PS122's COIL16 Brings Back David Neumann's Award-Winning "I Understand Everything Better"
Company:
David Neumann
PERFORMANCE SPACE 122 AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY PRESENT DAVID NEUMANN’S I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING BETTER AS PART OF PS122’S COIL 2016 FESTIVAL, JANUARY 10 - 16
In Bessie Award-Winning Show Neumann Looks at the Consciousness of Dying in Most Personal Work to Date
I Understand Everything Better
David Neumann (USA)
Dance, Theater
Co-presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater and Performance Space 122
The Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens
Jan 10 at 3pm; Jan 11 & 12 at 7pm; Jan 14 & 15 at 2pm; Jan 16 at 5pm
$20
"I Understand Everything Better takes choreographer Neumann's already-wonderful touch for movement and the wry phrase and cuts it into diamonds...Neumann has just entered a triumphant next phase of his work."
~ Helen Shaw's Time Out New York ***** star review.
As part of the eleventh edition of the COIL festival, Performance Space 122 and The Chocolate Factory present I Understand Everything Better, by recent Bessie Award Winner David Neumann. I Understand Everything Better is a deeply personal reflection on the consciousness of dying and interrupted narratives within the context of a cataclysmic storm. Combining personal narratives, traditional Japanese Noh theater and Neumann's virtuosic movement and humor, collaborators Tei Blow and Sibyl Kempson unite with Neumann to reveal the shimmer of attention to realms unseen, the concurrence of unrelated events and the body as evidence of a will having to let go.
In 2012, Neumann’s parents died on either side of Superstorm Sandy. His mother passed away suddenly in July 2014. His father had a longer journey, one where Neumann became the primary care giver, and died one month after Sandy made landfall. Created following this period, I Understand Everything Better is both fiction and truth. It rides a fine line between the purely presentational and the deeply personal. The work is a reflection on the consciousness of dying and finds Neumann working with some of his most autobiographical source material to date. I Understand Everything Better is set in a sparse and mutable landscape; there, Neumann presents a man on his deathbed, a meteorologist reporting from within a storm and a great actor who might be performing a Kabuki play about a dying man in a great storm.
I Understand Everything Better features performances by Neumann along with John Gasper, Jennifer Kidwell and Tei Blow. It features text by Sibyl Kempson, a sound score by Tei Blow, set design by Mimi Lien, lighting design by Chloë Z Brown and video design by Christine Shallenberg.
Performances of I Understand Everything Better will take place January 10 - 16 (see schedule above) at The Chocolate Factory, which is located at 5-49 49th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens. Tickets are $20 and available online at ps122.org and by phone at 212.352.3101.
[Photo: Maria Baranova]
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