Ben Munisteri + Sarah Skaggs: New and In-Progress Work Work In Progress
Company:
Munisteri + Skaggs
Choreographers Ben Munisteri and Sarah Skaggs present new, in-progress dances at the Actors Fund Arts Center, 160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201: Friday, August 11 and Saturday, 12, 2017 @ 7:30 p.m.
Ben Munisteri and Sarah Skaggs—two of the NYC downtown dance scene's most accomplished, prolific mid-career artists—will present their new, in-progress dances at the Actors Fund Arts Center for two nights: Friday, August 11 and Saturday, August 12, both shows at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free at the door; no reservations are necessary. The artists will ask for a donation to cover some of their costs.
Choreographer Ben Munisteri continues working on his elemental series, which began with the premiere of Antimony (51) at BAM Fisher last year. At this showing he will present Tin (50), a duet that premiered earlier this year, and in-progress incarnations of what will become Tellurium (52), which will premiere next year. Munisteri will open up his creative process to reveal to the audience all the different choices that go on in the studio: music, casting, sequence, syntax, timing, and other qualitatively different variables make for numerous versions of what will eventually become one dance.
Choreographer Sarah Skaggs presents the first section of her evening length project titled iHowl. Section one of iHowl, inspired by Allen Ginsberg's seminal poem Howl, is a 30-minute duet made in collaboration dancer/collaborator Cori Kresge. The piece is performed to a sound score made up of Ginsberg's reading of "Moloch," sounds from the natural world, and movement three from Rachmaninoff's Fantasie Tableaux Op.5. The score serves to support the movement vocabulary, which derives its meaning in part from Ginsberg's words.
Ben Munisteri has been making and presenting dances since the early 1990s. He has received funding from the National Dance Project, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the National Performance Network. He has been presented by the Joyce Theater, Central Park SummerStage, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Whitney Museum, Performance Space 122, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Celebrate Brooklyn, and other places. Supported by several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, his company has toured to Jacob’s Pillow (Doris Duke Theater), MASS MoCA, Florida Dance Festival, the UC Santa Cruz and Arts and Lecture series, the international Tanzmesse in Germany, and other places. Munisteri has won grants from the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and other sources. A native Brooklynite, Munisteri is an associate professor of dance at Alma College, Michigan.
Sarah Skaggs is a dancer/choreographer who has been making dances for over 20 years. She has received six National Endowment for the Arts Choreography fellowships and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships as well as the numerous grants from the Rockefeller, Culpeper, Jerome, Harkness, Greenwall, Dreyfus, and Bulova Foundations. She has the honor of having a two- page entry devoted to her in The International Dictionary of Modern Dance. In addition to her extensive travel and teaching in Hong Kong, Prague, Taipei, and Bali her work has been produced by the Joyce Theatre, Lincoln Center Festival, the Andy Warhol Museum, Dance Place (Washington D.C), Dance Theatre Workshop, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, PS 122, Jacob's Pillow, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Dublin Arts Festival and most recently at the Society of Dance History Scholars conference at Stanford University. She has served on the Board of Directors of Danspace Project at St.Mark's Church in New York since 1992. She holds an MFA in Dance Studies from Hollins University/American Dance Festival. Currently, she is the director of the dance program at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
For more information on the artists, go to munisteri.com and sarahskaggsdance.com
