--- Shana Nys Dambrot, Art critic

OK ladies, now let’s get in formation! This brilliant, moving, joyful interdisciplinary collaboration between Doni Silver Simons and Donna Sternberg & Dancers 49 Days: Women Who Count was a perfect success, whether as a visual artist you see your process come to life as a kind of secular prayer circle, or as a dancer you recognize a performance painter’s practice as another articulation of your own vision. Remarkable to be thinking about the spirit, the psyche, the body as working in synchronicity in memory and in society. The room was literally humming. Brava to all involved! So glad I was lucky enough to experience it in person. Thank you.

“I got to see One Song, Many Dances by Donna Sternberg & Dancers – a brilliant idea, and brilliantly executed.  Sternberg commissioned composer Yuval Ron to create a song, and then offered it to four other dance companies as well as her own to create an evening of international texture.  The music itself was filled with multicultural sounds, using instruments from all over the world…The artists took on the cultural flavors of belly dance, traditional African, a blend of Spanish and Mexican, and an Indian temple-style of dance.  To see the wide variety of expressions all set to the same piece of music opened the concept of interpretation into a long hall of mirrors.  The Donna Sternberg company offered the most energetic and powerfully passionate presentation of the theme.  The bodies falling to the stage, the lifts, the rhythms: they were inspirational.”

Donna Sternberg & Dancers…showcased a company of five dancers…their presentation was excellent! With innovative lifts, floor combinations and unique concepts … this company is worth your attention. The finale section went ‘topless’ with the girl’s backs towards the audience for the entire selection. I was captivated by the possibilities from beginning to end. This was a brand new twist of erotica suspense for me…from conception to completion – and this is a bold new creation of beautiful dance choreography.”

“Donna Sternberg has a talent for recognizing the essence of the complexities of life, defining the core of those complexities and putting it into movement.”

“Sternberg’s five dancers are incredible technicians – bullishly strong with sharp, clean lines; but it was their dramatic presence – all five separately and as a cohesive unit – that made them the stellar performers I saw before me. The evening ended with “The Back of Beauty”, a tour de force featuring all four female dancers, four chairs and colored skirts. The dancers were topless; but with their backs to us as they tangoed with their chairs, it became clear that the most intimate body part was the one undulating and writhing before us (Amanda Adams’ tattoos – not to mention back – didn’t hurt). To Lisbeth Scott and Greg Ellis’ pulsating beat, the dancers acted as temptresses, waving this languid body part in front of us like flags and we bulls in a corrida. The piece provided the perfect climax to this electrifying evening, solidifying Donna Sternberg’s talent as a maker of dances as technically stunning as they are dramatically resonant.”