JANUARY 5-15, 2012
ABRONS ARTS CENTER
NEW YORK CITY
“fiercely contemporary”
- Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
American Realness is festival of contemporary performance returning to the Abrons Arts Center for it’s third consecutive year, January 5-15, 2012.
The 2012 festival engages all three theater spaces at the Abrons Arts Center for a immersive experience offorty-six performances of twenty productions over ten days. Performances include the world premiere ofBig Art Group’s Broke House, a contemporary spin on Chekhov's Three Sisters, and four U.S. premieres including Daniel Linehan’s Zombie Aporia, a dance based on the structure of the rock concert and Montage for Three, an exploration of portraiture and representation, Jennifer Lacey’s intimate Gattica and Eleanor Bauer and Heather Lang’s cunning trash/drag spectacle, The Heather Lang Show by Eleanor Bauer and Vice Versa - Trash is Fierce Episode 2: Destiny's Realness. In addition American Realness is thrilled to present the New York premiere of San Francisco based Laura Arrington’s exploration of feminine identity and tropes, Hot Wings.
American Realness is also thrilled to welcome back the irreverent revelry that is AMERICAN PUSSY FAGGOT! REALNESS. Under the direction of nightlife and performance impresario Earl Dax, APF!R brings you the dynamic milieu of New York Nightlife in a party jam-packed with two stages for performances, cocktails and conversation.
The 2012 program welcomes the implementation of SHOW & TELL, a free series of informal conversations and work-in-progress showings from artists with new projects in development. Showings and talks will be hosted byDD Dorvillier, Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group, Luciana Achugar, Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Big Dance Theater, Keith Hennessy and Holcombe Waller.
While at Abrons for performances, audiences will have access to American Realness’ two exhibitions.UNREAL features staged and candid portraits along with performance photography from the extensive collection of images by photographer Michael Hart. The images will be accompanied by a text from writer, performer and composer, Ryan Tracy. The exhibition program also features “THE Sarah Michelson,” a survey of the iconic and mythological, sculptural or decorative representations of the self through which Sarah Michelson visibly owns and authors her performance works. “THE Sarah Michelson” includes paintings and sculptural neon created for Michelson’s work by TM Davy, Claude Wampler and Charlotte Cullinan.
American Realness patrons can further engage with the work of festival artists through the @r Shop, a bookshop featuring performance texts, catalogues and artist merchandise. The @r Café by Push Cart Coffeewill offer patrons a respite from their marathon performance going, where they can sit down and enjoy a coffee, sandwich, salad, beer or glass of wine.
American Realness also welcomes dance-tech.tv founder and director Marlon Barios Solano and co-producer Josephine Dorado as the official embedded_vloggers @ American Realness 2012. The vloggers will create and distribute video podcasts in conversation with festival artists and audiences. In addition, they will post video excerpts from festival performances online through dance-tech.tv and on-site at the Abrons Arts Center in the dance-tech.tv Media Hub. Stop by the Media Hub to view podcasts and video excerpts and find out more about dance-tech.tv
American Realness 2012 is going for broke. We hope you will join us at the Abrons Arts Center on Manhattan’s lower east side for some of the most rigorous and ambitious American performance works from in and outside of the United States. Come downtown and spend a day, or two, or five, or all ten. You won’t be sorry.
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American Realness is made possible in part with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Abrons Arts Center and Sondra Graff | RPM Projects.
EXHIBITION
UNREAL
MICHAEL HART & RYAN TRACY
THURS JAN 5 – SAT FEB 4
GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY - SATURDAY 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
OPENING RECEPTION THURS, JAN 5, 5:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER CULPEPPER & UPPER GALLERIES
Artists are people too; people with lives; people who chose to make art for a living. It's easy to forget that. Photographer Michael Hart has been capturing the art and lives of artists in photography for nearly a decade.UNREAL presents this photographic work in a survey of artists involved in and around the American Realness festival. The photographs include images from live performances as well as staged and improvised photo sessions where the line between artist and art, real and unreal is ecstatically blurred. The images will be accompanied by a text piece by writer and performer Ryan Tracy in conversation with the photographer.
"THE SARAH MICHELSON"
SARAH MICHELSON WITH PAINTINGS AND DECOR FROM HER WORK BY TM DAVY, CLAUDE WAMPLER AND CHARLOTTE CULLIAN
THURS JAN 5 – SAT FEB 4
GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY - SATURDAY 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
OPENING RECEPTION THURS, JAN 5, 5:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER CULPEPPER & UPPER GALLERIES
British/New York Choreographer Sarah Michelson’s rigorous experiments in formalist dance have long deployed reflexive tactics through iconic and mythological, sculptural or decorative representations of the self. Michelson owns and authors her work through the consistent presence of the artist as historicized object. This tactic has functioned as nod to Michelson’s own legacy, trajectory, geography and economy in the lineage of modern, post-modern and contemporary dance.
“THE Sarah Michelson” exhibits TM Davy’s portraits of Michelson with histrionic overtones as seen inDevotion (2011), a Claude Wompler painting from Daylight (2005), the iconic neon sculptural décor by Charlotte Cullinan for Dover Beach (2009) and the ready-to-wear tracksuits for Devotion (2011).
“I saw this dance about dance and dance making three times in one week. Each time I held onto it thinking, “This is as good as it gets.” - David Velasco, BEST OF DANCE 2011, ARTFORUM
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PERFORMANCE
LAURA ARRINGTON
HOT WINGS NEW YORK PREMIERE
THURS JAN 5 7:00 PM
SAT JAN 7 4:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Hot Wings is a charged dance that’s probably feminist, examining artifice and authenticity in representations of sex, gender, and violence. The work follows a cast of three women and a drag queen who are femme, fearlessly engaging, strong, and smart women, as they sing, scream, and dance towards resolution. Looking at how femininity is performed Hot Wing aims directly at the contemporary fabricated female in a critique that uncovers a deeper feminine truth.
“Laura Arrington… interrogate(s) issues of femininity, sexuality, individuality and our visceral and cerebral connection to the body.” - Nirmala Nataraj, SFGate.com
How Wings was created with generous support from CounterPULSE Artist Residency Commissioning Program.
BIG ART GROUP
BROKE HOUSE WORLD PREMIERE
THURS JAN 5 & 12 8:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 9:30 PM
FRI JAN 13 8:30 PM
SAT JAN 14 7:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Broke House is the new performance by Big Art Group inspired by Chekhov's Three Sisters. It explores social aspects of modernity and time: the frustration of social progress and the problem of presence in a world compromised by the virtual. From a bare stage the company constructs and dismantles the wooden skeleton of a house as they simultaneously film a documentary of its residents. Issues about the tragic entrapment of nostalgia and the futility of escapist fantasies of the future play out through colliding and disintegrating stories refracted across Big Art Group's sculptural scenography and lightning fast Real Time Film matrix.
"True to their name, Big Art Group's performances are big in every possible way: prismatic visuals hurtle across a panoply of screens, dazzling with flashing colors; strange conjunctions of video imagery captured live by a battery of cameras and spliced together in real time, ambush the eye; digital soundscapes thrum, groan, and roar at synesthesia-inducing volumes." - Jacob Gallagher-Ross, The Drama Review
Broke House is produced by Big Art Group with support from King's Fountain and NYSCA.
ELEANOR BAUER & HEATHER LANG
THE HEATHER LANG SHOW BY ELEANOR BAUER AND VICE VERSA: Trash is Fierce Episode 2: Destiny's Realness U.S. PREMIERE
THURS JAN 5 10:00 PM
SUN JAN 8 6:00 PM
WEDS JAN 11 11:00 PM
SUN JAN 15 9:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
The Heather Lang Show by Eleanor Bauer and Vice Versa is a double one-woman show: double the woman, double the show. In the uniquely gregarious context of a drag show cum spiritual talk show cum QVC infomercial, two outrageous and entertaining performers appropriate and reinvent the language and performance ethics of "realness". Combining genres of performance, remixing character prototypes and archetypes, challenging the economy of stuff with the immeasurable value of experience, these unlikely partners in crime fashion a homemade and uncanny amalgam of critiques on cultural identity, capitalism, creative expression and entertainment that holds a broken compact mirror up to the real(ness) world in all its twisted glory.
“Eleanor and Heather together is a whole lotta fierce in one place, ok? GET INTO IT.” - Miguel Gutierrez
Trash is Fierce Episode 2: Destiny's Realness was made possible with space grants from Kaaitheater and Heather's living room.
DANIEL LINEHAN
ZOMBIE APORIA U.S. PREMIERE
FRI JAN 6 7:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 7:30 PM
SUN JAN 8 4:00 PM
MON JAN 9 4:30 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Zombie Aporia is a dance performance that is composed of many small pieces, like a rock music concert, or a book of poetry. The dancers use their voices in order to create an intricate connection between dance and music, so that the dance and the music are both being generated by the very same bodies. The performance breaks down the boundaries that separate body from voice, sound from image, rhythm from meaning.
Zombie Aporia seeks to discover possibility within apparently impossible contradictions: music that is the result of dancing, emotional expression that begins physically, spontaneous feelings that are designed, words that give more of a sense of vibration than meaning.
“Linehan dissipated minimalism by breaking the nuclei of its structures.” - Gerard Mayen, Mouvement
Co-production support for Zombie Aporia was provided by Rencontres chorégrapiques internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Centre national de la danse (Pantin, FR); Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse / Midi- Pyrénées (FR), in the context of the European project ‘Departs’; Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Gent, BE); BUDA Kunstencentrum (Kortrijk, BE), and was supported through residencies at L’Agora, Cité International de la danse, Montpellier Danse (FR); Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse / Midi-Pyrénées (FR); O Rumo do Fumo & Forum Dança (Lisboa, PT); Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Gent, BE). Funding was provided by the Flemish authorities (BE) and Arcadi – distribution (FR).
JOHN JASPERSE
CANYON
A canyon is formed by the simple act of erosion—in which the earth yields over time to a repetitive force, giving birth to a landscape of opening rather than of imposition. Many have described witnessing nature on this scale as life-changing—an experience not easily put into words. While abstract in nature, this new work by Jasperse and his collaborators seeks to reflect these qualities by exploring the extraordinary that originates with the ordinary. Six dancers, including Jasperse, turn the stage into a space beyond language, where strangeness, subtlety, spaciousness, density, and fervent shifts all play a role—centering on the transformative power of losing oneself in visceral experience, where intellect is humbled into a state of wonder.
“Mr. Jasperse has a keen eye for detail and composition; the subtle internal logic of his choreography tends to drive both sense and sensibility in his dances.” - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
FRI JAN 6 9:00 PM
SAT JAN 7 2:30 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Canyon is commissioned as part of the BAM 2011 Next Wave Festival, and is co-commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Canyon is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Canyon is supported by The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Canyon is commissioned through Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program and by the American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program. Canyon is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the James E. Robison Foundation, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Canyon was developed in residencies at The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), MASS MoCA and CPR – Center for Performance Research.
CECILIA BENGOLEA, FRANCOISE CHAIGNAUD, MARLENE MONTEIRO FERITAS AND TRAJAL HARRELL
(M)IMOSA / TWENTY LOOKS OR PARIS IS BURNING AT THE JUDSON CHURCH (M)
FRI JAN 6 10:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 6:00 PM
SUN JAN 8 9:00 PM
MON JAN 9 6:00 PM
Run time: 90 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
(M)imosais a choreographic collaboration between Cecilia Bengolea, Francis Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Trajal Harrell. The work is the third installment of Harrell’s Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, a series of five works in five sizes (XS to XL). The series revolves around the proposition "What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing ball scene in Harlem had come downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns at Judson Church?"
(M)imosais a performance by four choreographers investigating the collision of voguing culture, post-modern dance and the artists’ own personal and artistic identities, exploring the intensity of the fault between the desire and the impossibility of becoming another person.
“At the confluence of the ordinary and the spectacular are both beauty and entertainment.” - Roslyn Sulcas,The New York Times
Production: VLOVAJOB PRU; Co-Production: Le Quartz – Scène nationale de Brest, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse, The Kitchen, Bomba Suicida / organisation funded by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers - Secretary of State for Culture/Directorate General for the Arts (DGArtes). Rehearsal space also provided by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Additional Funding has been provided by FUSED (French U.S. Exchange in Dance). With support from La Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) and Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. Francois Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea are associated artists of La Ménagerie de Verre (Paris). VLOVAJOB PRU is funded by the DRAC Poitou-Charentes and receives support from the French Institute for its overseas projects.
ELASTIC CITY
SALVE
FRI JAN 6 10:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 4:00 PM & 7:30 PM
SUN JAN 8 7:30 PM
Run time: 75 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Winter chills:
stuck in cold American
brick hallways and leftover props.
Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith walk you home
to putty floors, player-paintings and back-
stage Realness.
Take off your snowsuits, baby. This is not a walking tour.
“it’s refreshing to find a deliberately constructed experience—a performance—that exists just for itself, or just for you.” - Patricia Milder, The Brooklyn Rail
TRAJAL HARRELL
ANTIGONE JR.
SAT JAN 7 11:00 PM
SUN JAN 8 1:00 PM
Run time: 30 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
In American and English naming tradition, a junior (jr.) is the son of a father with the same name. Thus, with Antigone Jr., the New York choreographer Trajal Harrell takes on a study of the role of Antigone from Sophocles' tragedy alongside performer Thibault Lac as Ismene, Antigone’s sister. This work is part of an ongoing series entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church, that comes in five regular sizes - Extra Small (XS), Small (S), Medium known as (M)imosa, and the upcoming Large (L) and Extra Large (XL)- plus this junior size. They all take on the proposition: "What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing dance tradition in Harlem had come downtown to Judson Church in Greenwich Village to perform alongside the early postmoderns?" Thus, what new relations would have been produced by voguing a greek tragedy, a concept against the aesthetic trends of 1963 Judson? Rather than illustrating a historical fiction, Harrell uses this proposition to rethink our contemporary context. What we see was neither possible at the voguing balls nor at Judson Church, but a third possibility is created, here and now. This jr. represents a potential uni-size in the series, both unique and unisex.
“I love watching Harrell indicate styles—now with down-and-dirty swiveling hips, now with weaving, undulating arms and soft stroking-the-air hands, now with high-stepping feet. Every pose resonates.” - Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
Antigone Jr. is a co-production of Menagerie de Verre. Residency support has been provided by Menagerie de Verre, Workspace Brussels, and Pact Zollverein.
AMERICANPUSSYFAGGOT!REALNESS
CURATED BY EARL DAX
SAT JAN 7 8:00 PM – 4:00 AM
PUBLIC ASSEMBLY
70 North 6th Street between Wythe and Kent, Brooklyn
L train to Bedford Avenue
AMERICAN PUSSYFAGGOT! REALNESS is a performance-laden club night with two stages showcasing over twenty artists from the often-disparate worlds of dance, burlesque, cabaret, club and contemporary performance. For 2012 the event takes place at Public Assembly in vibrant Williamsburg, just a few minutes from the Bedford L subway stop or a short cab ride over the Williamsburg Bridge.
New York City nightclubs have long played a crucial role in the development of cutting edge performance. The real challenges - drunk and often inattentive crowds, limited technical capacity, etc - demand that artists wrest the attention of their audiences, helping to foster the intensity and dynamism characteristic of so many New York performers.
With a name derived from an epithet slung at him during a fabled bar brawl, "downtown impresario" Earl Dax has developed PUSSYFAGGOT! into a one night only, mini-festival of queer culture which is presented quarterly in New York City and has been featured internationally at Queer Up North and Queer Zagreb. With a fellowship from the Museum of Arts and Design, Dax has also brought the event to New Orleans and a rural radical faerie community in Tennessee. This year's festival edition of the event will once again be hosted by internationally acclaimed performance artist Penny Arcade, herself a product of the club scene and "a criminal, homosexual avant garde." It's a night you won't want to miss and one you won't soon forget.
“Mr. Dax’s events, the most historically minded of the current generation of club performances, form one of the surest and most politically conscious links to the fabled East Village club scene of [the 1970's and 80's].” - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
WALLY CARDONA AND JENNIFER LACEY WITH JONATHAN BEPLER
TOOL IS LOOT
SUN JAN 8 2:30 PM
MON JAN 9 8:00 PM
Run time: 70 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
“We would like to believe that our bodies and our brains are fantastically flexible and responsive to change, containing - at any moment - both the abstract and the specific. Well… what we’ve learned is that this is both gloriously true and frustratingly untrue. But that’s okay, really, and this dance proves it. There will be a swan, a prince, a robot, sexual behavior and two chairs. Sometimes all at once.” – Wally Cardona & Jennifer Lacey
For one year, choreographers Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey worked apart, holding tandem projects, in the U.S. and France respectively. Each artist solicited weeklong encounters with non-dance experts, voluntarily subjecting their aesthetic position to a barrage of assessment, opinions and desires from the “outsiders”, including an astro-physicist, sommelier, architect, film editor, medical supply salesman, kinetic sculptor, baroque opera singer, art critic, acoustician and social activist. Now, as the two choreographers come together in TOOL IS LOOT, the identity of each artist is simultaneously undone and strengthened in a duet that carries the ghosts of aesthetic propositions that are not their own. The opinions and interpretations of composer Jonathan Bepler and lighting designer Thomas Dunn function as yet another clarification and reinterpretation of TOOL IS LOOT.
“…utterly original, deeply comic and deviously beautiful. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that both Ms. Lacey and Mr. Cardona are effortlessly charismatic performers.” - Brian Seibert, The New York Times
A production of WCV, Inc., TOOL IS LOOT is co-commissioned by The Kitchen and EMPAC, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Creation of the work was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with lead funding from the Dorris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Boeing Company Charitable Trust; a 2010-2011 Joyce SoHo Creative Residency, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; CNDC Angers and FUSED; Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers with the Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis; Baryshnikov Arts Center; Dance Place (D.C.); Atlantic Center for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation.TOOL IS LOOT was commissioned through the Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program.
CYNTHIA HOPKINS
THIS CLEMENT WORLD WORK-IN-PROGRESS
SUN JAN 8 7:30 PM
TUES JAN 10 5:00 PM
Run time: 45 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
This Clement Worldis a new musical performance work by Cynthia Hopkins that poetically but urgently addresses our global climate crisis. The work is a live documentary film infused with three fictional characters that serve as tour guides for an imaginary exhibit conveying the wonders of our currently clement world. These guides in the form of the ghost of a Native American woman of the Cheyenne, a neutral alien observer visiting from the far reaches of outer space and a child from the not-so-distant future who has traveled back in time to visit the present, interpret this imaginary exhibit according to their own uniquely informed perspective. This Clement World uses original avant-folk orchestral songs, fantasy, imagination and storytelling to convey vital information regarding the climate crisis through a deeply personal and idiosyncratic lens.
This Clement Worldis scheduled to premiere at Les Subsistances in November 2012, followed by presentations at the Walker and St. Ann’s during the 2012-13 season. In May 2012, a work in progress concert version of the piece will be presented at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.
"a triumph of disciplined thinking, narrative fluidity and musical accomplishment."- Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times
This Clement Worldis inspired in part by a December 2009 Tipping Point Conference at Columbia's Earth Institute, and a September 2010 Arctic Expedition with Cape Farewell. This Clement World has been commissioned by Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN; St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn NY; and Les Subsistances in Lyon, France. The creation of This Clement World is made possible by the generous support of the Jerome Foundation, the MAP Fund; individual donors including Eleanor Alper, Warren Habib, Adam and Diane Max, and Jony Perez; and residencies provided by Acadia Summer Arts Program, Yaddo, and The MacDowell Colony.
JEREMY WADE
FOUNTAIN
SUN JAN 8 10:30 PM
MON JAN 2:30 PM
WEDS JAN 11 8:00 PM
Run time: 70 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Fountain, a new solo from Jeremy Wade proposes a generative sphere of uncertainty. Wade circumvents traditional audience-performer dynamics and facilitates a generous group experience that evolves into a sensual engine. Wade assumes the role of preacher, shaman, and fool, by offering himself as a medium to receive and transform the energy of the theater space taking the audience on an emotional and alchemical journey.
The development of this new work is the result of a longer research phase in which Wade practiced an amalgam of curating, hosting, teaching and choreographing, exploring the potential of the ecstatic body that lies within the community. Thus the combination of energetic interaction with the audience, suggestive visualizations and Wade’s virtuosic grotesque creates a supple machine that is strangely affecting.
Wade’s choreographic technique is a unique encounter of aesthetic, sociological and neurological dimensions. He derives movement from intense attention to the multiplicity of impulses in the body that are drawn from neurological processes, social constructions of norm and aesthetic decisions. The stage becomes an engine where the intersubjective actions/reactions are propelled into space enveloping the audience for maximal sensation and association.
“By turns frightening and pitiful, the process was fascinating to behold, and strangely affecting. The space was charged..” - Brian Seibert, The New York Times
BEST OF DANCE 2011 – David Velasco, ARTFORUM
A production by Jeremy Wade in co-production with HAU Berlin and Gaîté Lyrique Paris. Sponsored with funds from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and by the Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs. With support by Tanzfabrik Berlin and Uferstudios.
JACK FERVER WITH MICHELLE MOLA
ME, MICHELLE
MON JAN 9 9:30 PM
TUES JAN 10 8:00 PM
Run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Me, Michelle is a duet between Jack Ferver and Michelle Mola, which takes on the forever-mysterious Queen Cleopatra as a vehicle for two performers to uncover the truths about iconography, monarchy, and themselves. Ferver offers a manic meta-characterization of Cleopatra during the infamous icon's final days. Attended by Mola’s portrayal of his/her servant, the two engage in funny, vicious, and tragic psychosexual games that vacillate between the childish to the sociopathic. Through coiling layers of performance ranging from the histrionically grand to the restlessly personal, Me, Michele illustrates how ego fueled by total power can turn into annihilation and the sadomasochism that can exist between gay men and heterosexual women.
"While he constructs and subverts identity, presenting and manipulating images of sexuality, abuse, and self love, those of us watching are implicated in his physically raw, violent works."- Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
Me, Michelle was commissioned as part of the Museum of Art and Design’s series Risk + Reward and Performa 11.
DANIEL LINEHAN
MONTAGE FOR THREE U.S. PREMIERE
NOT ABOUT EVERYTHING
TUES JAN 10 6:30 PM
WEDS JAN 11 7:00 PM
Total Run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Montage for Three is a choreography-of-images that takes its source material entirely from found photographs, both famous and obscure. The two dancers embody the photographs with the absurd and impossible aim of giving presence to something which is absent. They strive to erase the inherent sentimentality of the photographs in order to see what lies beneath the nostalgia. The living/moving/present bodies confront the mechanical/static/reproduced bodies until the two forms begin to exchange roles. The still images begin to take on a life of their own, as the dancers begin to serve as a trigger for the viewer’s memory.
Daniel Linehan’s solo, Not About Everything, reflects on the basic elements that constitute art works as well as daily experiences – rhythm and change, language and meaning, energy and the human body. The performance re-imagines these familiar concepts through a multi-layered system of intense physical effort and a constant cyclical use of language. Beginning from an apparent simplicity, the performer introduces a series of variations, accelerations, and subtle shifts, creating a funny and complex dance. As his obsessive circular motion inevitably produces feelings of disorientation and vertigo, Linehan struggles to remain lucid and strives to create a space for thoughtful reflection.
“Linehan is extremely smart about what he’s doing, and he’s mesmerizing to watch in what seems like an ordeal of discovery” - Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
Co-production support for Montage for Three was provided by Rencontres Choréographiques Internationales de Seine Saint-Denis (Paris, FR) Not About Everythingwas created in part through the Bessie Schönberg/First Light Commissioning Program and Creative Residency Program of Dance Theater Workshop with support from the Jerome Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a US federal agency), the New York State Council of the Arts, and the Jerome Robbins Foundation. This work was also made possible in part through the Movement Research Artist Residency Project, funded in part by the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund.
HOLCOMBE WALLER
VISIONS OF A SONG MAN
TUES JAN 10 9:30 PM
SAT JAN 14 10:00 PM
Run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Visions of a song man presents singer, composer and performing artist Holcombe Waller in an evening of songs and musical excerpts from his recent interdisciplinary performances Surfacing (2011) and Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest (2008). Holcombe and musical collaborator Ben Landsverk perform simplified arrangements that employ whittled down vocals, small guitars, viola and piano to evoke ghostly renditions of folk, liturgical, ceremonial and popular music forms.
"Waller's new album, Into the Dark Unknown, is a come-to-Jesus moment come to life, a clear-eyed look at confusion that's as arresting as it is intimate." - Barbara Mitchell, National Public Radio
ANN LIV YOUNG
SLEEPING BEAUTY PART 1
WEDS JAN 11 9:30 PM
THURS JAN 12 7:00 PM
Run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
There was once a sleeping woman. She was betrothed at birth, unknowingly. She hid in the forrest until she was a true woman. At first glance she fell in love with a noble man. Her heart was taken. A witch tried to kill her and her love. A spell was put on her family and her castle. They all slept for over a hundred years. At last, the noble prince understood and at true loves kiss she awoke.
“vulgar, raunchy, funny, earsplittingly loud” - Gia Kourlas, Time Out New York
KEITH HENNESSY
ALMOST
THURS JAN 12 10:00 PM
FRI JAN 13 10:00 PM
Run time: 45 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Almost is spontaneous performance action. Keith Hennessy comes to the American Realness to improvise; to invent a performance from almost nothing, accessing almost everything. Curious about histories of moving bodies and social movement, Hennessy’s improvisations are a dynamic mash-up of Judson, body art, stand up, Ridiculous, site-specific, lecture, and ritual (where Ridiculous means, among other things, queer subversive camp, and ritual is about how a group of people experience magic and/or death together). He might go off on a political rant, he might take questions from the audience; he’ll probably change costumes and struggle to be still.
A body accumulates information and makes choices. Tactics and images from the historical body of Hennessy’s work appear like habits, crutches, old friends. Almost is simultaneously research and the distillation of research into composition. Improvisation is sometimes like fishing, a practical effort that might become thriling or it might be boring and then it’s ok to space out and dream of other worlds... Remix, spectacle, ritual, action, dancing, not-dancing, speaking, playing, ridiculous, activist, visceral, performance.
"Hennessy is that rare artist who succeeds in translating fierce social concerns into artistically satisfying creations that enlighten and entertain.“ - Rita Felciano, SF Bay Guardian
JENNIFER LACEY
GATTICA U.S. PREMIERE
FRI JAN 13 7:00 PM
SAT JAN 14 5:30 PM
SUN JAN 15 5:30 PM
Run time: 45 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
This piece was made especially for the Tanzquartier in Vienna under the stewardship of Sigrid Gareis in 2008. The event bore this unlikely title: A Precise Woodstock of thinking. I was asked to consider the future of performance. Hmmm... What to do? My own future was more-than-unusually uncertain at that moment, which created a lovely calm about the whole business as projections seemed un-urgent, unnecessary, inappropriate . I made the only thing I could which I still enjoy doing. The very pretty irony is that performance has no legitimate concern with the future. And also, this version of the future is a bit dated. Lovely. Please Come.
“a fearless, whip-smart artist” - Brian Seibert, The New York Times
Gattica was made possible with support from TanzQuartier Wein
ELEANOR BAUER
(BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS)
SAT JAN 14 8:30 PM
SUN JAN 15 4:00 PM
Run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
An empty promise, a preemptive lament, a flirtation with expectations, a wrestling match with potential, whispering what should be shouted and singing what should be whispered, (BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS) is a solo on scale, volume, extreme limits and the grey areas between them; on grandeur and vulnerability, hubris and humility, visibility and subtlety; on the fragile braggadocio of living large when less is more but more is also unmistakably more.
Eleanor Bauer invites the audience into the depths of the surface-oriented world of the performer, where the personal and the material are mutually imminent, where style is content, the 'how' is inseparable from the 'what', and the difference between fiction and reality is irrelevant. Navigating the folds, surfaces, and transformative possibilities of a too-large bear suit, Bauer performs a series of metamorphoses that challenge, obscure, and exploit her diverse capacities as a performer, to exercise and exorcise questions about the use of self onstage.
Through surrender to the theater and its discontents, in (BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS), self-expression drops the self and expression takes over.
“Ms. Bauer is a shape-shifter…lunging for her desperate pleasures as if her life depended on securing them, and earning our hearts in the process.” - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
Co-production support was provided by Workspace Brussels (BE) and Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Gent, BE). Funding was provided the Flemish Community Commission of the Brussels Capital Region.
ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONESmean Cait: a fairytale in progress
YVONNE MEIER Mad Heidi
SUN JAN 15 7:30 PM
Total run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $15 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONES mean Cait: a fairytale in progress
After two years of focusing on revivals of his earlier work, (What We're Made Of for Philadelphia Dance Projects and THEM at PS 122 and last year's American Realness), Ishmael Houston-Jones has embarked on a new project, mean Cait, directed by Houston-Jones and created in collaboration with performers Robert Maynard and Gillian Walsh.
Inspirations for mean Cait are as diverse as golden knee pads, enchanted boxer-briefs, water boarding, step-ball-change, ball torture, and more Stevie Nicks than anyone would ever want to hear.
“Unabashedly gay and gritty“ - David Velasco, ARTFORUM
YVONNE MEIER Mad Heidi
Mad Heidi is a portrait of a Swiss woman, battling against her Swiss expectations. Lifelong traumas like, "how many times must I hike up the mountain?" surface. A sexy witch-like broom dance becomes unavoidable. Consumed by equal parts madness, rage, and sadness, "Heidi" descends into the netherworld of the collective unconscious in order to ferociously and boisterously destroy Swiss stereotypes and clichés. The work evokes is a sense of homesickness and longing as the performer appears alone before her audience -- naked, both inside and out.
“A true east village renegade with a special talent for creating havoc…” - Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
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SHOW & TELL
DD DORVILLIER
CONVERSATION: Empty Spaces/Permanent Dances: A lecture and presentation on Danza Permanente
FRI JAN 6 6:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
The choreography of Danza Permanente comes from a musical composition created in Vienna two centuries ago by a nearly deaf man. Initially written for four stringed instruments, it's transposed to be seen, played by four dancers. They embody the musical structure, behaviors, and dynamics of the string quartet over time, and through space. The dancers behave as sound, in their becoming of visible music. We propose that you watch this performance in near-silence as you would listen to music in a shadowy room. The transposition is by DD Dorvillier and Zeena Parkins and dancers Fabian Barba, Nuno Bizarro, Walter Dundervill, Naiara Mendioroz and Heather Kravas. The acoustic environment created by Zeena Parkins and lighting design by Thomas Dunn follow the score and frame this visible music.
Followed by a conversation led by André Lepecki with Dorvillier and her collaborators, Zeena Parkins, and Thomas Dunn.
REGGIE WILSON / FIST & HEEL PERFORMANCE GROUP
CONVERSATION: Why A Dramaturg?
SAT JAN 7 12:30 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Reggie Wilson will be joined by dramaturg and historian Susan Manning to discuss the research process for his forthcoming work, (project) Moseses Project, slated for BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 2013. The conversation will explore how Wilson came to work with a dramaturge on this project, how the working relationship has evolved, and how the research process has embraced numerous tangents and unexpected connections in its explorations of Moses as story, myth and metaphor. Through this exploration Wilson and Manning will query “why a dramaturge” not only in Wilsons’ new work but also more broadly in the field of dance-making.
LUCIANA ACHUGAR
WORK-IN-PROGRESS SHOWING: FEELingpleasuresatisfactioncelebrationholyFORM
SUN JAN 8 12:00 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Inspired by the 1960's psychedelic experience, and its quest for enlightened interconnectivity and transcendence through altered states of consciousness, FEEL…FORM presents dance as a celebration of experience, and pleasure as the consummation of experience. With award-winning collaborators Michael Mahalchick (sound design) and Carrie Wood (lighting design), a quartet of women engage achugar’s signature durational phrasing, multiplying the dancers' movements to create an organic form reflecting both rigorous formalism and corporeal excess.
MIGUEL GUTIERREZ AND THE POWERFUL PEOPLE
WORK IN PROGRESS SHOWING: And lose the name of action
MON JAN 9 1PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
And lose the name of action is a new performance in development by Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, featuring Gutierrez and a star studded cast: Michelle Boulé, Hilary Clark, Luke George, K.J. Holmes and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Inspired by discoveries in neuroscience and paranormal phenomena, and drawing on the mysterious logic of improvisation, this new piece pushes Gutierrez’s persistent questions about the wonder of living with an ephemeral body into the beyond. Wry and perplexing, And lose the name of actiontreats the inscrutability of dance as its inherent power and savors its unique ability to be something that doesn’t make sense. The piece includes sound design by Neal Medlyn, lighting by Lenore Doxsee, and visuals and writing by Boru O’Brien O’Connell.
The work in process showing will be followed by a moderated conversation with writer Jenn Joy.
BIG DANCE THEATER
WORK IN PROGRESS SHOWING: Ich, KürbisGeist.
TUES JAN 10 3:30PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE STAGE
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Ich, Kürbisgeist, written by Sibyl Kempson, is a theatrical piece of writing, but it is not a play in the usual sense. The language itself manifests the harsh landscape of a world facing destruction, populated by five crude people speaking a rigorous, specific, invented language. Every word is semi-recognizable, an amalgam of English, Swedish, German and Sid Ceasar. The language is as tough and unforgiving as the windswept, uncultivated landscape. The five characters boast of surviving prior catastrophes and they bitterly recount lost times. They harvest pumpkin seeds; they sing; they dance; they reminisce. They are ever under threat from vaguely understood, external forces from which there is no protection. They are grounded in fear, absurd and doomed. Their outrageous costumes, created by visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra, place us in an unspecified medieval European locale. Characters pop up on video, further rattling our sense of time and place. Ich, Kürbisgeist, strangely comic, full of rawness, fragmentation, confusion, and superstition, is in the end a contemplation of language itself.
"Ut's o gaad life if yo dan't wikken"
(It's a good life if you don't weaken.)
KurbisGeist is co-commissioned by The Chocolate Factory and PS 122. Big Dance is grateful to the Abrons Art Center for residency support. The finished piece will premiere at The Chocolate Factory in Oct. 2012.
KEITH HENNESSY
CONVERSATION: Turbulence (a dance about the economy)
WEDS JAN 11 5:30 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Turbulence (a dance about the economy) is a bodily response to economic crisis, an experimental hybrid of contemporary dance, performance, agitprop, and circus. A collaborative creation choreographed by Keith Hennessy, Turbulence features a core company from San Francisco, musician Jassem Hindi from Paris, and 10 local performers. Modeling efficient solutions to economic and ecological crises, Turbulence uses resources sparingly and is adaptable to various venues. The intent of Turbulence is to inspire engagement and discourse in response to current economic crises and their historical antecedents visible is a performance work that explores epic journeys, myths, dreams, and memories of the known world and an imagined future in an unknown land.
HOLCOMBE WALLER WITH CYNTHIA HOPKINS AND MIGUEL GUTIERREZ
CONVERSATION: Surfacing & Song Based Performance
THURS JAN 12 5:30 PM
ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street / FREE / Reservations Required / RVSP: americanrealness@gmail.com / AbronsArtsCenter.org
Singer, songwriter and performance maker Holcombe Waller will be joined by choreographer and music maker Miguel Gutierrez for a conversation exploring the indefinable genre of contemporary song-based performance. Their conversation will seek to elucidate an understanding of how song-based performance has the potentiality to arrive in a similar pefromative space as the work of more theater or dance based contemporary performance. In addition these artists will explore the specific realities around the creation of Waller’s newest song-based performance, Surfacing, a collection of sung narrativesexploring Catholic beautification, anarchist communist revolution, health care activism and the history-in-the-remaking of contemporary performance art, that toe the line between realism and fantasy.
@r SHOP
Opening up new channels of information and exchange for the American Realness audience, the shop will feature performance texts, catalogues, companion publications, journals and artist merchandise. Featured publications include performance texts by Miguel Gutierrez, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Sibyl Kempson and Karinne Keithley Syers all published by the 53rd State Press.
Additionally the shop will carry back issues of the beloved Movement Research Performance Journal, THEATER Magazine, and full series of publications from Danspace Project’s Choreographic Center Without Walls (CW2) PLATFORM series featuring catalogues created by artists and editors including Ralph Lemon & Katherine Profeta, Juliette Mapp & Ursula Eagly, Trajal Harrell, and Judy Hussie-Taylor.
@r CAFÉ
by Push Cart Coffee
Before, after, or in between performances, the café offers American Realness patrons- coffee, tea, baked goods, pastries, sandwiches, hot paninis, salad, soup, wine and beer. Located on site at the Abrons Arts Center, the café is the perfect place to gather, hangout, meet with artists and colleagues, or just pickup a snack, stop by to enjoy a casual atmosphere and to engage in a dialogue around all the Realness you've been served.
DANCE-TECH .TV MEDIA HUB
Dance-tech.tv founder and director Marlon Barios Solano and co-producer Josephine Dorado will be the official embedded_vloggers @ American Realness 201, creating and distributing video podcasts in conversation with festival artists and audiences. In addition, they will post video excerpts from festival performances online through Dance-tech.tv and on-site at the Abrons Arts Center in the dance-tech.tv media hub. Stop by the Media Hub to view poscasts and video excerpts and find out more about dance-tech.tv
ADDITIONAL
UPCOMING
PERFORMANCES...
YVONNE MEIER THE SHINING
DECEMBER 13-18 & 20-23, 2011
NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
The Shining is a thrilling dance-installation set inside the intricate maze of 350 refrigerator boxes. Originally created and performed in 1993 at Performance Space 122, the Bessie Award winning, The Shining puts audience members and performers together in an extraordinarily crafted, anxiety producing, living, breathing and inimitable environment.
This reconstruction of The Shining is made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius. Additional support for The Shining is given by contributors to The DTW Commissioning Fund at New York Live Arts.
