Danspace Project's Spring 2014 Season includes 2nd Platform dedicated to the work of a single choreographer
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Danspace Project
Danspace Project Announces Spring 2014 Season
Season includes 2nd Platform dedicated to the work of a single choreographer
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - New York, NY, March 4, 2014 - Danspace Project announces its spring season featuring performances, special events, conversations, international collaborations, and PLATFORM 2014: Diary of an Image by DD Dorvillier, the second Danspace Platform to focus on the work of a single choreographer. "As part of our Choreographic Center Without Walls, Danspace continues to look for new ways to reveal multi-faceted processes in contemporary choreographic practice," explains Judy Hussie-Taylor, Danspace Project executive director. "The idea of focusing on a single choreographer originated with Melinda Ring in 2011 when she guest curated four-weeks at Danspace, all entirely devoted to Susan Rethorst's work. We continue to investigate alternative curatorial approaches in support of artists' visions."
DD Dorvillier, a choreographer who lives and works in New York and France, has developed this collaboratively designed Platform entitled PLATFORM 2014:Diary of an Image by DD Dorvillier (May 17-June 14), which overlaps with Danspace Project's major collaborations with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy's initiatives ART² featuring contemporary art projects, and DANSE: A French-American Festival of Ideas, featuring French choreographers across diverse venues in New York City.
Danspace Project will present innovative performances by acclaimed French choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh (May 15-17) and recent Turner Prize recipient Laure Prouvost (April 24 & 25). Part of Danspace's collaborations with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy will include a special Conversation Without Walls entitled DANSE to Diaries: French Feminisms, a conversation moderated by Jenn Joy between French and U.S. choreographers, artists, and scholars whose work challenges conventional notions of dance and writing (May 17).
Other exciting spring season highlights include a first-time Danspace Project shared evening by emerging choreographers Rebecca Brooks and Anna Azrieli (April 10-12) and the return of Okwui Okpokwasili (May 8-10) in her tour-de-force solo show Bronx Gothic. Okpokwasili performed to sold out houses at Danspace Project in January (co-commissioned by Danspace Project and PS122/COIL Festival) and Danspace is thrilled to bring her back immediately upon return from her first solo international tour.
Danspace Project's Gala on April 29 will honor the legendary dance innovator Steve Paxton for his masterful investigations, which have influenced generations of postmodern choreographers; and Dia Art Foundation for its historic commitment to dance and performance and four decades of supporting visionary artists' projects.
Tickets and Admission: Tickets to all performances, unless otherwise noted, are $20 General Admission and $15 for Danspace Project members. Tickets can be purchased online at www.danspaceproject.org or by calling OvationTix/TheaterMania at (866) 811-4111.
Location: Unless otherwise noted, all performances and events take place at Danspace Project inside St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in New York City's East Village. 131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), New York, NY 10003. Phone: (212) 674-8112. Email: info@danspaceproject.org. Website: www.danspaceproject.org.
Complete Danspace Project Listings from April - June 2014:
DANCE: Access
DANCE: Access is Danspace Project's self-production rental series.
Suzanne Beahrs Dance, March 27-29, 2014, at 8pm
Jill Sigman/thinkdance, June 19-21, 2014 at 8pm
Cherylyn Lavagnino, June 26-28, 2014, at 8pm
April 3-5, 2014, Thursday-Saturday, at 8pm
Food for Thought
Curated by Catherine Galasso (Thursday), Benjamin Kimitch (Friday), and Caleb Hammons (Saturday)
Food for Thought is Danspace Project's semi-annual benefit series featuring a different guest curator each night.
Admission is just $5 with 2 cans of food; or $10. All food proceeds support St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery's food distribution programs.
Please note: Food for Thought is not open to review.
Saturday, April 5, 2014, 3pm-5:30pm
Conversations Without Walls: Prelude to an Image: diagrams of the sonic
Tuning into the sonic as choreographic provocateur: How do the invisible strains of sound, of noise, of music, inhabit the spaces and compositions of dance? What other apparitions haunt these many sonic terrains? Working with a new more intimate format, this conversation will be moderated by Jenn Joy with Miguel Gutierrez, Fionn Meade and Mika Tajima. The conversation will be livestreamed at www.danspaceproject.org/live
Location: The Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church.
Admission: $10 suggested donation at the door. RSVP recommended at www.danspaceproject.org.
April 10-12, 2014, Thursday-Saturday, at 8pm
New work by Anna Azrieli & Rebecca Brooks
A shared evening of premieres by emerging artists Anna Azrieli and Rebecca Brooks.
In third skirt skrum, Anna Azrieli explores the process of hiding and revealing as three bodies are tugged by a mysterious gothic object. Performed by Anna Azrieli, Talya Epstein, and Connor Voss, the piece is inspired by literature, specifically the rituals and social rules exemplified in Jane Austen novels and the dark obsessions of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Anna Azrieli is a founding member of Miguel Gutierrez & the Powerful People, working and performing with the group from 2001-2011. Azrieli has performed in the work of Wendy Perron, Fred Darsow, Donna Uchizono, Sam Kim, luciana achugar, Clarinda Mac Low, and David Thompson.
Rebecca Brooks' Still Left on This Rock is a new collaborative work with co-performers Ursula Eagly and Emily Wexler. Inspired by the subterranean limestone caverns of Virginia and the cathedral-like caves of Myanmar, Still Left On This Rock unearths experiences of irreconcilable loss and excavates perceptions of timelessness. Brooks, Eagly, and Wexler explore sequences designed to enhance sensory integration and challenge neural connectivity. Rebecca Brooks is a dance artist based in New York City with a commitment to developing sustainable practices, enhancing conscious awareness for performers and public alike. Costumes by Rebecca Brooks; Costume Consultant: James Kidd.
April 12, 2014, Saturday, at 3pm
DraftWork: Lorene Bouboushian and Laurel Tentindo & Kevin Williamson
Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, DraftWork is a series of free Saturday afternoon work-in-progress showings. The showings are followed by lively discussions led by Houston-Jones with a post-discussion reception in The Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church. On this occasion Lorene Bouboushian and Laurel Tentindo & Kevin Williamson present work in various stages of development.
Admission: Free and open to the public. No advance reservations.
April 24 & 25, 2014, Thursday & Friday, at 8pm
From the Sky, by Laure Prouvost
"Trying to make sense of [her] film is like trying to weave together memories splintered in dreams - impossible, but you want to keep trying. Ms. Prouvost is an artist-poet, the real thing," wrote Holland Cotter in a February 23, 2014 New York Times mention of Laure Prouvost's New Museum exhibition. Guest curator Fionn Meade has curated two evenings of Prouvost's From the Sky, a performance which mixes video, music, and live narrative and marks the French-born/UK-based artist's first evening-length performance as part of the ART² contemporary art initiative of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York. Prouvost is a recent recipient of the prestigious Turner Prize and opened her first U.S. solo museum presentation at The New Museum in New York City this winter. Meade, a New York-based curator, writer, and faculty member at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies, was recently named a senior curator at The Walker Art Center.
This event is presented by Danspace Project with the support of ART². ART²: An International Platform on Contemporary Art is presented in collaboration with the Institut français, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).
Admission: $10 suggested donation at the door. RSVP recommended at www.danspaceproject.org.
April 26, 2014, Saturday, at 3pm
DraftWork: Daniel Roberts and Kathy Westwater
Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, DraftWork is a series of free Saturday afternoon work-in-progress showings. The showings are followed by lively discussions led by Houston-Jones with a post-discussion reception in The Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church. On this occasion Daniel Roberts and Kathy Westwater present work in various stages of development.
Admission: Free and open to the public. No advance reservations.
April 29, 2014, Tuesday, 6pm
Danspace Project Gala 2014: Honoring Steve Paxton and Dia Art Foundation
This year, Danspace Project honors legendary choreographer Steve Paxton for his singular investigations into movement forms which have influenced generations of postmodern choreographers; and Dia Art Foundation for its commitment to dance and performance and four decades of supporting visionary artists' projects. The evening will include a silent art auction as well as performances (Circus Amok Band, Diane Madden, Jennifer Monson, and a film by Cathy Weis are among those confirmed). Contact Peggy Cheng at (212) 674-3838 or peggy@danspaceproject.org for more information.
May 8-10, 2014, Thursday-Saturday, at 8pm
Okwui Okpokwasili
Bronx Gothic
In January 2014, Danspace Project co-presented a sold out, extended run of Okwui Okpokwasili's Bronx Gothic as part of the COIL Festival. "Okpokwasili in motion is a sight to behold; she can shudder and shake like a dervish, or pop-and-lock along the ground like a wounded robot," wrote New York Times' Tim Murphy, "...Okpokwasili leaves us deep in the yearning, broken hearts of the Bronx girls, feeling their own inner changes reflected in the waves of Orchard Beach."
This solo performance, written and performed by Okpokwasili with direction and visual design by Peter Born, chronicles the sexual awakening and exploits of two 11-year-old girls living in the Bronx. Due to illness, the final three performances were cancelled. Danspace Project is thrilled to invite Okpokwasili back immediately after her return from an international tour of Bronx Gothic.
Admission: $25 General / $20 Danspace Project members
May 15-17, 2014, Thursday-Saturday, at 8pm
Emmanuelle Huynh
A VIDA ENORME/épisode 1 (U.S. Premiere)
After dancing with numerous French companies, Emmanuelle Huynh began creating her own choreographic work in 1995. Huynh has collaborated with practitioners of many disciplines in her works, from astrophysicists to composers to visual artists, basing several of her works on literary sources. From 2004 to 2012 she served as director of the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine (CNDC) in Angers. Huynh was first presented by Danspace Project as part of PLATFORM 2010: certain difficulties, certain joy, curated by Trajal Harrell.
Huynh's A VIDA ENORME/épisode 1 is a site-specific work structured as a film in which the soundtrack and image are separate and offered to the audience one after the other. The soundtrack, a dialogue between a man and a woman, incorporates poems by the Portuguese author Herberto Helder, sampled in French and Portuguese. From time to time, flashes of David Bowie's Heroes are broadcast, obscuring the first soundtrack and acting as refrain for the performers' story.
This presentation is in partnership with DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas. In addition, this project is funded in part by FUSED: French U.S Exchange in Dance, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange), with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional funding from the Florence Gould Foundation.
PLATFORM 2014: Diary of an Image by DD Dorvillier
May 17-June 14, 2014
Danspace Project's Platform 2014: Diary of an Image by DD Dorvillier is a month of performances, events and conversations accompanied by a Danspace Project publication focusing on DD Dorvillier's work and practices.
BACKGROUND:
PLATFORM 2014: Diary of an Image emerged as Dorvillier's response to an invitation from Danspace executive director Judy Hussie-Taylor. It marks the second four-week Platform at Danspace dedicated to the work of a single choreographer following PLATFORM 2011: Susan Rethorst, Retro(intro)spective curated by Melinda Ring. Hussie-Taylor comments: "Susan Rethorst said that rigor and pleasure in choreography are not mutually exclusive. I would say that for Dorvillier rigor and playfulness are mutually necessary."
Hussie-Taylor's invitation provoked Dorvillier to reflect on key dance issues: the cross-purposes of a dance archive, the shifting identity of a choreographic work over time, the choreographer as a social image, the role of artist as curator, the value of a dance. In the eighteen months leading up to the Platform, Dorvillier engaged her past collaborators, New York-based and international artists and writers in an extended dialogue around audience reception, translation, live performance experience and personal history. Playful yet deeply urgent, these issues remain central to Dorvillier's research. For her groundbreaking work over the past decade, Dorvillier received the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.
PERFORMANCES:
Danspace Project's home inside of St. Mark's Church will be the site for the creation of two new performance projects by Dorvillier - Diary of an Image and A catalogue of steps. In addition Dorvillier has invited artists closely associated with her work to perform a solo work of their own.
A catalogue of steps
A catalogue of steps reframes choreographic content culled from videos of Dorvillier's work from 1990 to 2004. These fragments will be performed in six different iterations by dancers Katerina Andreou, Oren Barnoy, and Nibia Pastrana. Through a taxonomy invented by Dorvillier and dancers, the choreographer traces the evolution of certain behaviors, steps and approaches across this fifteen-year span of work. Each live presentation at St. Mark's Church is set up as a visit to a particular category of steps (animals, kaleidoscopic, tableau, as examples). The visitor can experience a few selected variations on fragments being danced over an extended period of time.
A catalogue of steps can be visited on the following days:
Wednesday, May 21, 12-3pm (Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church)
Friday, May 23, 7pm (Abe Lebewohl Park, outside St. Mark's Church)
Wednesday, May 28, 12-3pm (Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church)
Wednesday, June 4, 12-3pm (Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church)
Wednesday, June 11, 12-3pm (Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church)
Saturday, June 14, 7pm - 8 pm (Abe Lebewohl Park, outside St. Mark's Church)
Admission: Free with suggested donation. Reservations encouraged but not required at www.danspaceproject.org.
Diary of an Image
June 6-7, Friday-Saturday, at 8pm
& 12-14, 2014, Thursday-Saturday, at 8pm
Diary of an Image is a new work by Dorvillier and composer Zeena Parkins, with performer Katerina Andreou, lighting designer Thomas Dunn, and visual artist Olivier Vadrot. A cross between a Morse Code Opera and a Dance Concert, this new work features dancing by Dorvillier, a live piano and electro acoustic score by Parkins, an outdoor lighting installation by Dunn, and sculptural interventions by Vadrot. Diary of an Image reflects on the production of the image, of an individual, of artists in a community, and asks what these bodies represent - in motion and in stillness, isolated and in relationship to each other and to their histories.
Admission: $20 General / $15 Danspace Project members
Solo Performances
Dorvillier invited artists with whom she has important artistic relationships to perform on four different evenings. In response, each artist is presenting a solo reflecting shared artistic concerns or historic connections. All performances will be followed by a conversation between Dorvillier and the artists.
Friday, May 23, 8pm: Sébastien Roux, Jennifer Lacey
Saturday May 24, 8pm: Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward
Friday, May 30, 8pm: Heather Kravas, Walter Dundervill
Saturday, May 31, 8pm: Katerina Andreou, Oren Barnoy, Nibia Pastrana
Admission: $20 General / $15 Danspace Project members
CONVERSATIONS
Saturday, May 17, 2014, 3pm-7pm
Conversations Without Walls: DANSE to Diaries: French feminisms
As an opening to the Danspace Platform 2014: Diary of an Image by DD Dorvillier and in conjunction with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy's DANSE: A French-American Festival of Ideas, this conversation traces the legacies of French feminism-the fierce re-imagination of writing through sensuous intellect, an écriture for dancing as it touches on desire, on language, on power. Moderated by Jenn Joy with DD Dorvillier, Noémie Solomon, Emmanuelle Huynh, Trisha Low, Judy Hussie-Taylor, and others to be announced.
Location: The Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church.
Admission: $10 suggested donation at the door. RSVP recommended.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 6:30-8pm
Looking and Listening: A Perceptual Conversation
DD interviewing DD:
DD: "You rejected pre-conceptions of what an acceptable proposition for a dance should be. It was about a thinking space for dance, and it was about looking and listening. This is a major through-line in your work, this co-existence and intelligence of looking and listening, and their prickly and mysterious relationship. This spirit, and these questions and ideas remain central to your work today.
Would you agree that it's still an interesting entry point to your work?"
DD: "Yes, yes I would."
DD Dorvillier and her artistic collaborators Zeena Parkins and Katerina Andreou, and curatorial collaborator Jenn Joy discuss the urgent, ongoing questions of looking, listening, and collaborating addressed in Dorvillier's work.
Admission: Free. RSVP recommended but not required at www.danspaceproject.org.
PUBLICATION
Diary of an Image is also the name of the publication, edited by Jenn Joy, published by Danspace, that will be released in late May during the Platform. The book will include the taxonomy from A catalogue of steps, a glossary of choreographic fragments, images and writing about past and present pieces from scholars, artists, writers, and collaborators including Katerina Andreou, Oren Barnoy, Seth Cluett, Walter Dundervill, Danielle Goldman, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jenn Joy, Heather Kravas, Jennifer Lacey, Jennifer Monson, Zeena Parkins, Quim Pujol, Noémie Solomon, Elizabeth Ward, and others.
PLATFORM 2014 events in chronological order
PLATFORM 2014: Week 1
Saturday, May 17, 2014, 3pm-7pm: Conversations Without Walls: DANSE to Diaries: French feminisms (The Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church)
Wednesday, May 21, 12-3pm: A catalogue of steps (Danspace Project)
Friday, May 23, 7pm: A catalogue of steps (Abe Lebewohl Park, outside St. Mark's Church)
Friday, May 23, 8pm: Solo Performances: Sébastien Roux, Jennifer Lacey (Danspace Project)
Saturday May 24, 8pm: Solo Performances: Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward (Danspace Project)
PLATFORM 2014: Week 2
Wednesday, May 28, 12-3pm: A catalogue of steps (Danspace Project)
Friday, May 30, 8pm: Solo Performances: Heather Kravas, Walter Dundervill (Danspace Project)
Saturday, May 31, 8pm: Solo Performances: Katerina Andreou, Oren Barnoy, Nibia Pastrana (Danspace Project)
PLATFORM 2014: Week 3
Wednesday, June 4, 12-3pm: A catalogue of steps (Danspace Project)
Friday, June 6-Saturday, June 7, 8pm: Diary of An Image (Danspace Project)
PLATFORM 2014: Week 4
Tuesday, June 10, 6:30pm: Looking and Listening: A Perceptual Conversation (Danspace Project)
Wednesday, June 11, 12-3pm: A catalogue of steps (Danspace Project)
Thursday, June 12 - Saturday, June 14, 8pm: Diary of An Image (Danspace Project)
Saturday, June 14, 7pm: A catalogue of steps (Abe Lebewohl Park, outside St. Mark's Church)
