SHOW & TELL: Commentary=not thing

SUN JAN 13 . 1:30 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street

In this work-in-process showing, May will present the first 30 minutes of her newest evening length piece, which will premiere at New York Live Arts February 19-23, 2013. Commentary = not thing is commissioned by New York Live Arts

Part Steven Sondheim, part Kate Pierson from the 1990’s group The B52’s, the piece becomes a Modern dance opera. This “coexistence of dissimilars” demonstrates a severe compression of time as it aligns a range of singular genres, decades, geographies, emotions and viscera. These “dissimilars” create a jagged and illegible terrain that makes a case for abstraction and its ability to communicate the expressive possibility of the emotional body. This project will look specifically at the social emotions i.e. compassion, embarrassment, shame, guilt and contempt in an effort to prioritize a more attentive and often aggressive relationship to the naked body, the functions of the body and the genitals.

Commentary = not thing is commissioned by New York Live Arts and made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and by contributors to The Dance Theater Workshop Commissioning Fund at New York Live Arts. Additional support is given by New York StateDanceForce with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.