LABA: Laboratory for Jewish Culture and Mystical Feet Company present

The Mar Vista, a dance/theater work written and choreographed by Yehuda Hyman in collaboration with the Mystical Feet Company (Ron Kagan, Dwight Kelly, Ryan Pater, Ezra Lowrey, Amanda Schussel and Hyman) at The Theater at the 14^th Street Y, 344 E. 14^th Street, from December 1-18, 2016. Performance schedule: Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $18 in advance or $22.50 at the door. Tickets are available at 646-395-4310 or www.14streety.org.

The Mar Vista is a comical and heartbreaking new dance/theater work by award-winning Brooklyn-based theater artist Yehuda Hyman and his Mystical Feet Company. A cast of six performs this unusual Jewish family saga spanning 90 years - a forbidden and passionate WWII romance, the mysteries of Istanbul, a 1960s family of immigrants on the West Side of L.A., gypsy dances, pop songs and water ballets, and above all the enduring memory of lost love.

“Mar Vista” is Spanish for “view of the sea.” It is also the name of the Los Angeles neighborhood where Hyman grew up, a working class area on the Westside that had a high population of World War II and Korean War veterans and their families, many of whom bought their homes with the help of GI loans. The neighborhood’s name held within it a promise of views of the Pacific Ocean for all.  Unfortunately, the Hyman’s small house was at the bottom of a big hill, which blocked his family’s view. In this lyrical and quirky new work, Hyman attempts to climb that hill and witness the distant sea.

Elizabeth Zimmer of The Village Voice said, "Hyman weaves the episodic work together with intensely physical storytelling, flinging his compact form about like a genie loosed from a magic lamp. Laced with music and dancing, the two-hour piece transports you across continents and a century to a deep, lyrical understanding of the making of an artist."*