Dana Michel
Mercurial George
US PREMIERE
Thursday, January 5, 10:00pm
Friday, January 6, 8:30pm
Monday, January 9, 4:00pm – SOLD OUT*
Tuesday, January 10, 7:00pm – SOLD OUT*
* A waiting list will begin 30 minutes before each performance.
Run Time: 55 minutes
Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater
466 Grand Street / Tickets $20
Where does identity come from? How do you find it for yourself and how is it placed on you? How can one’s identity register or fail to cohere in relationship to objects, feelings and affectation?
In Mercurial George, Dana Michel is “wading through the hairy rubble of a preliminary anthropological dig” asking “What is the smell of a plethora of someones that you have been avoiding your whole life? What do you do with the body?” Through fragmented gestures, loose and loaded signifiers, sounds and songs, this solo work provides the “ground to test skins” of Michel’s identity; “ideas that may or may not have been imposed.”
Mercurial George was co-produced by Festival TransAmeriques, Tanz Im August, CDC Atelier de Paris-Carolyn Carson, ImPulsTanz, and Chapter with residency support from Usine C, Dancemakers, ImPulsTanz, Actoral/La Friche Belle de Mai, WOOP, CDC Atelier de Paris-Carolyn Carlson, M.A.I. Additional support from Conseil des Arts et des Letters du Québec, Canada Council for the Arts.
Dana Michel receives administrative/development support from Daniel Léveillé Danse company as a part of its sponsorship project.
Photo by Sammy Rawal
MERCURIAL GEORGE (trailer) from DANA MICHEL on Vimeo.
Dana Michel: Mercurial George from Marin Media Lab on Vimeo.
Conceived and Performed – Dana Michel
Lighting & Technical Direction – Karine Gauthier
Artistic Activators – Martin Bélanger, Peter James, Mathieu Léger, Roscoe Michel, Yoan Sorin
Sound Consultant – David Drury
Production – Dana Michel
Executive Producer – Marie-Andrée Gougeon for Daniel Léveillé Danse
Coproduction – Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), Tanz im August (Berlin), CDC Atelier de Paris-Carolyn Carlson (Paris), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), Chapter (Cardiff)
Creative Residencies – Usine C (Montréal), Dancemakers (Toronto), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), Actoral/La Friche Belle de Mai (Marseille), WOOP (Douarnenez), CDC Atelier de Paris-
Carolyn Carlson (Paris), M.A.I. (Montréal)
With The Support Of Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Canada Arts Council
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. Her previous 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 Implustanz 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.
“There is in Mercurial George a clarity of position that is rare. Dana Michel knows exactly where she is speaking from (as an artist; as a woman; as a Black person). She knows exactly where she performs.”
– Le Devoir, Montréal (Canada)
“Michel’s “Yellow Towel” was engrossing. Offbeat in the extreme, it cast an imaginative theater spell that recurrently evoked the great New York performance artists Eiko & Koma, while showing Ms. Michel’s intense individuality. (…) Every stammering noise, every strained movement demonstrated powerful imagination and psychological force.” – The New York Times (USA)