American Realness

Jennifer Lacey / Antonija Livingstone / Dominique Pétrin / Stephen Thompson

Culture Administration & Trembling

U.S. Premiere

Thursday, January 7, 7:00pm & 8:00pm – SOLD OUT*
Friday, January 8, 5:30pm & 6:30pm – SOLD OUT*

*A waiting list will begin one hour before each performance.

Run Time: 60 minutes

Abrons Arts Center, Main Gallery
466 Grand Street / tickets $20

Single Tickets Festival Pass

In this intimate and out-of-bounds choreographic salon, time-based sculptures shift between the human and the animal, the real and the imaginary; a series of unexpected contemplative landscapes. Initiated by Antonija Livingstone in 2009 as a partnership with Jennifer Lacey, the work is an ever-expanding display of a collection of Medicine Dances: co-created and performed with Montréal-based visual artist Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, guest artist Dana Michel, and Berlin-based sound artist Brendan Dougherty. Culture Administration & Trembling invites the public to spend time together to wonder about being a spectator, a witness, or a companion.

Culture Administration & Trembling was co-produced by Festival TransAmériques, Agora de la Danse, Studio 303, Les Escales Improbables Montréal. With support from Impulstanz, Vienna, Centre Choréographique Nationale de Langedoc-Rousillion, Fabrik Potsdam, Osprey Arts Center. This presentation is supported in part by Canada Council for the Arts and the Goethe-Institut.

photo by Stephen Thompson

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Culture Administration & Trembling is created and performed by Jennifer Lacey, Antonija Livingstone, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, Jamie Ross, An Thorne.

Video by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Sound by Brendan Dougherty
Male Breast Feeding Ensemble : Thibault Lac, An Thorne, Jamie Ross, Mikiki, CT Thorne, Laurent Pichaud

Special Thanks to :
Florin Flueras, Noémie Solomon, Mikiki, CT Thorne, Julian Schnorr

Culture Administration & Trembling is conceived and produced by Antonija Livingstone
Management for A. Livingstone projects : Plan V Paris : FannyVirelizier@free.fr

Jennifer Lacey (FR/US)is an American choreographer now based in Paris. She received a Doris Duke Impact Award in 2014 and a Guggenheim fellowship in 2015, and Impulstanz Vienna DanceWeb coach 2016. As far afield from traditional dance performance as the work often goes, Lacey is commited to her essential point of view as a dancer and strives to produce a thinking body of work in which poetics transcend a conceptual basis.Lacey has taught technique, improvisation, composition etc. all over the globe for the last 15 years in institutions, studios and festivals. As a teacher of technique Lacey has been influenced by her studies with Release Technique pioneer, Joan Skinner. Over the past 10 years her teaching has expanded into her artistic practice.The form of the workshops is taken as performative and capable of producing content rather than just transmitting it. Consequently, she has been developmental in designing and running a project at the Impulstanz Festival in Vienna for artists who also teach. This program is in it’s 6th year and 2015 functioned as the DanceWeb Mentor itself.
During the 90’s in New York City Lacey was a member of the Randy Warshaw Dance Company as well as a dancer with Jennifer Monson, DD Dorvillier, John Jasperse, Yvonne Meier among others. At the same time she began developing her own work, which was presented at PS 122, Movement Research, Danspace St Marks, the Kitchen as well as at many European venues and Festivals notably the Kaai theatre, Beaubourg/Centre Georges Pompidou, Festival d’Autumn, Weiner FestWochen, the Tate Modern and Montpellier Danse. In 2000 Lacey founded Cie Megagloss in Paris with Carole Bodin and began collaboration with artist Nadia Lauro. Their collaboration has produced many works including “$Shot”, “Chateaux of France”, “Mhmmmmm” and “Les Assistantes”. A monograph of their work was published by Presse du Réal in 2007. In addition to her work with Lauro, Lacey has founded a number of projects with ambiguous borders: “Projet Bonbonnière” – a research and living project designed to rehabilitate Italianate theatres; “Prodwhee” – a disposable series of performances using the dance residency as currency; “Robinhood” – a mythic and invisible performance with artist Cerith Wyn Evans; “Robinhood – The Tour” – an act of theft perpetuated with composer/musician Hecker, presented recently at the Tate Modern; and “Transmaniastan” – a work commissioned for “a choreographed exhibition” at the Kunsthalle, St. Gallen. She has also produced several solos: “Two Discussions of an Anterior Event” (2004), “Tall” (2007) and “Ouch”(2007) (a tap version of Carolee Scheeman’s Internal Scroll).During her 2 years time as artist in residence at Laboratoire d Aubervilliers she has produced two projects, “Ma premiere fois avec un dramaturge”, and “I heart Lygia Clark”. These projects are performative but fall outside the standard modes of dance production and spectacle. In 2011 Lacey began a collaboration with American choreographer Wally Cardona and composer Jonathan Bepler, “Tool Is Loot”. This group is currently engaged in a 4 year 8 part project, “The Set-Up” based in meetings with international dance “masters”. In 2009 she presented “Culture & Administration”, for Festival Avignon, a duet in collaboration with Antonija Livingstone; the project is now reformatted and active as Culture Administration & Trembling, performed with Stephen Thompson, Dominique Pétrin animal companions and guests.

Antonija Livingstone ( CA /DE ) creates and performs at the frontiers of Dance and Performance. Her projects are often born from collaborations with visual artists, strangers and guests from beyond the professional performing arts milieu with whom she co-operates to make things out of dance. Her performance practice was first activated when as a close collaborator of Quebecois choreographer Benoit Lachambre, Livingstone tthen went on to work with Meg Stuart-Damaged Goods since 2002, and continues to tour the current project Sketches- Notebook. As a maker Livingstone has realized a variety of good humoured queer spirited co-created and co-produced works for stage, exhibition, and film. The Part (2004-2016) – a situation for dancing. In 4 episodes with Heather Kravas (2006- 2008), Cat Calendar with Antonia Baehr (2006),Culture & Administration with Jennifer Lacey( 2009- 2016) The 1001 with Sarah Chase, On Orientations and other works with Ian Kaler (2012), and most recently Supernatural with Simone Aughterlony and Hahn Rowe which they continue to tour in 2016. Livingstones work has been coproduced and presented internationally over the years by Tanz Im August, Berlin, Impulstanz, Vienna, Festival Avignon, Festival Transameriques Montreal, amongst other interdisciplinary venues world wide. Livingstone creates a new work in collaboration with scenographer Nadia Lauro for Festival Actorale Montreal, Marseille, and Festival D Autumn Paris 2016. She has been active as a coach and mentor for emerging artists and comrades such as Ian Kaler, Dana Michel, as well as at Impulstanz, Vienna, DOCH Stockholm, CCN Montpellier, SNDO Amsterdam, HZT Berlin, Circuit- Est Montreal. Management : Plan V Paris : Fannyvirelizier@free.f

Dominique Pétrin is a multidisciplinary artist born in Montreal. In visual arts as well as performance, her interests converge towards producing altered states of conscience and perception, be it through cognitive or visual illusions, or, for her performances, the use of hypnosis. A former member of the band Les Georges Leningrad, she also collaborated with such renowned artists as Sophie Calle and Pil & Galia Kolletiv. She staged performances at the Frieze Art Fair in London, at the Désordres Festival in Lille, MUTEK, Viva! and Rouyn-Noranda’s Performance Biennale. She was rewarded with an artist residency in Nunavik by the Quebec Council for the Arts, participated in the 29th Contemprary Art Symposium in Baie-Saint-Paul, and was selected for the last instalment of the Quebec Triennial at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. She recently presented in Untitled at Art Basel Miami USA.

Stephen Thompson is recognized as a performance/dance artist, choreographer, researcher and pedagogue originally from Calgary, Alberta, living and working nomadically between Canada and Europe. He received a Bachelor of Kinesiology (art and science of movement) and Dance from the University of Calgary. Stephen has worked with a plethora of artists and companies notably Benoit Lachambre, performing in Trajal Harell s (USA) 2012 Bessie award winning – Large version of Twenty Looks or Paris is burning at the Judson Church, and Fabrice Lambert in Solaire presented by Theatre De La Ville in Paris. He has signed several performance artworks presented nationally and internationally and is currently developing a project together with visual artist Xavier Veilhan.

Brendan Dougherty
is a composer musician active in both the Berlin Electronic Music and Tanz Aktuelle milieu, His new solo LP: “Sensate” on Entr’Acte records is released in November 2015. He has created a variety sound scores for Meg Stuart -Damaged Goods, notably, Violet, and Sketches, as well as with Jeremy Wade, Adam Linder, Ian Kaler and Antonija Livingstone projects in France, Québec, UK.

Dana Michel is a choreographer and performer based in Montreal. Before obtaining a BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University in her late twenties, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner and football player. She is a 2011 danceWEB scholar (Vienna, Austria) and is currently an artist-in-residence at DanceMakers (Toronto, Canada) and at Usine C (Montreal, Canada) An amalgam of choreography, intuitive improvisation and performance art, her artistic practice is rooted in exploring identity as disordered multiplicity. She work with notions of performative alchemy and post-cultural bricolage – using live moments, object appropriation, personal history, future desires and current preoccupations to create an empathetic centrifuge of experience between her and her witnesses. Michel’s solo, Yellow Towel, was featured on the “Top Five” and the “Top Ten” 2013 dance moments in the Voir newspaper (Montreal) and Dance Current Magazine (Canada) respectively. In 2014, she was awarded the newly created Impulstanz Award (Vienna) in recognition for outstanding artistic accomplishments and was highlighted amongst notable female choreographers of the year by the New York Times. The year concluded with Yellow Towel appearing on the Time Out Magazine (New York City, U.S.) “Top Ten Performances” list.


Jamie Ross
Jamieross.org

An Thorne snowlakekeep.org

This work is innately (intimately) queer as all lines of territory and practice are crossed….Culture, Administration & Trembling is a subversion of its own form; a curation of moments that destabilise our understanding of how things relate to other things and why. Culture, Administration & Trembling is not comfortable or easy yet evokes a sense of jouissance and insists upon a further reading.
- Benjamin Sebastian, This is Tomorrow

…the thrill of this piece lies its ability to do the unexpected. While the bizarre and unexpected can often seem to be done just to confuse, here it seems to be done out of care, hope and love. There is a presence that each performer, musician, and guest have that says, everything is going to be ok, we can do this together. A silent manifesto brought out in extreme patience.. .
- Chad Dembski, Charlebois Post Montréal