Dance | Performance Space New York

Strange Action

lewis forever


“Isabel Lewis is a fierce and fiercely smart choreographer and dancer.” – Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

“Lewis’s Untitled Solo (Sweet Exorcist) contains poetic, powerful imagery and energy.” – Eva Yaa Asantewaa

This piece is about the peculiar act of performing.
This piece is about the possibility of making a solo that is not a dead end to autobiography and identity politics.
This piece is about Mr. T, headbanging, and Nicole Kidman.

STRANGE ACTION: a solo in three seemingly unrelated parts

In Isabel Lewis’ premiere evening-length solo show she resurrects her depiction of Mr. T, using him and a few other icons as the unexpected reference points of a discussion by way of performance about the strange act of performing itself. Making minimal use of stage design and media elements Lewis tightens the focus around the presence of the performer in an anti-gesamtkunstwerk, using language and movement to frame her interplay of associations and disassociations. Drawing on a range of references from B.A. Baracus to Beckett, Lewis weaves a circuitous narrative about altered states, imagination, connectivity, process, and fiction.

Concept and Performance by Isabel Lewis
Dramaturgy and Performance by Josep Maynou

Isabel Lewis is a Brooklyn and Berlin-based dance artist and curator from the Dominican Republic. She is a graduate of Hollins University (USA) where she majored in both Dance and Literary Criticism. In 2004 Isabel formed The Labor Union along with Erika Hand and presented work at the Cunningham Studios, Dance New Amsterdam, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, PS 122, and The Kitchen amongst other venues in Manhattan and the outer boroughs. Isabel now creates solo work, performs with her family art collective LEWIS FOREVER and with Ann Liv Young. She has also had the honor of working with Miguel Gutierrez, David Neumann, Levi Gonzalez, and Crystal Brown. Isabel was a Movement Research Artist in Residence and a Fresh Tracks Residency Recipient in 2005-2006 and was selected to take part in the Meeting Points Artist Exchange in Budapest in the summer of 2008. She has worked as an editor and writer for the Movement Research Performance Journal and was the curator for the dance series, Body Blend, at Dixon Place from 2005-2009. As a curator Isabel has also worked on the Movement Research Festival 2004: Improvisation is Hard and the Movement Research Festival Spring 2007: Reverence (Irreverence) as well as Re-Imagining Utopia, an Austrian and NYC artist exchange, a project of Movement Research (NYC), the Austrian Cultural Forum (NYC), and Tanzquartier Wien (Austria).

Josep Maynou studied Fine Arts in Barcelona (UB), Porto (Facultade Belas Artes Porto) and London (Middlesex University). Maynou has shown his work all over Europe highlighting Getxo Arte in Bilbao, Strip Art and Sala Pares in Barcelona, Galerie Eva Bracke in Berlin and Maoshabitos in Oporto among others. He has been working in different artistic fields and is now focused on media art often collaborating with Berlin-based media artist Arturo Steele. Reusing images and giving them new meanings, he creates visual collages which function as a continuous whole, as complete films unto themselves. The visual and rhythmic coherence of his films, achieved through a process of careful editing, makes reference to the manipulative power of audio-visual media. This process of recycling also leads to installing his work in different contexts such as TV repair shops, warehouses, abandoned spaces and second-hand stores.

Photo by Arturo Martinez Steele

This performance was supported by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation

World Premiere
June 3 – 6, 2010
Thu – Sat at 8PM, Sun at 6PM
Late Show: Sat, June 5 at 10PM
Thursday Night Social: June 3
$20, $15 (students/seniors)
ONLY $11 with a PS122 Passport
Find out more

Cinderella Toe Jam 2

toejam

toejam

Royal Pink explores restriction through the body, resulting in a dance that reveals an unusual and unexpected beauty – the transformation of body, lives, movement. The piece’s choreography stylizes the extreme concepts of corporeal perfection that dancers contend with, questioning the motivation and vulnerable psychology of the female performing body. MEI-BE WHATever is a New York City based dance ensemble fusing media technologies with contemporary movement. Exploring relationships between the body and technology, investigations culminate in the staging of multi-media events. Current work focuses on the simultaneity of the performance with its own live reproduction. This work was developed during the 2006-2007 Artist- in -Residency Program at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, NYC, with a commissioned from the American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program.

Thu, Apr 2 – Sun, Apr 5, 2010
Thursday – Saturday 8p
Sunday 6:30p
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Heaven

Heaven

BEST CHOREOGRAPHER 2008 – Best of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St.Paul City Pages

“Powerhouse” – Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

A near-imperceptible hum that mutates into angelic, wordless plainsong; later it embraces a grating, blurry rock effect and beautiful, hymnlike fragments sung by the group.” – New York Times

“The dancing follows a slowly expanding path…the hourlong “Heaven” feels mesmerizingly driven by a taut inner logic.” – New York Times

“The anti-Christs of classical dancing” – Molly Glentzer, The Houston Chronicle

Morgan Thorson teams with the sublime slowcore band LOW in pursuit of corporeal perfection in a real-time performance ritual. This reverential spectacle transfers the myth of perfection from the religious to the theatre world as a roving chorus of performers undertakes angelic choral singing and Thorson’s uniquely dynamic choreography. While extreme restriction is transformed into powerful kinesthetic expression, believers and non-believers, dance-enthusiasts and live music-lovers will experience HEAVEN‘s acute force of attraction.

Get a head start on Heaven, read PS122’s rundown on Morgan Thorson’s work and methods.

Heaven is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Diverseworks (Houston) in partnership with Performance Space 122 (New York), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and NPN.

Heaven was made possible by the Doris Duke Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project, a program administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation.

Photo by Cameron Wittig

October 20th we are hosting our first Conversation with Culture @ 7pm – 11th Street bar (11th Street b/w Avenue A & B)
Email artsdevelopment@ps122.org or morgan@ps122.org for your free reservation.
Participants include:

  • JAY WEGMAN, Director of the Abrons Art Center and and former Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
  • MORGAN THORSON, choreographer: HEAVEN premiering at Performance Space 122 on October 25th
  • JOHN MERZ, Diocese of New York Episcopal Chaplain to NYU
  • MICHAEL DE DORA JR., Executive Director, Center for Inquiry-New York City

N.Y. PREMIERE

Presented as part of COIL 2010
Thu, Jan 7-12, 2010

Sat, Jan 9 at 5pm
Sun, Jan 10 at 5pm
Mon, Jan 11 at 7:30pm
Tue, Jan 12 at 7:30pm

$20, $15 (students/seniors)

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Heaven program online!

    

within us

...within us

within us

“It is both striking and antiseptic. You think of office spaces, study halls, waiting rooms; the places in between the action.”
-Claudia LaRocco, The New York Times

“…eruptions of movement burn themselves into your brain-the residue of lives you can’t quite grasp but which you suspect might be your own.”
-Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

Set in a 360 degree hyper-intimate environment with audience members integrated among the performers …within us. examines the human instincts that lay at the core of physical and emotional conflict. Inspired by the images of violence in Jacob Landau’s visual artwork and focusing on the repression that exists all over the world and across time periods, the performers act as both aggressor and inflicted. Creating palpable tension and relief, …within us. continues mvworks’ investigation of kinetic transfer through movement.

…within us. is choreographed by Megan V. Sprenger and features Tara O’Con, Kendra Portier, Alli Ruszkowski, and Richert Schonorr with Lighting by Joe Levasseur, Sound by Jason Sebastian, Set by Brad Kisicki, and Costumes by Mary McKenzie.

mvworks, a contemporary dance company based in New York City, was founded in 2005 by Megan V. Sprenger. mvworks strives to engage viewers in dance through an intensely kinetic, unpolished movement style that is driven by clear emotional intent, creating powerful performance that connects with the audience beyond their viewing experience.

Running time: 40 minutes. No late seating is allowed for this performance.

Presented as part of COIL 2010
Wed, Jan 6 6:30pm
Fri, Jan 8 9:30pm SOLD OUT
Sat, Jan 9 4:30pm

Original Spring 2009 Dates:
Sun, May 17 – Sun, May 24

Solo and SoloShow

maria hassabi


“Gazing at this exquisitely designed living sculpture, you also feel your own body straining with Hassabi, and in the slow friction between these two views, mysterious emotions ignite.”
– Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

“The boundaries between dance, artwork, installation and performance are subtly blurred…every sculptural position suggests unverifiable meaning…The quality of the darkening light is as beautiful as a painting, but the effect – the music, the spatial emptiness – is pure theater.” – Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times (on GLORIA)

A diptych of two autonomous evening-long solos that play between opposing orientations. The performer moves from a solitary contemplation in Solo, to a devotion to ‘show-culture’ in SoloShow. Hassabi continues her rigorous exploration of representations of the female body – embedded within art history, pop culture, and the performance of daily life – dissolving into the physicality of contemporary dance.

Performed alternately by Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas;
Thu, Fri, Sat at 8 – Maria Hassabi
Fri, Sat at 10 / Sun at 6 – Hristoula Harakas
Lighting by Joe Levasseur, clothing by ThreeAsFour, dramaturgy by Marcos Rosales, sound score by James Lo, and set design by Scott Lyall and Hassabi.

Crossing the Line (September 12 – October 3, 2009) is FIAF’s fall festival, conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of transdisciplinary artists working in France and New York City. Initiated, conceived, and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, the 3rd annual edition of this inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival further develops its focus on artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. www.fiaf.org

Performa 09 (November 1 – 22, 2009) is the third edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. www.performa-arts.org

With funding from the National Performance Network, MCAF supported by the N.Y.C. Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by LMCC and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston and a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation.. Co-produced and presented by Performance Space 122, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) as part of the Crossing the Line Festival, and the 2009 Visual Art Performance Biennial, Performa 09.
Photo by Marcelo Krasilcic

WORLD PREMIERE
Presented as part of COIL 2010

SoloShow
Jan 11 at 4:30pm
Jan 12 at 4:30pm
Jan 12 at 9:30pm
SOLD OUT: Jan 11th at 9:30am

Offsite at a private studio
West 27th btwn 6th & 7th


Fall 09 Run:
Solo
In association with Crossing the Line
Tue, Sept 29 – Sun, Oct 4


SoloShow

In association with Performa 09
Thu, Nov 12 – Sun, Nov 15

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Solo Program and SoloShow Program online!

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