Jen Rosenblit
Clap Hands
Friday, January 6, 5:30pm
Saturday, January 7, 8:30pm – SOLD OUT*
Monday, January 9, 10:00pm
Tuesday, January 10, 1:00pm
*A waiting list will begin 30 minutes before each performance.
Run Time: 65 minutes
Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater
466 Grand Street / Tickets $20
Clap Hands is a mating call, an over-crowded solo, looking to hail, disguise, displace, reveal and track the disappearance of the body. A large stack of fuchsia felt installs the space. Meaning hovers and a still-life emerges.
Clap Hands is concerned with the politics of coming together as we maintain autonomy. Something is lost or forgotten, but we continue with the burden of carrying on. How can we consolidate a skeleton of logic through our individual labors? Can we locate intimacy in non-human forms?
Clapping hands is a phenomenon we do together, to celebrate, mark or culminate. Clap Hands is something we have to sit alone with, to recall being together.
Clap Hands is a commission of New York Live Arts, The Invisible Dog Art Center, and Atlanta Contemporary and made possible, in part, through a residency at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas; a residency at Tanzhaus Zürich; with support from the exhibition Greater New York at MoMA PS1; with funding from the Jerome Foundation; with support from Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory; through The Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program, funded, in part, by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Davis Dauray Family Fund, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and was developed as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace program.
Photo by Maria Baranova
Creation – Jen Rosenblit
With the performers – Effie Bowen and Admanda Kobilka
Sound – Admanda Kobilka Aka Snoggybox
Lighting design – Elliott Jenetopulos
Production Management / Supportive Performance – Alexia Welch
Management / Producer – Alexandra Rosenberg
Jen Rosenblit has been making performance in New York City since 2005. Works include Swivel Spot (upcoming, 2017), Everything Fits in the Room, a collaboration with Simone Aughterlony (upcoming, 2017), Clap Hands (2016), a Natural dance (2014), Pastor Pasture, in collaboration with composer Jules Gimbrone (2013), In Mouth (2012), and When Them (2010). Rosenblit is a 2015-16 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2014-2015 LMCC Workspace artist, a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Emerging Choreographer for a Natural dance, an inaugural recipient of THE AWARD, a 2013 Fellow at Insel Hombroich (Nuese, Germany), a recipient of the 2012 Grant to Artists from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a 2009 Fresh Tracks artist (Dance Theater Workshop). Rosenblit was included in MoMA PS1’s quintennial Greater New York exhibition in 2015, and has received support for her work from The Jerome Foundation, The MAP Fund, and Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and through commissions from The Kitchen, The Invisible Dog, Atlanta Contemporary, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, and Issue Project Room. Rosenblit has also collaborated and performed with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Young Jean Lee, Ryan McNamara, Yvonne Meier, Sasa Asentic, Anne Imhof, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns, and Kerry Downey and Joanna Seitz. Recent works focus on an improvisational approach to choreographic thought, locating ways of being together amidst impossible spaces. Rosenblit currently works between NYC and Berlin.
Effie Bowen (performance) graduated with a BFA in dance from Hollins University and has since performed in New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. With a focus on collaborative performance projects, effie is currently working with Kentaro Kumanomido at Northwestern University, and Louise Trueheart at Tanzhaus Zurich, and is a contributing editor to the Performance Journal. effie’s solo, DANCE SPORT, will perform at Pieter (LA) this February and Gibney Dance (NY) in April.
Admanda Kobilka (performance/sound) was raised in Minnesota and now resides in New York. Admanda was nominated for a 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Music Composition/Sound Design for Clap Hands.
Elliott Jenetopulos (lighting design) has been working with Jen Rosenblit since 2012. Elliott has also designed lights for Anna Sperber, Enrico Wey, Mariana Valencia, Marissa Perel, The Builders Association, luciana achugar, Lorene Bouboushian, niv Acosta, Tess Dworman, Ursula Eagly, and others.
Alexandra Rosenberg (management/producer) is a manager and producer for contemporary performance and currently represents Jen Rosenblit, Annie Dorsen, Maria Hassabi, and Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble. From 2014-15, she was the Producer of Global Programs for Performance Space 122. Prior to founding her company Rosie Management in 2013, Alexandra was a producer and administrator with ArKtype, The Chocolate Factory, and others. Born and raised in Queens, Alexandra currently lives and works in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. She is a graduate of Bennington College.
Alexia Welch (production management/supportive performance) lives, works, jogs in Los Angeles where she also makes videos and texts. These projects often take up issues surrounding embodiment, dykeish sexuality and community standards. She graduated from the film and electronic arts department at Bard College in 2013.
“Ms. Rosenblit, who marries conceptual ideas to a vivid sense of theater, is a playful contrarian. … Linear thinking has no place in Ms. Rosenblit’s poetic world, yet her imagery gradually falls into place.”
– Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
“My expectations were twisted and refashioned around me. All of this added up to a fascinating new vocabulary where the spectacle is off to the center of where we expect it to be.”
– Jaime Shearn Coan, The Brooklyn Rail