Residency Dates: June 5-11
Residency Showing: June 9 & 10, 8pm
In partnership with Henry Street Settlement•Abrons Arts Center
Showings will take place at Henry Street Settlement•Abrons Arts Center’s Experimental Theater,
466 Grand Street in Manhattan
Tess Dworman will use the PS122 Ramp 2017 residency to experiment with merging very different kinds of choreographic and improvisational material to become part of the same world. She initiated the process with a collage-like structure that pins together brief self-contained dances and situations varying in representationalism, abstraction, emptiness, realism, and fantasy. The performers conjure these qualities through scores that amplify ambiguity as a skill and the craft of oscillating between image and sensation. Her work has always explored meaning by willfully obscuring it in different ways. This next piece goes farther down this road to challenge how nonsensical parts can exist all together while maintaining the integrity and feeling of wholeness. The working title is Saints.
Tess Dworman is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer originally from Oak Park, IL. She studied at the Laban Centre in London and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a BFA in Dance. In New York, her work has been presented by AUNTS, Center for Performance Research, Catch, Dixon Place, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and New York Live Arts. She has been an artist in residence at Links Hall, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance Center, and currently at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Dworman has an ongoing teaching practice and collaboration with Laurel Atwell that operates under the moniker WellMan. Within this practice, Atwell and Dworman offer classes in qi gong and meditation as a means of integrating wellness with artistry. As a performer, Dworman has had the pleasure of working with Yanira Castro, Sam Kim, Tere O’Connor, Mariana Valencia, and Kim Brandt, among many others. Tessdworman.com
Performance Space 122’s Ramp residency program is designed to foster the creation of ambitious, new work from three New York City-based emerging artists working across genres, perspectives and cultures. With this residency, PS122 not only provides the space needed to work but also technical assistance, commissioning fees, marketing support as well as the confidence to make bold moves in new directions. ps122.org/ramp
Featured Image by Simon Couchel.
Tess Dworman’s work is being developed through Performance Space 122’s Ramp 2017 residency program with commissioning support from the Jerome Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Dance programming support provided by Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance and Jerome Robbins Foundation. Tess Dworman’s Ramp 2017 Residency provided by Henry Street Settlement•Abrons Arts Center.