Looking forward to the New Year at BAX

For UNTOLD, BAX Artist-In-Residence Mariangela Lopez has chosen to curate three NYC-based choreographers that have inspired her throughout her career. Although their aesthetics are very different, they are bound together by their powerful presence as performers, their audacity, their emotional complexity and their physicality.
Lopez invited Alex Escalante, Marilyn Maywald and Michelle Torino Hower to present work that has yet to be presented in public so that both artist and audience may benefit from the post-performance exchange.

Mariangela Lopez is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer from Caracas, Venezuela. Since 2001, Mariangela has created seven independent works. Her pieces have been presented in Venezuela, Mexico, France, Boston and multiple venues in New York City, including Williamsburg Art Nexus, Dixon Place, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, P.S 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Tisch School of the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Exchange and MonkeyTown. She was the choreographer of Karen. O Psycho opera Stop the Virgen presented at Saint Ann's Warehouse (NYC) and The Sydney Opera House as part of the Vivid Festival in 2012. Her work is known for enabling the participation of performers from various disciplines and backgrounds to take part in her creative process. Mariangela was a 2009-10 Movement Research Artist in Residence and is currently a Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Artist In Residence (2011-13).
 

The Nostalgia of Vigorous Dancing

The works of choreographers Jen McGinn and Rebecca Warner speak to the physical and visual memory of dance history and dance training.
They look to dance training with nostalgia, like an old family member, and desire, like a middle school crush.
Very precise and vigorous, their work finds content within a landscape of bodies.
Unapologetic, their work heads towards paradise, to the fantasy of utopia, filled with caravans, sea anemones, and robots.

Jillian Peña -- I am a dance and video artist based in Brooklyn. My work is primarily concerned with confusion and desire between self and other, focusing on the most complicated relationship we all have: that of the self to the self. I make dances that sometimes include people dancing, sometimes include you dancing, and sometimes hope that dance can exist without dance, by being moved by something.
I am inspired by psychoanalysis, queer theory, pop media, and spirituality. I have been presented internationally, including at Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, Akademie der Kunste Berlin, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, International Festival of Contemporary Art Slovenia, and Mix Brazil Sao Paulo.  I have an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a fellowship recipient, and a BA from Hollins University. I am a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar and a Practice-based MPhil candidate in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London.  My video work is distributed by Video Data Bank.  I was a 2009 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2009 DanceWeb Fellow at Impulstanz in Vienna, a 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Archauz in Århus, Denmark, and a 2011 Artist-in-Residence at the National Dance Center of Bucharest, Romania.