, and storytelling.

Click here to read the rest of our story about the Check It Dance Festival Manhattan.

Check It Dance Festival

5th Annual Dance Festival Moves To The Waterfront

July 20, 2015 / Upper West Side UWS Neighborhood & Midtown Manhattan Neighborhood / Manhattan Dance / Manhattan Buzz NYC. Continued.

This year the Check It Dance Festival moved south to Solar One along the East River, just east of Stuyvesant Town. The cool openess of the East River helps mitigate the heat, which on Sunday was in the low 90's. The festival check it dance festival nyc manhattan included pieces created by eleven choreographers and in which over 40 dancers performed.

This year they held the performance on Sunday due to inclement weather earlier on Saturday, as there were predictions of more inclement weather to come. Since its inception, the Check It Dance Festival has showcased local dancers and choreographers, as well as visiting choreographers from the Netherlands and Dominican Republic.

I had an opportunity to speak with Allison Brzezinski, Founder and Artistic Director of Check It Dance Company. Allison is originally from Connecticut and holds a degree in both dance and theatre from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Shortly after she arrived in New York City, Allison set out to form Check It Out Dance Company and only a year later, she organized the first Check It Dance Festival at Summit Rock on the Upper West Side. She told me that the mission of Check It Dance Company and the Check It Dance Festival was to:

"... crack the stereotypical infrastructure of how women are seen in society today, by creating new works that seek to empower women ..."

One of the premier choreographed works that have come from Check It Dance is entitled, Is My Body?. Allison told me that this work is about taking care of a woman's body in a healthy way, instead of trying to attain the ideal of female beauty that is depicted in the media but that doesn't exist in reality. The work was a collaboration between Allison & Kendra Dushac who performed it at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland; as well as at several locations in the NYC metropolitan area.

The photo to your right shows the Check It Dance Festival at Solar One along the East River in Manhattan in 2015. The photo was taken by Allison Brzezinski.

To learn more about Check It Dance and future events, visit their website at www.checkitdance.com [cut & paste into your browser].

$element(adman,groupad,Catgry ManWmn)$

$element(adman,groupad,NhoodUWS)$