Douglas Dunn + Dancers in "Vain Combat." Photo by Avery McCarthy.

Laurie Berg and Douglas Dunn + Dancers at Astor Alive! Festival

Danspace Project is pleased to collaborate with The Village Alliance Business Improvement District for New York City’s first-ever “Astor Alive! Festival” from September 15 to 17, 2016. The festival will celebrate the upcoming reopening of the new Astor Place, which will be complete in the fall. As a vibrant cultural district with over two dozen theater, dance, music, art, architecture and historic landmarks including Danspace Project, the festival will debut Astor Place’s four new public plazas, among other civic space transformations as part of its larger $16 million revitalization project.

Danspace Project has invited choreographers Laurie Berg and Douglas Dunn + Dancers to perform site-specific works at the Festival’s Dance Plaza on Saturday, September 17.

Performance Schedule:
Douglas Dunn + Dancers at 1:30, 3:00 and 4:00
Laurie Berg at 2:30, 3:30, and 4:30

Further details at http://astorplace.nyc/events/astor-alive-festival

Photo: Valerie Oliveiro

Jennifer Monson/iLAND: in tow (premiere)

2-week run!
Friday-Saturday, September 23-24
Thursday-Saturday, September 29-October 1
Pre-attacks: 6-7pm on September 29-October 1*

Every night of in tow is different! If you wish to attend multiple performances, we are offering $10 tickets for each additional performance you attend. Please contact lydia@danspaceproject.org for details.

The Saturday, September 24th performance will be followed by an open discussion of the experimental contexts, questions and concerns that shape the in tow project led by Professor of Performance Studies, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera.

Initiated in 2013 by award-winning choreographer Jennifer Monson, in tow is an ongoing performance research project bringing together 10 artists from 4 different decades. in tow straddles location, discipline, and aesthetic to create an evolving working process driven by what each artist brings to it. The performance itself is a site for destabilizing the familiar, testing new ground, defining difference, and creating a shared practice that resonates with layers of experience, points of view, and perspective.

I was curious about how revisiting the long-term creative relationships I formed in the mid ’80s in NYC with DD Dorvillier, Zeena Parkins, and David Zambrano could activate and reimagine experimental relationships with new artists from other geographies and generations. Starting with the basic question of how and why we experiment, we have spent the past three years developing questions, practices, material, and scores that look at how movement, sound and image can be used to research perceptual, philosophical, and social constructs in our current political and aesthetic contexts. – Jennifer Monson

in tow features artists Susan Becker, DD Dorvillier, Niall Jones, Alice MacDonald, Jennifer Monson, Valerie Oliveiro, Zeena Parkins, Angie Pittman, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, David Zambrano (not performing), and Rose Kaczmarowski (not performing)

Music by Zeena Parkins. Performance by Tilt Brass on September 24 & 29.

*in tow Pre-attacks: Arrive early on September 29, 30 and October 1 to experience some of the underlying infrastructure of the work from 6-7pm. More info here.

Other performances

September 29 – October 1

Jennifer Monson is a choreographer, performer, and teacher. Since 1983, she has explored strategies in choreography, improvisation, and collaboration in experimental dance. In 2000, her work took a new turn to investigate the relationship between movement and environment. This ongoing research has led her into inquiries of cultural and scientific understandings of large-scale phenomenon such as animal navigation and migration, geological formations such as aquifers, and re-functioned sites such as the abandoned Ridgewood Reservoir. These studies provide the means to unearth and inquire into choreographic and embodied ways of knowing and re-imagining our relationship to the environments and spaces humans/all beings inhabit. Her projects BIRD BRAIN (2000-2005), iMAP/Ridgewood Reservoir (2007), and the Mahomet Aquifer Project (2008-2010), SIP (sustained immersive process)/watershed are investigations that have radically reframed the role dance plays in our cultural understandings of nature and wilderness. Her current work Live Dancing Archive proposes that choreography itself is an archival practice for environmental phenomena. Her early choreography has been performed in New York City venues including: The Kitchen, Performance Space 122, and Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church; as well as other recognized national and international venues. She has collaborated with Zeena Parkins, DD Dorvillier, Yvonne Meier, David Zambrano, and many other artists. She has received fellowships from the NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts, The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Lambent Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has received two Bessie awards- one for sustained achievement in the field and one for BIRD BRAIN. She is an inaugural Doris Duke Impact Artist.

In 2004, Jennifer Monson incorporated under the name iLAND- Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance. She is currently a Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and a Marsh Professor at Large at the University of Vermont, (2010-2016).

Video still from Ruth Patir’s The Sleepers (2016)

The Sleepers: an Evening with Ruth Patir and Jonathan Crary (one night only)

Watch the trailer for The Sleepers here!

Ruth Patir is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her current research into dream interpretation has brought her into conversation with the writer Sheila Heti, who authored a blog in 2008 tracking dreams that Americans were having about then-presidential nominee hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In response, and in the spirit of election season, Patir will present an evening of readings and a screening of her 2016 video work The Sleepers.

Patir will be joined at this event by special guest Jonathan Crary, art critic and author of 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, a critically acclaimed book examining the fate of human perception within the operations of global information and communication networks.

The continuation of Patir’s research will be presented at Danspace Project in January, coinciding with the 2017 Presidential Inauguration.

Ruth Patir is an Israeli American artist raised in Israel and currently working and living in New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2015 and her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 2011. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art (2014 official selection NDNF, New York), Petah Tikva Museum (2014, Israel), Kav 16 Gallery (2012, Tel Aviv) , Flux Factory (2016, New York), and Judith Charles Gallery NY (2015). Currently she is performing at the Guggenheim Museum with Public Movement.

Photo: Valerie Oliveiro

Jennifer Monson/iLAND: in tow (Pre-attacks)

Part of Jennifer Monson/iLAND: in tow September 23-October 1!

Initiated in 2013 by award-winning choreographer Jennifer Monson, in tow is an ongoing performance research project bringing together 10 artists from 4 different decades. in tow straddles location, discipline, and aesthetic to create an evolving working process driven by what each artist brings to it.

in tow will hold a priming event each evening during its second week of performances. These events give the audience an opportunity to experience some of the underlying infrastructure of the work. All Pre-attack events are free and audiences are welcome to come and go as they please.

September 29, 6-7PM: horizon line/fragment – a perceptual installation that works against the receding nature of a horizon line and brings the public into a new sense of dimensionality and continuity.

September 30, 6-7PM: tide/groove – a sound experiment developed from the horizon line set-up and the rhythmic patterns developed through the in tow process. The score activates the particularities of the acoustic architecture of the church.

October 1, 6-7PM: solo/collective: tone/relation – a series of solos and duets that pull away what we bring in tow.

Note: Tickets for 8pm performances of in tow September 29-30 and October 1 must be purchased separately. More information and tickets here.

Featuring artists Susan Becker, DD Dorvillier, Niall Jones, Alice MacDonald, Jennifer Monson, Valerie Oliveiro, Zeena Parkins, Angie Pittman, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, David Zambrano (not performing), and Rose Kaczmarowski (not performing)

Other performances

September 23 – October 1

Jennifer Monson is a choreographer, performer, and teacher. Since 1983, she has explored strategies in choreography, improvisation, and collaboration in experimental dance. In 2000, her work took a new turn to investigate the relationship between movement and environment. This ongoing research has led her into inquiries of cultural and scientific understandings of large-scale phenomenon such as animal navigation and migration, geological formations such as aquifers, and re-functioned sites such as the abandoned Ridgewood Reservoir. These studies provide the means to unearth and inquire into choreographic and embodied ways of knowing and re-imagining our relationship to the environments and spaces humans/all beings inhabit. Her projects BIRD BRAIN (2000-2005), iMAP/Ridgewood Reservoir (2007), and the Mahomet Aquifer Project (2008-2010), SIP (sustained immersive process)/watershed are investigations that have radically reframed the role dance plays in our cultural understandings of nature and wilderness. Her current work Live Dancing Archive proposes that choreography itself is an archival practice for environmental phenomena. Her early choreography has been performed in New York City venues including: The Kitchen, Performance Space 122, and Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church; as well as other recognized national and international venues. She has collaborated with Zeena Parkins, DD Dorvillier, Yvonne Meier, David Zambrano, and many other artists. She has received fellowships from the NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts, The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Lambent Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has received two Bessie awards- one for sustained achievement in the field and one for BIRD BRAIN. She is an inaugural Doris Duke Impact Artist.

In 2004, Jennifer Monson incorporated under the name iLAND- Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance. She is currently a Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and a Marsh Professor at Large at the University of Vermont, (2010-2016).

Danspace
Project

Sep 2016

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