Announcing SOAK: A torrent of AcTS and Training molded by LEIMAY at CAVE
Company:
LEIMAY at CAVE
© M. Tsukada
AT CAVE home of LEIMAY
LEIMAY PROUDLY PRESENTS SOAK 2014
A festival presenting a torrent of acts and workshops in theater, butoh, dance, and performance art
WORKS BY INTERNATIONAL BUTOH MASTERS, LOCAL VOICE & PHYSICAL PERFORMERS, LEIMAY ENSEMBLE MEMBERS, AND THE AMAZING LEIMAY FELLOWS
12 EVENINGS OF PERFORMANCES:
9 WORKSHOP OPPORTUNITIES (LEIMAY Ludus Training)
1 CLOSING CELEBRATION AND BLOCK PARTY MAY 21 JUNE 29
at CAVE home of LEIMAY
(58 Grand Street, Brooklyn)
KO MUROBUSHI | MARIO BIAGINI
TERRA INCOGNITA THEATER | KOTA YAMAZAKI
MINA NISHIMURA | MOENO WAKAMATSU | XIMENA GARNICA ELKE LUYTEN & KIRA ALKER | MAXIMILIAN BALDUZZI
RACOCO PRODUCTIONS | MICHAEL BODEL | SUSAN MAR LANDAU JULIA CROCKETT | REBECCA BROOKS | CARLYE ECKERT
ANABELLA LENZU/DANCE DRAMA | SOPHIA TREANOR | JEREMY GOREN KIKA ESPEJO | ANGELI | ANDREA JONES | MASANORI ASAHARA
SOAK is a festival presenting a torrent of acts and workshops in theater, butoh, dance, and performance art every spring over four weeks in May and June. SOAK is molded by LEIMAY, the interdisciplinary ensemble and producing organization behind the acclaimed New York Butoh Festival. SOAK takes place at LEIMAY’s home, CAVE, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
SOAK broadens the perceptions of our artists and audiences with work that is experimental, rigorous, and thoughtprovoking. The festival showcases finished and inprogress work by international, local and resident artists and blends them together in a concoction that inspires audiences, fuels the artists, and stimulates the community surrounding LEIMAY’s activities.
SOAK takes place starting May 21th and ends on June 29th with a closing celebration block party coinciding with the citywide festival of Make Music New York. Visit www.leimay.org for details.
PERFORMANCES:
Butoh Performance: Ko Murobushi // butoh improvisation
June 3rd, 8pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY
58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Ko Murobushi is one of the best known and acclaimed butoh artists in the world and is recognised in Japan as a leading inheritor of Hijikata's original vision of butoh. He studied with Hijikata in 1968, briefly 'giving up' dance to become a "Yamabushi" mountain monk. Upon reentering society, his pioneering vision led to the creation of: butoh troupe Dairakudakan together with Ushio Amagatsu, Akaji Maro, and othersI¾ a female butoh company, Ariadone with Carlotta Ikeda, and two years later a similar male only Butohgroup: Sebi. He continues to teach and tour internationally to this day.
LEIMAY Fellows Showcase: Rebecca Brooks, Carlye Eckert, Julia Crocket
June 6th, 8pm + June 7th, 6pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY
58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Rebecca Brooks: an actual dance
an actual dance asks the question, what happens after what happened before? add third person xxxxx
Carlye Eckert: Untitled
In Untitled, Carlye Eckert collaborates with her mother on a piece traversing time, memory, and experience. My mother says that since moving into the last third of her life, she is no longer thinking about the future. She looks back on the life she built and the path she paved for her family. As her 28 yearold daughter, I am thinking about the futureI¾ what it will bring and how I will shape it. We look at each other, I look forward and my mother looks backward. In between us is a lifeline of memories, hopes, experiences, and the inevitability of time.
Julia Crocket: KID
KID began primarily as an exploration of imitation and the way imitation generates personal identity. What happens between two people or within oneself when the boundaries between feelings dissolve? For Crockett and collaborator Colin Self, the result was an ardently emotional relationship between two performers, and an excitingly unpredictable, bizarre display of humanity. Sometimes they are one being in a synchronized experienceat other times adversaries and representations of difference. Ultimately, one sees the performers struggle to discover form within this chaos.
LEIMAY Fellows Showcase: Anabella Lenzu, Jeremy Goren, Sophia Treanor
June 7th, 8:30pm + June 8th, 6pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY
58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama: Excerpts from In Pursuit of Happiness
In Pursuit of Happiness is a gripping, polemical piece of dance theater that hashes the personal, practical, and political struggles of immigrants to the United States. The piece moves in between the turn of the twentieth century, during the great waves of immigration at Ellis Island, and modern day. In a nonlinear approach, the work weaves in scenes from our current conflict on US immigration policy, bringing the contemporary debate into sharp relief against historical, forgotten experiences.
Jeremy Goren: Wistaria, The Gaggery and Gilt
Wistaria is an intimate meeting of traditional music, historical and original words, and modern technology that questions what it means to be part of the living history of the USA and the world. This new segment of Wistaria continues the contrarian investigation, now bridging Walt Whitman to the historical present.
“I tucked my trouserend in my boots and went and had a good time,
You should have been with us that day round the chowderkettle.” W.W.
Sophia Treanor: Snow Flakes, Sand Dunes, and Turbulent Vortices
A collaboration in spontaneous composition between the musicians Adam Gundersheimer and Derek Baron and the bodies of Sebastiani Romagnolo and Sophia Treanor, in concert with the poetry of Rachel Broderick. Inspired by, or rather in submission to, matter's ubiquitous and continuous process of spontaneously reorganizing itself to dissipate the heat of the sun.
LEIMAY Fellows Showcase: Terra Incognita Theater
June 11th and 12th, 8pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY
58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Terra in Fragments
Pushkin's The Covetous Knight and short works by members of Terra Incognita. As the angle shifts, the square becomes a circleI¾ as the circle shifts, triangles become visible. I am lost. Where are we? An ensemble company, for the first time Terra is exploring working together to devise solo performances from what ignites us each individually. Our stories come from our dreams, memories, poetry we love, and listening to the best of our abilities to what needs to be said. What emerges from the hidden treasure boxes of our souls?
LEIMAY Friends Showcase: Kota Yamazaki and Mina Nishimura
June 13th and 14th, 8pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY
58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Kota Yamazaki: Running
Kota Yamazaki is a Bessie award winning dancer and choreographer, a student of Akira Kasai and Hirofumi Inoue, and an internationally known teacher of butoh. Running is Yamazaki’s solo piece, a part of this evening’s shared bill.
This is a running piece, which never ends. It is based on his daily dance practice while jogging.
Mina Nishimura: Princes Cabbage (workinprogress)
In Princess Cabbage, a multitude of fantastical and grotesque images from and inspired by Tatsumi Hijikata’s biographical novel, Sickened Primadonna, are transformed into movements, vocals, facial expressions, crystallizing in a single body like a kaleidoscope. The piece is going to premiere at Mount Tremper Arts in August along with Quiet House, Ash Daughter, a new quartet which also shares the research around Hijikata's butoh scores.
LEIMAY Friends and Members Showcase: Maximilian Balduzzi, Elke Luyten & Kira Alker, Andrea
Jones, Angeli*, Kika Espejo**
*June 17th, 8pm with Angeli
**June 18th, 8pm with Kika Espejo
@ CAVE home of LEIMAY, 58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Maximilian Balduzzi: Untitled (workinprogress)
Through a daily practice begun almost 20 years ago, Maximilian has developed original physical and vocal training for performers designed to confront questions like:
How does the performer erase the gap between impulse and action?
How can the performer train to achieve the precision and efficacy of movement that appears spontaneously in the most extraordinary moments of life?
How can one elaborate a rigorous pedagogical method based on a precise technique without forgetting that the performer is always involved in an emotional way?
The exploration Maximilian presents at SOAK is a practical attempt to answer those questions. Untitled is practice brought to the performative realm.
Elke Luyten and Kira Alker: Untitled
Luyten and Alker's piece is a new studies project. It explores functional repetitive movements, drawn from the basics of work movement across the spectrum to psychologicallydriven compulsive actions. These actions are built, codified and rehearsed through a deep investigation of presence and intentionality. This is a continuation of their artistic research into challenging and displacing traditional and contemporary dance vocabularies.
Andrea Jones: The Perilous Chapel
A dance study influenced by T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, as well as the Fisher King and grail quest motifs of Arthurian legend, and used as an opportunity to explore dance's intrinsic alchemical properties and transformative power. Drawing upon ideas such as magical rites and shamanic traditions, the work seeks to rediscover the simultaneous connection of dance as public performance and personal ritual. The dance acts as both offering and entertainment, thus body becomes the axis point, the site of sacrifice and metamorphosis. Therefore, the dancing body is a bridge between two worlds and a gateway to memory and prophecy, hope, and healing.
Angeli: Homage to Yoko Ono *
A timed homage to Yoko Ono's '64 Cut Piece.
How one’s own departure can be another one’s staying.
*June 17 only
Kika Espejo: What I Think I am **
What I Think I Am is a performance art piece that explores the nature of human consciousness. Through a polygraph test, the artist subjects herself to an examination of her own superficial choices and profound existential matters. Playing with the relationship between psychological constructs and their effect on the physical body, the artist investigates the paradigms of knowledge, beliefs, and desires, putting into question the limitations of her own selfawareness.
**June 18th only
LEIMAY Friends and Members Showcase: Masanori Asahara, Moeno Wakamatsu, Racoco
Productions*, Michael Bodel**
*June 19th with Racoco Productions
**June 20th with Michael Bodel
@ CAVE home of LEIMAY, 58 Grand Street, Brooklyn
Masanori Asahara: InBetween
The operating body as a stream of air, the flow of which changes various elements of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, and shielding. What happens when these elements surrounding the body operate within the body? This is the generative question of InBetween. The presented work evokes the idea of “coma” and “awakening” through a dynamic collage of choreographed and impromptu movements.
Moeno Wakamatsu: Inscription of a Soul
In this body are inscribed all the souls from beginning of evolution. In the matter that makes this body are inscribed all the souls of matter since its birth. The soul that inhabits this body inscribes the absolute place and the absolute time where it exists. The absolute ground where this body and soul stand is the same as where I stand and where you stand, and where all things stand. My soul and your soul and all things inscribe the same moment. Though the beauty of the moment seems to make no discrimination between human joy or despair, nor between good or bad, I fill it and empty it with my desires and there is all, but there is nothing.
Racoco Productions: Paper Work *
A collaboration between paper artist Stephanie Beck and choreographer Rachel Cohen, Paper Work charts ideas of "progress," territorial expansion, discipline, and disorder. Tactile duets between paper and person continually create and destroy shifting landscapes, echoing the tension between the desire to be civilized and the constant call to new territory inherent in Manifest Destiny. *June 19 only
*June 19 only
Michael Bodel: there are caves and attics **
Emerging from Michel Foucault’s 1966 radio broadcast Corps Utopique, this is a dance in 9 parts, weaving together text and an original olfactory score. This performance will include solo versions of new sections, gray turtlenecks, samba music, and an experimental fan array. **June 20 only.
SOAK closing block party with Jeremy Slater, Big Volcano, Christopher Lunney, (DJ set) Kaoru Watanabe, (taiko drums) Kevin and the Shapes, and more to be announced on LEIMAY’s website
June 21st | 3pm -8pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY
58 Grand Street | FREE EVENT
Celebrate the end of SOAK with LEIMAY at the CAVE with friends and artists from the festival. We will provide the grills, games and live musicI¾ you may bring your favorite food to put on the grill. Stop by to say hello or stay through the evening. The music will be an eclectic mix of friends’ music from acoustic to electronic, psychedelic to soulful, and jam time (bring your own instrument). This event is part of the Make Music NY Celebration.
