Wendy Osserman Dance Company Celebrates 50th Anniversary with World Premiere of ECHO GLASS

Wendy Osserman Dance Company presents the World Premiere of ECHO GLASS on February 5–7 at 7:30PM at Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY. Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased online at https://ci.ovationtix.com/2742/production/1258698?performanceId=11726817.

Echo Glass was developed through an ongoing collaboration between composer Concetta Abbate and Wendy Osserman Dance Company and is presented on the occasion of the company’s 50th anniversary. Choreographed by Osserman in collaboration with dancers Cori Kresge and Hui Wang Zhang, the work brings movement and live music into close, reciprocal relation, with each shaping the structure, timing, and texture of the other.

ECHO GLASS is part of Danspace Project's "Off-Season" series.

“Osserman has been making eccentric and original work since the nineteen-seventies.”

- The New Yorker

The live score, composed and performed by Abbate with vocalists Jimmy Kraft, Judette Elliston, and Damon Hankoff, draws inspiration from echolocation techniques and from the ways partially sighted individuals experience the world through hearing and vibrational touch as primary senses. The music explores sound as a spatial and perceptual force—resonating through bodies, architecture, and atmosphere—and operates not as accompaniment but as an active presence within the performance.

Together, dance and music in Echo Glass invite audiences to listen with their bodies, feel movement as resonance, and consider alternative ways of perceiving space, relationship, and presence—marking a 50-year commitment to experimentation, collaboration, and embodied inquiry.

The event is part of a larger celebration of 50 years of the Wendy Osserman Dance Company. Wendy Osserman Dance Company has been presented since 1976 in dance venues including 92nd Street Y, DanceNow Joe’s Pub, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Dixon Place, Dance Theater Workshop, Joyce SoHo, Symphony Space, La MaMa, and Theater for the New City. WODC has toured nationally and internationally, performing and teaching in colleges, schools, and festivals. The choreography explores the many sides of our personalities and relationships. The Company values its collaborations with musicians and composers, including Iva Bittová, Skip La Plante, Harry Mann, Victor Lewis, and Concetta Abbate, as well as visual artists, including Illya Azaroff, Charles Hinman, Sarah Olson, Ken Laser, and Sanya Kantarovsky.

Influenced by her experience working with Kei Takei’s Moving Earth in the 1970s, Osserman enjoys finding tasks for herself and the dancers that border on the impossible—such as trying to touch while not wanting to be touched, and the reverse. The attempt generates movement that is both authentic and metaphorical. Osserman conveys her struggle to comprehend current events and history with drama and humor, confusing the personal with the political.

Mission Statement

“To collaborate with artists of all media on the creation of performances and workshops for all ages. We seek to develop new languages and forms and to utilize alternative spaces for performance. The choreography explores the many sides of our personalities and relationships including our relationship to the larger world.”

Wendy Osserman Dance Company is a federally recognized 501c.3 Non-profit organization.

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Host or Publisher Lilli Stein