Gina Gibney
January 31, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
Gina Gibney's choreography always reminds me of what's most important to me about art: serious attention to craft and an equally serious concern about human connection and communication. Gina is a thoughtful spokesperson for the art of dance. I've always enjoyed our encounters and usually go away feeling a little more focused and motivated as a result. I hope you'll be similarly inspired by our discussion about her work, including her development of The Distance Between Us, which premiered at the Ailey Citicorp Theater in November 2007.
This year, Gina’s company celebrates its 10th Anniversary as an all-female troupe. See below for updated information on Gibney’s projects.
GUEST BIO
Gina Gibney’s choreography has been widely presented and commissioned in the United States and abroad at such venues as Danspace Project, White Bird Dance, Yale Repertory Theater, The Duke on 42nd Street Theater, WORKS & PROCESS at the Guggenheim Museum and elsewhere. In response to her growing concern about the status of women in the professional dance world, she reorganized her company as an all-female ensemble in 1997. Since that time, she has created six evening-length works exploring the humanity and physicality of women. In 2000, she launched the Domestic Violence Project, a groundbreaking project that offers dance and creative expression to women who are survivors of domestic abuse. She is the founder of Studio 5-2, an officer of Danspace Project's Board of Directors, and a trustee of Dance/USA. Gibney graduated with honors and received an MFA in Dance from Case Western Reserve University.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Catch a sample of Gina Gibney’s work at the dancemOpolitan group show at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, March 14-15, 9:30 pm. For reservations, call 212-967-7555 or visit www.joespub.com.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary as an all-female troupe, Gina Gibney Dance holds its annual Women at Work gala on June 2 at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. The gala will feature a mini-retrospective performance, including excerpts from Coming from Quiet (1998), Time Remaining (2002) and unbounded (2005), and a new work developed in collaboration with survivors of domestic violence. This program will be repeated for the public on June 5 (7:30pm) as part of the Tisch Summer Dance Residency Festival.
LINK
Gina Gibney Dance at http://www.ginagibneydance.org/
Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at
http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Luciana Achugar and Mary Cochran
January 29, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
Today, we’ll hear from Mary Cochran (Chair of the Dance Department, Barnard College of Columbia University) and Luciana Achugar (2007 Bessie Award-winning choreographer) about Sugar Salon, a program dedicated to mentoring, commissioning and presenting women at the forefront of contemporary choreography.
GUEST BIOS:
Luciana Achugar
Luciana Achugar is a Brooklyn-based Uruguayan choreographer. After moving to New York upon graduation from Cal Arts in 1995, Achugar danced with several choreographers, including Chameckilerner and John Jasperse. From 1999 to 2003, she worked in a close collaborative relationship with choreographer Levi Gonzalez. Their work was presented in New York by Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Dance-in-Progress at The Kitchen, and at Dance Theater. Achugar has also worked collaboratively with visual artists Marcos Rosales and Michael Mahalchick.
Mary Cochran
Department of Dance Chair and Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Barnard College of Columbia University, Mary Cochran has performed and taught on every continent except Antarctica. A renowned soloist with Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1984-1996, Cochran continues her association with Taylor to this day having completed 19 restagings of his masterworks and as Director of the Paul Taylor School’s Summer and Winter Intensives. Cochran has taught at numerous colleges and conservatories including Mills College, the Juilliard School, University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee in May of 2005.
UPCOMING EVENT:
See Sugar Salon's performances at Abrons Arts Center (February 15-16), featuring works by the 2007-08 residents: Luciana Achugar ("Franny and Zooey"), Renée Archibald ("Curtain Wall") and Heather McArdle/BLUEPRINTVIOLATION (excerpt from "Ballad of Arrivals & Departures"). Choreographer mentor Donna Uchizono will moderate a post-performance discussion with the artists on Friday, February 15. For full schedule and ticketing details, call 212-352-3101 or visit http://www.theatermania.com.
INFORMATION LINKS:
Department of Dance, Barnard College: http://www.barnard.edu/dance
Williamsburg Art NeXus (WAX): http://www.wax205.com
Abrons Arts Center: http://www.henrystreet.org/arts
Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Jen Abrams
January 24, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
One of the interviews I’m most proud of was conducted in late 2007 with dancer-choreographer Jen Abrams. I’m delighted to bring this episode out of the archives and present it in Body and Soul’s new home.
When our "half-hour" interview concluded, we were amused to see that it had actually lasted a full hour! But that's what it takes to tell even part of the story of her work with the WOW Cafe Theater collective, an historic and essential part of the still-hearty cultural abundance of Manhattan's rapidly-changing East Village. Listening to Jen talk about her background in contact improvisation, I discovered a fascinating connection between contact improvisation and the "open source," grassroots nature of WOW. Her intensity and strength as an artist working in dance, theater and poetry are more than matched by the tenacity of this theater collective and space that she so clearly loves.
And here’s her bio:
Jen Abrams’ work has been presented at BAX, HERE, Dixon Place, the Nuyorican Poets Café, and the Bowery Poetry Club, as well as at WOW Café Theater, where she has been an active member for seven years.
She has produced three full-length concerts of her own work at WOW: Itch (2000), Saturn Return (2001), and Surfacing (2002), as well as two shared bill evenings: As I Was Saying (2004, with Risa Jaroslow and Eva Lawrence) and Asunder (2006 with Clarinda Mac Low and Tara O’Con.). She was a 2005 BAX space grantee, and is co-curator and co-producer with Sally Silvers of TalkTalk WalkWalk, an annual poetry and dance festival. Her choreographic work has also been seen at WOW in the stage plays The Skriker by Caryl Churchill, All Eyes, All Sides – Beckett One Acts, Naomi Wallace’s Slaughter City, and Moira Cutler’s MetaMeshugenaMorphosis and Sonofabitch Stew, all with Dogsbody Theater. The Village Voice has called her work “quintessentially New York,” and her performances “convincing no matter what [she chooses] to do.”
Jen has studied the form of Contact Improvisation for twelve years, beginning at Oberlin College, the birthplace of the form. She relocated to New York City from Chicago, where she presented and performed in five full-length concerts with the contact improv-based company she co-founded, Limbic Fix. She is classically trained as an actor, and performed in plays throughout Chicago before moving to New York City to focus on movement-based performance. She is also a writer, and has given readings of her work at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Halcyon, and Bar 13.
By day, Jen works as a fundraiser for a small poetry press, and serves as Managing Director for Risa Jaroslow & Dancers. She also teaches Contact Improv through Movement Research. Her roots in theater and immersion in literature inform her dances.
Visit Jen Abram's Web site at http://www.jenabrams.org.
Visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's dance blog--InfiniteBody--at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com.
Ring Dance Theater 2008-01-20 17:26:00
January 20, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
It's January 2008 now and we just completed another successful run of Disarray. We were part of a group concert at the Community Education Center last weekend (11-13) called the New Edge Mix. I'd say we reached an even wider audience and got an even more enthusiastic reception, much to our delight. I really enjoyed reworking the piece with the same performers. Karin, Lindsay and Erin reached deeper into the work and found new levels of trust and play. And surprisingly, it worked quite well in a black box space so I'm glad I went against my first impulse which was to keep it in its original long, narrow configuration.
Louis Mofsie
January 18, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
I asked my friend, Tom Pearson, to help me introduce my interviewee, Louis Mofsie, who will once again MC the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers' annual concert and pow-wow at Theater for the New City, February 8-17. Tom responded with this lovely reflection.
"Louis Mofsie is a community builder, in the truest sense. A respected elder and member of the Hopi and Winnebago tribes, and a Brooklyn native, Louis draws together urban Indians of all ages by teaching traditional dances and music, collaborating with contemporary artists, and creating opportunities for people of myriad backgrounds to gather and express cultural heritage. The dance troupe he directs, the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, has been holding monthly socials for years at the American Indian Community House (where he serves as Chairperson of the Board of Directors) and more recently at the Museum of the American Indian, as well as annual summer powwows at the Queens County Farm for 28 years. And for 33 years, in the thick of winter, his dancers have been bringing their passionate fires to Theater for the New City.
"Events like these anchor many urban Indians to their heritage and help them redefine for themselves notions of identity, cultural inheritance, and a sense of belonging to a thriving and diverse urban American Indian community. Most native people in NYC can trace a connection to Louis in one way or another, myself included. And aside from being a brilliant musician (he has recorded several albums), an accomplished artist (he has illustrated several books), and a consummate choreographer and director--his humor, flair for the dramatic, and stage presence also make him an engaging speaker. What the camera was to Greta Garbo, the microphone is to Louis Mofsie! Always an educator, he imparts his wisdom and cultural knowledge every time he MCs a powwow or introduces a performance at a school showing or in the theater by explaning a dance's origin or a song's meaning. And, all of the proceeds from Thunderbird events support native scholarships. It is his generous spirit, sense of community, and educational agenda that allows audiences and participants to glean a deeper understanding when they experience native culture and to walk away fortified by the power of indigenous music and dance.
"Louis loaned me an outfit and taught me my first steps for the Grass Dance a few years back, setting me on the powwow trail, and he has been my collaborator on several contemporary dance projects, at The Museum of the American Indian and Lincoln Center. This year, I am thrilled to be performing the Grass Dance with Louis and the Thunderbird Dancers at TNC."
--Tom Pearson, Co-Artistic Director, Third Rail Projects
BACKGROUND
Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, officially incorporated in 1963, traces its roots further back, to a group of teenagers called the Little Eagles. From the beginning, keenly aware of the great diversity of tribal groups living in and around the metropolitan area--each with a very distinct cultural background--its members were determined to learn and preserve the songs and dances of their own tribes, then to branch out and include other tribes. Their teachers were their fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Since its formation, Louis Mofsie and the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers have visited and performed in almost all fifty states, where they have learned from a wide variety of Indian peoples.
Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago) received his M.A. from Hofstra University and taught art for 35 years at the Meadowbrook School in East Meadow, New York. Mofsie has curated exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other venues. He has been a guest artist at the Walker Art Center and has shown his own work at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Woodards Museum and the Gallup Ceremonials, both in Gallup, New Mexico. Mofsie has illustrated the books "The Hopi Way," "Coyote Tales," and "Teepee Tales" and choreographed productions for the Lincoln Center Repertory Company, the Mercer Arts Center, and Theater for the New City. He has made several recordings, including Songs and Dances of the American Indian, and Authentic USA 1, and has lectured at the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University, Wesleyan University, and New York University, among others.
For further information and tickets for the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers' 33rd Annual Dance Concert and Pow-wow, visit http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net.
Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.
Tamango’s Urban Tap
January 17, 2008 · Posted in dance bloggers · Comment
Tamango's revolutionary approach to tap transforms his dance into music with a sharpened sense of style and awe-inspiring fluidity. Born in Cayenne, French Guiana, Tamango moved to Paris at age eight and began a formal education in art. He started tap dancing in his early 20's at the American Center in Paris and the Beaux Arts de Paris, which he left to join the university of the streets before moving to New York City.
Bringing together a global mix of dancers, musicians and artists, Tamango's Urban Tap crosses and blends the cultures and rhythms of jazz, tap, hip hop, capoeira, stilt, world, free-style and more. Tamango has been hailed worldwide for the electrifying skill and elegant beauty of his dancing. The New York Times declared, "One is tempted to call him the best dancer of any kind around."
He is also a painter, drummer, didjeridoo player and spoken word artist. Currently, he is acting, singing and dancing in "In Search of Josephine," a French production that draws together stories of the sensational Josephine Baker and modern-day, flood-ravaged New Orleans.
Urban Tap performs on March 7, 2008 at New York City's Town Hall. In April, Tamango's collaborative project with jazz funk guitarist Charlie Hunter will be presented as a work-in-progress at Harlem Stage.
For more information about Tamango's Urban Tap, visit www.urbantap.net/. For ticket information for the March 7 performance at Town Hall, visit http://www.the-townhall-nyc.org/pages/calendar/march.html.
Visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's dance blog--InfiniteBody--at http://infinitebody.blogspot.com.
Subscribe to Body and Soul, the podcast of InfiniteBody, at http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml
and through iTunes.
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
