American Realness

Keith Hennessy

Crotch

(all the Joseph Beuys references in the world could not heal the pain, confusion, regret, cruelty, betrayal or trauma …)

Friday June 9, 8:00pm
Saturday June 10, 8:00pm  

Run Time: 60 minutes

Hollins University, Theater 
Roanoke, Virginia 

Crotch references the images and actions of artist Joseph Beuys. On the surface the work is about art, about its histories and heroes. Deeper, a sadness grows, a queer melancholy. A song, a dance, a lecture, an image. Talking to the dead. Chaos through Play becomes Form.

Crotch was developed at Ponderosa (Stolzenhagen Germany) in 2007 and was commissioned/premiered at L’Arsenic (Lausanne Switz) in 2008. Crotch has also been presented by DTW (NY), The Southern (Mnpls), Impulstanz (Vienna), Bluecoat (Liverpool), Dance Mission (SF), Ashby Stage (Berkeley), Queer Zagreb, Grütli (Geneva), Zodiac (Helsinki), Stary Bowar (Poznan Poland), Tanzfabrik (Berlin), Rhubarb Festival (Toronto), American Realness (NYC), Chicago, BONE Festival (Bern), God’s Entertainment (Vienna). Circo Zero is fiscally sponsored by CounterPULSE.
Photo by Robbie Sweeney


Performance & Installation: Keith Hennessy
Production: Circo Zero
Producing director: Alec White
Music: Emmy Lou Harris, Craig Armstrong, Teddy Thompson,
Down River, Nirvana
Onstage assistant: Peggy
Lighting operator: Sarah Lurie

Crotch was awarded a Bessie in 2009, the NY Dance & Performance award.

Crotch was developed at Ponderosa (Stolzenhagen Germany) in 2007 and was commissioned/premiered at L’Arsenic (Lausanne Switz) in 2008. Crotch has also been presented by DTW (NY), The Southern (Mnpls), Impulstanz (Vienna), Bluecoat (Liverpool), Dance Mission (SF), Ashby Stage (Berkeley), Queer Zagreb, Grütli (Geneva), Zodiac (Helsinki), Stary Bowar (Poznan Poland), Tanzfabrik (Berlin), Rhubarb Festival (Toronto), American Realness (NYC), Chicago, BONE Festival (Bern), God’s Entertainment (Vienna). Circo Zero is fiscally sponsored by CounterPULSE.

Keith Hennessy dances in and around performance. Born in northern Ontario, he lives in San Francisco since 1982 and tours internationally. His performances engage improvisation, ritual, collaboration, and public action as tools for investigating political realities. Practices inspired by anarchism, critical whiteness, post/Modern dance, activist art, the Bay Area, wicca, punk, contact improvisation, and queer-feminism motivate and mobilize Hennessy’s work. Keith’s 2016 collaborators include Peaches, Meg Stuart, Scott Wells, Jassem Hindi, and the collaboratives Blank Map and Turbulence. Keith’s recent teaching in universities, independent studios, and festivals includes Ponderosa, FRESH, HZT, Movement Research, Impulstanz, Portland State University, Sandberg Institute, St. Mary’s, and Warsaw Flow International CI Festival. Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, United States Artist Fellowship, a NY Bessie, multiple Isadora Duncan Awards, and a Bay Area Goldie. Keith’s writings have been published in Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Journal, Performance Research (UK), Society of Dance History Scholars Journal, Dance Theatre Journal (UK), Itch, Front, and In Dance. Hennessy directs Circo Zero and was a member of Contraband with Sara Shelton Mann. Hennessy is a co-founder of CounterPULSE (formerly 848 Community Space) a thriving performance space in San Francisco. He earned an MFA and PhD from UC Davis.