Events – Danspace Project
Netta Yerushalmy’s “Helga And The Three Sailors,” 2014. Photo: Ayala Gazit.

Netta Yerushalmy: Helga And The Three Sailors

Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 480 new works since its inception in 1994. Our winter season opens with reprisals of recent Danspace Project commissions.

“…a work of art as enigmatic as its title, yet as solidly built as the church that was (temporarily) housing it.” (Deborah Jowitt)

Helga And The Three Sailors premiered at Danspace in November of 2014. It consists of a solo for award-winning choreographer and performer Netta Yerushalmy, and a trio performed by Marc Crousillat, Amanda Kmett’Pendry, and Sarah Lifson. Yerushalmy performs her solo before a backdrop of continually-looping video snippets of herself as a young dancer in Israel and the U.S. in an effort to reconcile personal history and a desire to desubjectify her presence. In the trio, says Yerushalmy, “bodies waver between the staging of analytic formal entities and an aesthetic of defamiliarization, which undermines meaning and perception.”

Set designed by Lenore Doxsee; with lighting designed by Carol Mullins; costumes designed by Austin-based artist Magdalena Jarkowiec; elements of a score, created with acclaimed soprano, keyboardist, and composer Judith Berkson, performed live by Berkson.

Michelle Boulé’s “White,” 2015. Photo: Ian Douglas

Michelle Boulé: White

Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 480 new works since its inception in 1994. Our winter season opens with reprisals of recent Danspace Project commissions.

“I crave more time inside this bizarre world, vacillating between the potent qualities of the material and the immaterial. White contains multitudes of meaning and purpose that takes days to metabolize…a very promising statement in Boulé’s ever-deepening choreographic practice.” (Cassie Peterson, Brooklyn Rail)

Presented in Spring 2015, White, is the second evening-length work by Michelle Boulé featuring Boulé, Lauren Bakst, and Lindsay Clark.

White references quantum physics and BioGeometry (an environmental science which looks at the qualitative frequencies emitted by different shapes, sounds, and color to create harmonic biological energy systems). Boulé considers how movement affects space —the invisible architectures and frequencies created by choreographic form— and how our material bodies are participants in an immaterial world.

Music by composer Chris Seeds, costumes designed by Reid Bartelme, and lighting designed by Natalie Robin.

Photo: Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times

Keely Garfield Dance: WOW

Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 480 new works since its inception in 1994. Our winter season opens with reprisals of recent Danspace Project commissions.

WOW is an act of disruption, an unmasking with occasional masks, a mouthful of Pop Rocks, a baptismal immersion in feelings that continuously build, ebb and build again. Theatricalized for performances, these feelings nevertheless appear to originate in and take their sustenance from someplace real.” (Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinite Body)

“Full-out and entirely sincere dancing, the uplift is irresistible. Wow, you feel, wow.” (Brian Seibert, New York Times)

It is no laughing matter that cynicism and scorn have seeped into our bones. Our good hearts desire more, but we are made powerless by puns, and our powerlessness is what we feel instead of the gravity of our situation. Meanwhile people go missing, guns go off, resources are hoarded, and the world heats up – What is our sincerely held hope for each other, for the whole planet? In a dramatic act of sincerity WOW deploys a panoply of performance devices – pantomime, musical theatrics, back-up dancing, faux pas-de-deux – set to songs by Kate Bush (performed live by Matthew Brookshire and the company) to protest its case. Bring in the clowns! Love is all there is! – Keely Garfield

Choreography by Keely Garfield
Performed by Keely Garfield, Paul Hamilton, Jordan Morley, Raja Feather Kelly, and Matthew Brookshire
Music Inspired by the poetry of Kate Bush.
Décor & Wardrobe by Keely Garfield
Blue Cat by Vivian Ra

WOW was originally commissioned and presented by Danspace Project in December 2014.

Hailed in The New York Times as an,”Artist working at the height of her powers,” Keely Garfield is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, curator, and advocate who alongside making work for her own company, Keely Garfield Dance, has created work for other modern dance companies, ballet dancers, musical theater, students, children, and film. She has choreographed productions at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, Gypsy at Sundance Theatre in Utah, Carnival at New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, and Yeast Nation, The Triumph of Life! for Perseverance Theater, Alaska. Garfield has made nine original dances for students at Barnard College, Hunter College, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, etc. She holds an MFA in choreography and is often engaged as a professor and visiting artist at many universities. Her work for children includes over a decade as curator and host of Dance Theater Workshop’s popular Family Matters series, and curation and performances for Lincoln Center’s Reel to Real & Meet The Artist programs, Scholastic Inc., and others. Garfield served as a board member and as the chair of DTW’s Artist Committee, was a co-author of The Dancers Forum Compact, and has written articles about dance and related topics. Early on, Garfield made videos at MTV working with artists like Adam Ant, and Herbie Hancock.

Keely Garfield Dance (KGD) has received many commissions, and has been frequently presented at theaters and festivals both nationally and internationally. Highlights include: Deep (The Joyce Theater), Disturbulance (Dance Theater Workshop),My Mother Was A Four-Alarm Fire and other mostly true stories (The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival), Scent of Mental Love (A film for Radio Bremen/Canal Arte), Disturbing The Peace (Zenon Dance Company, MN), Iron Lung (Groundworks Dancetheater, OH), Limerence, & Twin Pines (Danspace Project, The Joyce Theater), Telling the Bees (Chocolate Factory), and most recently WOW (Danspace Project) and Pow (Roulette).

KGD has also received commissions and presentations from Celebrate Brooklyn! (NY), Milwaukee Danceworks (WI), Philadelphia Dance Projects (PA), The Southern Theater (Minneapolis, MN), Danse Vernissage (Montreal), Spring Loaded (London), and Tanzmesse (Frankfurt) among others. KGD has received support from government, foundation and private sources, and has benefited from numerous creative residences and awards and was the recipient of a Gibney Dance DIP Residency. The company consistently receives high critical praise and has garnered four New York Dance & Performance Awards “Bessies” (performance, music, lighting, production).

Complementary to her work as an artist, Garfield maintains a varied career in the field of health and wellness, as an E-RYT 500 Yoga Instructor, Urban Zen Integrative Therapist (UZIT), Reiki Master, Zen Meditation teacher, guide to Self-Care for Dancers, and hospice caregiver. On one end of the spectrum Garfield encounter’s movement and sound, and at the other end, is presented with stillness and silence. These natural states of being intimately inform Garfield’s personal and professional engagement in the world at large and are at the heart of all of her creative endeavor.

Laurie Berg’s “The Mineralogy of Objects,” 2015. Photo: Ian Douglas.

Laurie Berg: The Mineralogy of Objects

Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 480 new works since its inception in 1994. Our winter season opens with reprisals of recent Danspace Project commissions.

Laurie Berg’s The Mineralogy of Objects premiered at Danspace Project in April 2015. In three sections of tightly structured improvisation, Berg, along with performers Jodi Bender, Bessie McDonough-Thayer, and Jillian Sweeney examine the power of objects and the body as they translate an artwork by Joseph Cornell (Variétés de Minéralogie Object, 1939) into a collective, kinetic exercise.

Photo: Judy Hussie-Taylor

Food For Thought: curated by Adrienne Rooney, Ali Rosa-Salas, Greta Hartenstein

**Saturday’s performance has been cancelled due to the increasing intensity of the weather. Stay warm and safe, everyone!**

Food for Thought is three nights of performance selected by a different guest artist curator each night. Admission is $5 + two cans of food; or $10 with no cans. No advance reservations. First-come, first-served!

Canned goods collected through Food for Thought are donated to St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery food distribution programs.

Guest curators this season are emerging curators working in the field of performance within visual arts settings: Adrienne Rooney, Ali Rosa-Salas, and Greta Hartenstein.

Thursday, January 21, 8pm
tongues
curator:
Adrienne Rooney
Lindsay L Benedict & Letitia Spangler
Veraalba Santa
Sophie Sotsky | TYKE DANCE
Saúl Ulerio

Friday, January 22, 8pm
pleasure principles
curator: Ali Rosa-Salas
Jonathan Gonzàlez
Jasmine Hearn
Lindsay Reuter
serpentwithfeet

Saturday, January 23, 8pm
curator: Greta Hartenstein
Ayesha Jordan
André D. Singleton

Adrienne Rooney is a writer, researcher, composer, and gardener. She is currently a DAAD scholar based in Berlin, Germany, researching local performance scenes after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Prior to moving to Berlin, Adrienne worked as curatorial assistant to the director of the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art over three years, and before that, she worked as a curatorial assistant for the museum’s inaugural exhibition at it’s downtown location. She has provided research assistance for publications at the Whitney and Danspace Project, published writing in Texte zur Kunst, and juried art shows in the New York area. Adrienne holds a BA from Barnard College / Columbia University.

Ali Rosa-Salas is a Brooklyn, NY native. She is a graduate of Barnard College with a BA in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and danced in works by Beth Gill, Heidi Henderson and Faye Driscoll. Ali has curated exhibitions and produced public programs for AFROPUNK, Barnard Center for Research on Women, MoCADA, Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, TOP RANK Magazine and Weeksville Heritage Center. Her collaborations with Salome Asega, Chrybaby Cozie, and Dyani Douze have been supported by AUNTS with residencies at the New Museum and Mount Tremper Arts. Ali is currently Exhibitions Coordinator at MoCADA.

Born in Rochester, NY, and living in Brooklyn, Greta Hartenstein received a BA in Art History and Dance from Wesleyan University. She is currently the Senior Curatorial Assistant for performance at the Whitney Museum where she has been instrumental in planning the opening season of performance at the new building, and has previously worked on exhibitions including 2012 Biennial2014 BiennialRituals of Rented Island, and Stewart Uoo & Jana Euler: Outside Inside Sensibility. Dance is an essential part of her focus, and over the past five years at the Whitney, she has worked on major projects with choreographers including Sarah Michelson, Michael Clark, taisha paggett, and Miguel Gutierrez. Outside of the Whitney, she has guest-curated for Current Sessions, as well as an exhibition at Pratt entitled The Artist as Provocateur: Pioneering Performance at Pratt Institute. Greta has danced with Sophie Sotsky | TYKE DANCE since 2010, and continues to perform with the company and foster her collaborative spirit.

Food for Thought is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Member Rosie Mendez.

Photo: Milton Guillen

Colby on Tour: We Don’t Have an Algorithm for This

Community ACCESS provides subsidized off-season rental opportunities for Danspace Project community members.

We Don’t Have an Algorithm for This is an original dance theater work directed by Annie Kloppenberg, Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at Colby College, featuring Colby students. Created collaboratively in response to this year’s annual campus-wide Humanities theme: Human/Nature, the work explores ideas from multiple disciplines that have encouraged the Colby community to reflect upon nature, the built environment, and the ways in which our relationship to the natural world has shaped human existence. By embodying and transforming content from a series of lectures, this work encourages a critical and sometimes humorous look at ourselves and the spaces we inhabit, those that nourish us, inspire us, and challenge us.

Performers: Julia Borges, Kathryn Butler, Olivia Gould, Emery Lawrence, Brendan Leonard, Jeannely Lopez, Nick Pattison, Molly Plunkett, Lucy Soucek
and guest artists: Sara Gibbons, Tristan Koepke, Christina Robson, Heidi Henderson of elephant JANE dance

Director: Annie Kloppenberg
Technical Direction: John D. Ervin
Stage Manager: Lily Fernald
Costume Design: Christine Nilles
Scenic Design: Jeannely Lopez
Light Design: Tim Cryan

Sponsored by The Center for the Arts and Humanities at Colby College and The Department of Theater and Dance.

Annie Kloppenberg has presented her professional work nationally and internationally in South Africa, France, Turkey, and Austria; teaches and performs nationally with the improvisational trio, Like You Mean It; founded and co-curates Moving Target Boston, a professional guest artist series; and has served on the Boards of Green Street Studios in Cambridge, MA and the American College Dance Festival Association. As Assistant Professor of Dance at Colby College, her current creative and theoretical research hinges on improvisation and on facilitating choreographic research/pedagogies of choreography. This piece is the result of a collaborative creative process with Colby students as part of that pedagogical research. Her article, “Improvisation in Process: ‘Post-Control’ Choreography” can be found in the July 2010 issue of Dance Chronicle. Kloppenberg holds an MFA from The Ohio State University, and a BA from Middlebury College. Choreographic fellowships, commissions and residencies include The Boston Dance Alliance Rehearsal and Retreat Fellowship, Mass MoCA, Summer Stages Dance Choreographic Fellowship, The Boston Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop’s Outer/Space, Dublin Arts Council with OhioDance and The Ohio State University, and the Taft School. anniekloppenberg.com

Colby College is a four-year liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine. Colby’s 1,850 students come from nearly every state and more than 70 countries. Educational exploration is a way of life at Colby. Academics are rigorous, and learning goes way beyond sitting in a classroom—it’s enhanced by new experiences, real-world research, project-based problem solving across all disciplines, small classes, and collaborative work with faculty. This project gives Colby students professional production experience, and will offer the chance for audiences to enjoy the thoughtful work of burgeoning young artists. colby.edu/theaterdance

Skip to content