Dance | Performance Space New York

untitled feminist show

Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company (NY)
UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW (NY Premiere)

A “brief, joyous, mute extravaganza of dance, mime, and movement”
– New York Magazine

“Does hold nothing sacred? Rather little, save a devotion to the theatrical medium and a desire to challenge complacency, encouraging audiences to think – and feel – for themselves.”
– The Village Voice

“She offers the pleasure of brazen theatrical inventiveness” –
The New Yorker

“Lee confirms herself as one of the best experimental playwrights in America.”
– Time Out New York

“Her work constantly turns itself inside out. It’s also constantly fascinating.”
– The Wall Street Journal

“The clearest indication that the avant-garde isn’t dead, and has never been funnier.”
– New York Magazine

Named Best Provocative Playwright by The Village Voice

In Young Jean Lee’s latest experiment, UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW, six charismatic stars of the downtown theater, dance, cabaret, and burlesque worlds come together to invite the audience on an exhilarating, nearly wordless journey through expressions of a fluid and limitless sense of identity.

Conceived & directed by Young Jean Lee. Featuring Becca Blackwell, World Famous

*BOB*, Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo), Hilary Clark, Katy

Pyle & Regina Rocke. Choreography by Faye Driscoll, Morgan

Gould & Young Jean Lee, in collaboration with the performers.

Please note this performance contains nudity.

Originally commissioned by The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN) this production is a co-production of The Walker Art Center, Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Kunstenfestivaldesartes (Brussels), the 2011 Spalding Gray Award (Performance Space 122 in New York, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, On the Boards in Seattle, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis), and Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. Originally developed in association with Caleb Hammons. Funding support provided by the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the MAP/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Explorations Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Residency support from The Park Avenue Armory, The New Museum, Mount Tremper Arts, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

youngjeanlee.org

Co-presented by PS122 & Baryshnikov Arts Center as part of the 7th Annual COIL Festival
Baryshnikov Arts Center’s
Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St., Manhattan, NY
January 12 – Feb 4, 2012
60 min

$25, $20 (students / seniors)
$35 / $30 student, seniors (EXTENSION)

Choreography for Blackboards

Michael Kliën with Steve Valk (Ireland)
Choreography for Blackboards (US Premiere)

“Choreography is not to constrain movement into a set pattern, it is to provide a cradle for movement to find its own patterns.” – Michael Kliën

2001 a space odyssey: the appearance of a massive black monolith heralds a paradigm shift from mindless savage to calculated tool user. Now the monolith reappears in Brooklyn, in the shape of 6 imposing blackboards on a pristine white dance floor.

A cast of uniquely abled citizens including Paul Muldoon, “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.” (The Times Literary Supplement), heavyweight particle physicist Brian Schwarz (CUNY), members of Occupy Wall Street, an investment banker, and bright young things of dance Fitzgerald & Stapleton, surf the cusp of change, modeling potential routes to a new world order.

This is state of the art choreography from the most agile thinkers in contemporary dance.

PERFORMED BY:
Brian Schwartz, physicist. (Jan 8, 9)
Paul Muldoon, poet . (Jan 8)
Jeffrey Gormly, playwright. (Jan 8, 9, 10, 11)
Frank Hentschker, graduate theater professor. (Jan 8,9)
Ivan Martinez, Investment Banker. (Jan 8, 9, 10, 11)
Eugenia Manwelyan, urban planner and
Occupy Wall Street activist. (Jan 8, 9)
Tal Beery, sculptor and Occupy Wall Street activist. (Jan 9, 10)
Emma Fitzgerald, performance artist. (Jan 10)
Aine Stapleton, performance artist. (Jan 11)
Tony Schultz, physicist and dancer. (Jan 10, 11)
Leina Bocar, artist/activist/film maker (Jan 10, 11)

Made possible with support from Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Culture Ireland. Originally produced by Daghdha Dance Company, Ireland.

Presented by The Invisible Dog Art Center and Performance Space 122 as part of the
7th Annual COIL Festival
The Invisible Dog Art Center

51 Bergen St., Brooklyn, NY
January 8 – 11, 2012
1 hr 30 min

RetroFutureSpective All Day Dance Class

All Day Dance Class

Your don’t have to be a dancer to dance the day away with Performance Space 122!

4 back to back classes with Yvonne Meier, Yoshiko Chuma, Jack Ferver, and Sarah Michelson that culminate in an Open Movement celebration and a free screening of FAME caps the evening off.
Plus Carla Peterson will be on hand for some Gilda Radner style life-coaching sessions.

Kid’s class with Yvonne Meier
12PM
In this children’s dance class we will be using the concept of straight round and curvy for a warm up, then we will move on to a extraordinary freeze dance. We will roll and jump straight ,as a pencil, across the floor, finally to end we will use a rope to crawl under and jump over.

Class with Yoshiko Chuma
1:30PM
Through experiences of passing over the border — the border between danger or safety – we will make the creation, dangerous brain, dangerous sweat, and dangerous memory of the border.
For choreographers.

Show Me Your Dance Mov(i)es
3pm
Choreographer and Performance Artist Jack Ferver utilizes two of his favorite films: The Piano Teacher and Showgirls, as source material for a workshop exploring how film can be a vehicle for our personal mythologies and can act as a means of inhabiting facets of our personality and exploding them into performances that are entertaining and in-depth (i.e. “how do you perform a close-up?). Scenes will be viewed, and rapidly turned into dance. NC-17 for sure.

Learn an “impossible solo” from Sarah Michelson
4:30PM

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Presented as part of the 30th Anniversary RetroFutureSpective Festival
Becoming a Friend with Benefits is the single best way to experience the RetroFutureSpective Festival. Friends at the Special Friend level ($75) and above enjoy a PS122 Passport – 5 tickets valid to PS122 through June 30, 2011 to be used in any combination to onsite events.

The Green Surround

Heather Kravas
The Green Surround
Heather Kravas upends the effortful, immodest, non-sequential physicality of 9 women and the practice of perfection. Through repetition and the endless rhythmic possibilities of classical and anti-classical movement, text, and atmospheric sound, individuality oozes from the cracks of a stoic mass as the facade of idealised beauty is broken.

Performed by: Laurie Berg, Milka Djordjevich, Cecilia E., Carolyn Hall, Lyndsey Karr, Sarah Beth Percival, Liz Santoro, Antonietta Vicario, Elizabeth Ward

Choreography & Direction: Heather Kravas
Performance Advisor & Eye: Rebecca Brooks
Composer & Sound Design: Vorhees aka Dana Wachs
Scenography: Jason Starkie
Lighting Design: Madeline Best
Costume Constructor: Maria Garcia

Heather Kravas grew up in Pullman, WA where, under the tutelage of Deirdre Wilson, she studied classical ballet and the experimental theater exercises of Jerzy Grotowski. In the early 90’s, she moved to Seattle, incorporating modern and improvisation techniques with teachers Joan Skinner, Hannah Wiley and Stephanie Skura. As a young performer, she co-founded the repertory company D-9 and danced with Amii LeGendre. Also in Seattle, she created her first dances in collaborations with Maureen Whiting, Karn Junkinsmith and Jack Magai. An independent artist working, and working to work in New York City since 1998, she has performed for Marion Ballester, Jennifer Allen, Amy Cox, Yvonne Meier, and most significantly, DD Dorvillier, whose work she continues to tour. In Spring 2010 she was part of MoMA’s retrospective, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. In 1999, as the nono twins, Kravas and cellist Okkyung Lee began an investigation of emotionally charged, repetitive improvisations that they performed frequently at experimental music venues in NYC. From 2003-2008, Kravas collaborated with Canadian/European artist, Antonija Livingstone, generating several works, including two, multi-evening performance events,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX – a situation for dancing. And (no more village), both exhibited at international theaters and festivals throughout the US, Canada and Europe. Her work has been presented at MR @ Judson Church, the Kitchen, DTW, Tonic, On the Boards, Kaaistudios (Brussels), City of Women (Ljubljana), Springdance (Moscow), Festival TransAmerique (Montreal), Festival Antipodes (Brest) and Chez Bushwick and awarded support from Washington State Arts Commission, Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the Yard, f.u.s.e.d., and the CCN de Franche-Comte a Belfort. Heather lives and works between New York, Seattle, and Montesquieu-Volvestre, France.

Madeline Best (Light Design)Madeline Best designs dances, installations, lighting and video and is the Production Manager at the Chocolate Factory Theater. Best graduated from Bennington College, grew up in Durham NC and currently lives in Brooklyn NY. She has designed lights for Luciana Achugar’s Bessie award winning PURO DESEO, Neal Nedlyn, Milka Djordjevich/Chris
Peck and Len Jenkin. Performance experience includes work on The Chocolate Factory Theater’s 2010 Resident Project Selective Memory (with Brian Rogers) as well as work with Choreographer Juliana
May/MayDance.

Vorhees (Sound Design) Vorhees is the nom de guerre of Dana Wachs, an audio engineer, musician, and sound designer, based in New York City. Vorhees began as a recording project in 2005, focusing on creating analogue textures and soundscapes for extended ambient listening sessions based on memories of childhood and teenage excursions to the Pine Barrens of South Jersey. Recordings, and now live performance, has evolved into more contemporary song structures while retaining her original ambient experiments, rejecting any assistance from a laptop. Ms. Wachs has applied her skill and artistry in music and audio production to world tours of Internationally acclaimed musicians such as Cat Power, MGMT, M.I.A., Lykke Li, and St. Vincent to name but a few, as well as in Greene Street Recording Studios, (now defunct birthplace of classic albums by Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Sonic Youth, and New Order). She has also acted as a consultant for Visionaire Magazine’s SOUND issue, sound design for NY Fashion Week designers Rachel Comey, Imitation of Christ, Y + Kei, Wink, Sebastian Pons and Jess Holzworth, and her composition “Condensor” featured in a short film by the SOMNUS collective for their 2008 F/W presentation. Vorhees continues to record and perform with recordings planned for release the summer of 2011.

Rebecca Brooks is a dance artist and Alexander Technique teacher based in NYC. Recent performance work includes projects with Marina Abramovic, Amanda Loulaki, Jillian Pena, Katy Pyle, robbinschilds, and Kathy Westwater, and next month she will be performing in a work by Susan Rethorst at Danspace Project. Her own performance works have been presented throughout NYC. Rebecca has taught classes in the Alexander Technique at Balance Arts Center, CLASSCLASSCLASS, Movement Research, the Fieldston School and the American Dance Festival, and she also teaches privately. BA, Sarah Lawrence College; Co-founder, AUNTS; co-curator, Movement Research Festival Spring 2007: Reverence (Irreverence); Program and Event Manager, Movement Research; Artistic Director, Rockbridge Artist Exchange. www.rebeccakelleybrooks.com

Jason Starkie, visual artist, studied painting in the late 80’s in San Francisco at the Art Institute and has had studios in Chicago, Seattle, New York, Montreal and Leipzig. He is currently developing a new body of work in DUMBO.

This performance was supported in part by TestPerformanceTest & made possible with commissioning support from Performance Space 122 and the Jerome Foundation.

US PREMIERE | DANCE
Wednesday, May 4 – Saturday, May 7, 2011
Wednesday – Friday at 7:30PM,
Saturday at 7:30 & 9:30PM
ALSO performed during COIL 2012: Jan 7-11, 2012

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your The Green Surround program online!

SWAN

Nonsense Image
Jack Ferver’s QWAN Company
SWAN!!!A sexy, scary, spectacular, salacious, stunning, startling werk from Jack Ferver’s QWAN (Quality Without a Name) Company.

The same people who brought the smashing success NOTES!!! (their incredibly dramatic parodied reading of Notes on a Scandal) returns with SWAN!!! (their even more incredibly dramatic parodied reading of this years dance away smash: Black Swan).

Nina (Jenn Harris) is freaking out. She is freaking out because she really wants to play the Swan Queen in the new production of Swan Lake. She is also freaking out because she is crazy. And so is her mother (Randy Harrison). And so is the choreographer (Christian Coulson) she works under, and we mean works under. And so is the former prima ballerina Winona Ryder, we mean Beth (Matthew Wilkas).

The pressure is a lot and she finds a little release, and we mean release, when she meets hot new bad ballet girl in town, Lily (Jack Ferver). However she gets a little more than nervous when it seems Lily may want her part. Things boil up and over and there is self-mutilation and violence towards MOM and cunnilingus and jetés.

Jack Ferver’s Rumble Ghost recently premiered at PS122, and was brought back for their COIL Festival in 2011. His A Movie Star Needs A Movie was commissioned by The New Museum in 2009. It was also presented in American Realness at Abrons Art Center and at Theatre de Vanves in 2010. He was the first choreographer to be presented at The New Museum with I Am Trying to Hear Myself in 2008. He remounted the work at PS122 in 2009. In 2009 he also premiered his evening length work Death is Certain to sold out audiences at Danspace Project. Death is Certain was workshopped through the Dance Theater Workshop space grant, Studio Series. Ferver was also an artist in residence from 2008-2009 at Chez Bushwick. In 2008 Ferver premiered MEAT, his second Mondo Cane! commission from Dixon Place. Ferver’s first Mondo Cane! commission was in 2007 for his first full length work: When We Were Young And Filled With Fear. Shorter and solo works have been presented at Dance New Amsterdam (NYC), LaMaMa E.T.C. (NYC), The Culture Project (NYC), and Envoy Gallery (NYC). As an actor, credits include Strangers With Candy (Comedy Central), Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation (Off-Broadway), and numerous other film and theatre projects. His writing was recently published in the magazine Novembre.

Photo by Christian Coulson

WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE
Thursday – Saturday, March 10-12, 2011
Thu + Fri at 8, Sat at 7:30 & 10

Tickets: $15