Ground Zero Dance Company

Moment of Flight, choreographed by Rob Petres, opened in Richmond at the Grace Street Theater, February 10-11 and 17-18, 2006 to packed houses and critical acclaim. Originally a co-production of Ground Zero Dance Company and Live Arts, the piece premiered April 1, 2005 at Live Arts Theater in Charlottesville, VA, to SOLD-OUT audiences and STANDING OVATIONS during an 8-day run. Moment of Flight is performed in tandem with Petres’s ever-popular Rope (1999), called “truly excellent” by Cathy Harding of C-ville Weekly and “a blast” by the Philadelphia City Paper. For more information, please contact GZDC Executive Director Lea Marshall at leam@groundzerodance.org or 804-353-9774.

Edited video footage of February, 2006 performance at the Grace Street Theater in Richmond, VA.

Moment of Flight asks performers to imagine that they have a looser relationship with gravity than the rest of us. For most of this 30-minute work, the cast of six runs together in patterns that build in intensity and duration until they take off from the floor and up the walls of the set. The piece is set to an original score composed and performed by cellist Chris Lancaster, with original lighting design by Jay Ryan, and wall designed by Thomas Woltz and Rob Petres. As described in Charlottesville's The Daily Progress, Moment of Flight "soars over real, imagined barriers." The piece is both a fascinating exploration of physics and a celebration of human physical capability.

Rope, originally created as a solo by Petres, has enthralled even more audiences since its 1999 premiere as a trio at Richmond’s Grace Street Theater. Named “Pick of the Day” by the Philadelphia City Paper during the 2000 Philly Fringe Festival, the piece involves three dancers’ descents down three ropes suspended over the stage. The dancers explore the shapes made by the rope’s movement, and the body’s imitation of, or interaction with those shapes. Throughout the work, the ropes act as performers as much as the dancers themselves.

The creation of Moment of Flight was supported by Live Arts Theater, New Balance Virginia, ACAC Fitness Center, the Dreaming Hand Foundation, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts in the form of a 2004 Individual Artist Fellowship in Choreography awarded to Rob Petres. Ongoing support of Moment of Flight comes from Bob Petres and Peggy Duvall, Joseph L. Martin, Thomas Woltz, Joe Marshall, Will Kerner, and Will May. The Richmond premiere of Moment of Flight was supported in part by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

The original cast of Moment of Flight included: Chuck Beretz, Dan Clark, Jaclyn Gerard, Tim Granlund, Sissily Harrell, Michaux Hood, Scott Keith, Laura Lantz, Nicol Leddington, Kathleen Legault, Ian Lorson, Elizabeth Ochs, and Darryl Smith.

If you are interested in helping to fund, or would like more information about Moment of Flight, please email info@groundzerodance.org.