Archived Events | Page 59 of 96 | Performance Space New York Spring Gala

Beethoven Live

“What does is not a complete experiment, something that you have not seen before, it is something completely different than you have ever seen.”
-Jana Navratova, Dance Zone Magazine

Czech co-founders of the LaS Company, choreographer Kristina Lhotáková and director/sound designer Ladislav Soukup, create a unique documentary dance-theatre working with non-dancers, “real people,” as inspiration.

For the New York segment of The Name of the Game, a piece that explores the irrevocability of nature, they have assembled a corps of four young people, aged fifteen to twenty-five, who were cast in NYC and who then traveled to Prague to work with the LaS company. The youthful cast, growing up, changing every day, and literally leaping into their lives, embodies the unstoppable forward mechanism of nature, progress, and moments that will never come back. Yet the project seeks to reinvent the “unrepeatable” with aesthetic tools of rhythm, pictures, and movement.

In October, 2005 Lhotáková and Soukup opened “The Name of the Game – Queretaro” at the Encuentro del Cuerpo Festival in Mexico, with Mexican performers. Another version of “The Name of the Game” is currently being worked on in Prague. These three variations will be presented as a mini-festival in Prague in late 2007 at the Archa theatre.

Photos courtesy of LaS company.

Beethoven Live Logos

PLAYING AS PART OF
COIL FESTIVAL 08
SHOWTIMES: Jan 9th at 10pm, Jan 10th at 10pm, Jan 12th at 7pm, Jan 13th at 9pm

NY Premiere
Sunday, October 28-
Saturday, November 3 2007

What if Saori Had a Party?

(a.k.a. Saori’s Birthday)

Created by John Moran
in collaboration with:
Saori Tsukada, Katherine Brook
and Joseph Keckler

“I am convinced that there is no more important composer working today, than John Moran. His works have been so advanced as to be considered revolutionary.”
-Phillip Glass

Saori portrays a magical, Anime-Children’s Show-Host, sealed forever inside a protective, computerized-bubble. Trouble begins one day as Saori decides to have a birthday party; and ‘Death’ (Joseph Keckler) arrives to deliver the present of ‘Youth’ (Katherine Brook).

This is Moran trademark style of full-length, high precision music-theater; delivered by 3 masters of the craft: Saori Tsukada, Joseph Keckler and Katherine Brook. This commission by Performance Space 122 also marks the 20th anniversary of Moran’s work, which began at P.S.122 with his groundbeaking techno-opera, ‘Jack Benny!’, in 1987-88.

Click for your sound souvenir from ‘What if Saori had a Party?’

John Moran in the press:

“Moran is a modern-day Mozart, on a mission to revolutionize music and theater.” – The Boston Globe

“…stays in the mind as phenomenally imaginative music-theater: dizzying lipsynch’ theatrics, intricate staging and mournful, minimalist patterns combine to create an operatic world unlike any other.” – The New York Times

“One of most important (and underrated) figures in the avant garde scene.” – Timeout
“Moran is a bonafide, American original. He has forged a path as singular (and enduring) as his electronic, god daddy ” – NY Newsday

Music/Soundscape and Direction by John Moran; Choreography by Moran and Saori Tsukada

Photo by Nolan Rosemond

PART OF
COIL FESTIVAL 08
SHOWTIMES: Jan 9th at 9.30pm, Jan 10th at 3:30pm, Jan 11th at 6.30pm, Jan 12th at 9.30 pm and Jan 13th at 6.30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

World Premiere
October 21-November 4 2007

A Bowl of Summer

As recommended by The New Yorker:
“This all-female troupe crosses two kinds of Japanese strangeness: Butoh extremity and infantilized pop. In party dresses and corpse-white makeup, they grimace and grin, scratch themselves and scarf down tofu. “A Bowl of Summer” draws on the Japanese Obon Festival, a kind of summer picnic with the dead. There’s a giant melon head with flashing red eyes, and plastic bags full of water hanging from the ceiling. One moment the girls look like backup dancers for a hard-rock band, the next they’re in the throes of death.” -Brian Seibert

Founded in 2000 and based in Osaka, this butoh-based all female troupe seeks to uncover new, original physical expression with a pop sensibility. Their choreography is born out of carefully observing elements from the physical memory of modern life and bringing them into new light. The group has gained popularity in Japan for embodying their name – the pure freshness of a bright blue sunny sky brimming full of pleasant dreams.

Performance Space 122 brings these Butoh rebels to New York for their first full engagement as part of the Japan Society’s “Turning Japanese” festival, The 2007 New York City-wide celebration commemorating the Japan Society’s centennial.

Inspired by the traditional Japanese Obon Festival, “A Bowl of Summer (Natsu no Utsuwa)” explores the universe created when life and death mingle with each other in the summer. During the summer Obon festival, the Japanese welcome their deceased ancestors back to the world, and after spending several days together, send them off to the other world. It is believed that they encounter not only the dead who have been resting peacefully in their graves, but also ghosts who still have attachments to our world, or those who have transformed into insects and other animals.

Read about A Bowl of Summer in “Poetry in Motion”from Oct 9th’s Star Ledger.

photos by Kaori Ho

Presented in association with The Japan Society and The CAVE New York Butoh Festival; supported by the Cultural Affairs Agency of Japan, and The Japan Foundation.

U.S. Premiere
October 18-21, 2007

Start Up

by Roland Schimmelpfennig

GTA’s Road Theater USA embarks on a hilarious theatrical adventure – or misadventure – as five actors (three German and two from the U.S.), two Austrian video artists and the GTA team go cross-country in a tricked out school bus, travelling from New York to Los Angeles in search of the “American Dream” and touring the world premiere of Start Up, a black comedy written specifically for GTA by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Germany’s most produced contemporary playwright.

Young Germans come to the U.S. to find their fortunes: their million euro idea? To sell German culture. Of course, that is exactly what GTA’s Road Theater USA is attempting as it travels across the country presenting this fast-paced farce.

A video team documents this ambitious road trip, then mixes the video material collected up to that point live during each performance where it is projected on set. This always new and expanded dramatic “Road Journal” will interact with the production of the play Start Up as background and stage design. The audience is treated to a unique, riotous and ever-changing performance-event, a combination of the filmed “reality” of the tour and the theatrical “fiction” of the Schimmelpfennig play.

The trip will take the troupe from New York through 24 cities in the U.S. over 7 weeks. They will travel 6,000 miles and perform in 24 locations – including sleepy villages like Edmonton, Kentucky, Las Vegas, the original sin city, melting pots like El Paso on the Texas/Mexico border and even an actual ghost town, Death Valley Junction – until they reach Los Angeles on the Pacific Ocean.

Running time: 75 minutes.

GTA’s Road Theater USA Start Up is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the ERP Fund (Transatlantic Program) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour.

On Saturday October 13 NY SALON will be holding a post-show debate and conversation.

U.S. Premiere
October 7-14, 2007
(no performance Monday, October 8)
Tuesday- Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays at 4:30 p.m.
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Avant-Garde-Arama Goes Clubbing

“Try as it may to maintain theatrical composure, always ends up degenerating, or exploding, into an all-out party.”
-flavorpill.net

P.S. 122’s longest-running series (25 years) is an action-packed, eye-popping multi-disciplinary mini-festival that always culminates in a DJ dance party. The latest eruption of breakout dance, music, theatre, performance, video/film and more are presented in 8 minutes or less. The ever-popular “40-Second-Street” segment invites the audience to sign-up and present their own express performance contribution, be it prepared or made up on the spot.

Hosted by Hattie Hathaway and HapiPhace!

Curated by Club Curators of the past and the present along with Salley May, Joe E. Jeffries, Ande Whyland, Miss Joan Marie Moossy and Henry Baumgartner, this very special AGA is a celebration, remembrance and current snapshot of the vital role clubs played and play in the world of NY performance.

Starring club legends including:

Friday, Oct. 5th:

Alien Comic

Factress

Duke Lafayette

“Nelson Sullivan Goes Clubbing 1985-1989”

Rose Wood

“Nelson Sullivan The Pyramid Years 1985-1989”

David Ilku

Paul Zaloom

Saturday, Oct. 6th

Carmelita Tropicana

“Nelson Sullivan Goes Clubbing 1985-1989”

Flawless Sabrina

Scott Matthew

The World Famous *BOB*

“Nelson Sullivan The Pyramid Years 1985-1989”

Rose Wood

Phoebe Legere

Featuring photo installation and slide show by by Ande Whyland

Video by Nelson Sullivan, edited by Robert Coddington and produced by Joe E. Jeffreys;
and capped off by a dance party with a mix by DJ Dany Johnson.

October 5 and 6, 2007
Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm
Tickets from $15, $10 (members)

Posts navigation

Older posts
Newer posts