Category: Performance

Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2
Xi Ban & Pi Huang Club (China)

Performance Space 122, Asia Society, and the China Shanghai International Arts Festival (CSIAF) come together for a second year of collaboration through multidisciplinary, music- focused emerging Chinese artists Xi Ban and Pi Huang Club.

Wrapped in an absurd and hyperbolic narrative, the music film, Sever revisits the ancient Chinese folktale of Diao Chan with live accompaniment by the modern Chinese band Xi Ban. Mixing classical instrumentation with westernized form, Xi Ban create an intriguing interplay between traditional idioms and pop culture references.

Drawing parallel lines between Qi-style Peking Opera and southern blues, Pi Huang Club matches the two main tones of this ancient performance with similarities in this distinctly American form.

Co-curated with Rachel Cooper.

“studio theatre forges boundless new power…” — Shanghai Weekly

Co-presented with Asia Society and China Shanghai International Arts Festival

Jan 13 – 7 & 9:30pm

Asia Society
725 Park Avenue, Manhattan

Free; Reservation Required

#COIL16

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Info about Xi Ban & Pi Huang Club coming soon!

Asia Society is the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context. Across the fields of arts, business, culture, education, and policy, the Society provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes collaboration to address present challenges and create a shared future.

Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational institution with offices in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Sydney and Washington, DC. For more information visit AsiaSociety.org.

 

 
China Shanghai International Arts Festival (CSIAF), which is hosted by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and organized by Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, is the only states-level International Arts Festival in China. Since 1999, driven by the concept of “innovation and development” with the emphasis on brand-effect development, CSIAF has grown into a flagship project for cultural exchange as well as one of the most influential festivals in the international art circles.
 
The China Shanghai International Arts Festival is held from Mid-October to Mid-November every year. The Festival consists of several sections, including stage performances, exhibitions, the Arts Space performance Series, performing arts fair, forums and seminars, public cultural activities, festivals in the Festival, and the Young Talents Program called “R.A.W.!”(Rising Artists’ Works). With a Galaxy of artistic classics an well as a dazzling display of original works and creative cultures, the arts festival will consistently present the most fabulous and splendid art feast to the audience from home and abroad.
 
Many masters and superstars have presented their excellent programs on the stage including the great conductors Zubin Mehta, the pianist Lang Lang, the cellists Mischa Maisky and Yo-Yo Ma, the violinist Itzak Perlman, the choreographer Alvin Ailey, etc. Plenty of world-renowned orchestras and ballet companies including Berliner Philharmoniker, The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Nederlands Dans Theater, Bejart Ballet Lausanne, etc. have left their classical charms on the festival stage.

Asia Society is located in the Manhattan neighborhood of the Upper East Side, which is host to some of the most famous museums in the world including the Met and Guggenheim.

 
Some PS122 staff recommendations for dining in the area are The East Pole located at 133 East 65th Street and Bel Ami Cafe located at 30 East 68th Street.
 

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Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2 is a major arts project of Shanghai Municipal Government sponsored by Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation. All participating artists are within RAW (Rising Artists Works), a new series of the CSIAF and a platform that develops new ideas and emerging artists from across China.

Jonathan Capdevielle
Adishatz / Adieu

Through formative teenage years spent learning to imitate pop icons like Madonna and singing the greatest hits from the 1980s, Adishatz / Adieu is a self-portrait of a performer; a collection of songs that wander between real life and fantasy.

Moving between music and conversation, memories of childhood are conjured alongside a past that continues to inform his shifting identity. On a journey to capture the personas of others, he strives to discover the most truthful version of himself. Sung a cappella, Adishatz / Adieu aims to study of the vulnerability of adolescence.

Concept and Performance: Jonathan Capdevielle
Lighting Technician: Patrick Riou
Stage Manager: Christophe Le Bris
Sound Manager: Johann Loiseau
Artistic Collaborator: Gisélle Vienne
Artistic Consultant: Mark Tompkins
Audio Assistant: Peter Rehberg
Touring Artistic Assistant: Jonathan Drillet
Administration: Léonor Baudouin and Manon Crochemore
Choir: Jed Aicher, Jeffrey Funaro, Greg Kefalas, Joey Kovach & Mattew Krob
Mirror-ball construction: Jenni Hensler

“With irony, perversion and off-kilter humor…. his mastery of the stage, his body, and his voice is phenomenal. A rare bird, indeed.” — Le Devoir

55 minutes running time, in French with English subtitles.

Co-presented with American Realness

Jan 15 – 7pm
Jan 16 – 8:30pm
Jan 17 – 4pm

Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse
466 Grand Street in Manhattan

$20

#COIL16

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Coming soon!

American Realness is a festival of dance and performance founded by tbspMGMT in partnership with the Abrons Arts Center.

Abrons Arts Center, located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is accessible by the F subway line to Delancey Street or the J/M/Z subway lines to Essex Street. This neighborhood is perhaps best known as once being a center of Jewish culture in the city, which is embodied in the famous Katz’s Delicatessen at 205 East Houston Street. The Lower East Side is also known for its numerous contemporary art galleries and its thriving nightlife.

 

Some staff picks for great restaurants in the area are Benson’s NYC at 181 Essex Street and dirtcandy at 86 Allen Street. Also, the Clinton Street restaurant row sits just west of Abrons Arts Center and is complete with pizzerias, tapas restaurants and local bars.

 

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Featured image by Alain Monot
 
Adishatz/Adieu is produced by Bureau Cassiopée. Adishatz/Adieu was commissioned by Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon dans le cadre de domaines – FR, Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort dans le cadre de l’accueil-studio – FR and BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen with the development support of Centre national de la Danse (FR). Additional support provided by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and Institut Français and with the help of DACM and the technical staff of Quartz, Scène Nationale de Brest.

Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A.
Michael Kliën (Austria)

In this one-time-only dance event, a multigenerational group of performers from the Martha Graham Dance Company’s past, present, and future will excavate their relationships to Graham and the underlying “movement forces” that bind them to one another, to Graham, and to the Company.

Organized by Austrian choreographer and artist Michael Kliën, Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. bypasses the institutionalized social structures of the Company to uncover new paths of organization and potential between its participants. The work utilizes strategies of social choreography developed in collaboration with dramaturge Steve Valk, who has organized a complementary discursive component that will unfold alongside the performance in an adjacent studio.

Audiences are invited to explore the work for any length of time and are encouraged to move freely between the two spaces.

Choreography: Michael Kliën
Dramaturgy: Steve Valk
Electronic Score: Volkmar Klien
Performers: Selected Martha Graham Company dancers and guests

Co-presented with New Museum and Martha Graham Dance Company

Jan 16 – 3pm to 7pm

Martha Graham Studios
55 Bethune Street, 11th floor, Manhattan

$20

#COIL16

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For the past several decades, Michael Kliën has been engaged in fundamentally deconstructing our civilization’s assumptions on choreography, dance and culture. He set out to redevelop choreography as an autonomous artistic discipline concerned with the workings and governance of patterns, dynamics and ecologies. In response to the urgency of our contemporary ecological situation, this new conception of choreography engages its social potential to pursue sustainable orders of human relations (Social Choreography). Choreography, as an Aesthetics of Change, assumes the creative practice of setting relations, or setting the conditions for new relations to emerge.

 

Over the years Kliën’s artistic development has been guided by the ideas of Gregory Bateson, Alain Badiou, Joseph Beuys, William Forsythe, Steve Paxton, Gordon Lawrence, Sophia Lycouris and numerous close artistic collaborators such as Steve Valk, Jeffrey Gormly, Volkmar Kliën and Nicholas Mortimore amongst others.

 

Steve Valk is a contemporary dance dramaturge, visual artist and designer, lecturer and leading figure in the emerging field of Social Choreography. Influenced by his experiences as Personal Assistant of theatre director Robert Wilson (1988—90) he joined Ballett Frankfurt as Head Dramaturge and creative collaborator for William Forsythe (1992—2004). From 1998 to 2004, this dramaturgical practice and a subsequent focus on trans-disciplinary networking strategies lead to the development of a new participatory/situational epistemology for the institution of contemporary dance. From 2004 to 2011, Steve Valk, in partnership with choreographer and Artistic Director Michael Kliën, became Head Dramaturge and artistic collaborator of Ireland’s Daghdha Dance Company. Since 2012 he has been Director of the newly founded Institute of Social Choreography in Frankfurt, where he currently lives.

Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a leading destination for new art and new ideas. It is Manhattan’s only dedicated contemporary art museum and is respected internationally for the adventurousness and global scope of its curatorial program.
 
The New Museum is the only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art in Manhattan and one of the leading contemporary art museums in the world. Founded in 1977, the New Museum was conceived as a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation on artists whose work had not yet had wide public exposure or critical acceptance. At its inception, the Museum lay somewhere between a grassroots alternative space and a major museum devoted to proven historical values. Today, the New Museum is a major cultural destination. Its size, name, and mission of “New Art, New Ideas” distinguishes it as a responsive institution that fosters innovation, collaboration, and understanding. newmuseum.org

 

 
The Martha Graham Dance Company has been a leader in the development of contemporary dance since its founding in 1926. Today, the Company is embracing a new programming vision that showcases masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. During its 90-year history, the Company has received acclaim from audiences and critics in more than 50 countries.
 
“These men and women easily embody the choreographer’s sense of dancers as angelic athletes,” says Robert Greskovic of The Wall Street Journal, while Marina Kennedy of Broadway World notes, “This is contemporary dance at its very best.” Siobhan Burke of The New York Times asks, “Can this please never go away?”

Martha Graham Studios is located in Greenwich Village, Manhattan and is accessible by the A/C/E subway lines at 14th Street. This famous region on the west side of Manhattan is home to Washington Square Park, New York University, Cooper Union, St. Marks Place and a host of independent film houses and Off-Broadway theaters. Martha Graham Studios is close to Hudson Street, where audiences can pick from a plethora of restaurants scattered throughout.

 

Aside from untold numbers of shopping and dining options, there are plenty of neighborly activities…for recreation-seekers without memberships to the area’s multiple gyms, the Hudson River and its well-traveled waterside trails are a short walk away. – The New York Times

 

 

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Featured image by Brigid Pierce
 
Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. is co-presented by the New Museum, as part of the Spring 2016 R&D Season: LEGACY; Martha Graham Dance Company, as part of its 90th season; and Performance Space 122 as part of the COIL 2016 Festival and is generously supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. PS122 presentation support provided by Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance and Jerome Robbins Foundation.