CECILIA BENGOLEA, FRANCOISE CHAIGNAUD, MARLENE MONTEIRO FERITAS AND TRAJAL HARRELL

(M)imosa / Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (M)

FRI JAN 6 . 10:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 . 6:00 PM
SUN JAN 8 . 9:00 PM
MON JAN 9 . 6:00 PM

Run time: 90 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street

(M)imosa is a choreographic collaboration between Cecilia Bengolea, Francis Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Trajal Harrell. The work is the third installment of Harrell’s Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church, a series of five works in five sizes (XS to XL). The series revolves around the proposition “What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing ball scene in Harlem had come downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns at Judson Church?”

(M)imosa is a performance by four choreographers investigating the collision of voguing culture, postmodern dance and the artists’ own personal and artistic identities, exploring the intensity of the fault between the desire and the impossibility of becoming another person.

“At the confluence of the ordinary and the spectacular are both beauty and entertainment.” – Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times

“Best of Dance 2011” – Gia Kourlas, Time Out New York

Production: VLOVAJOB PRU; Co-Production:  Le Quartz – Scène nationale de Brest, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse, The Kitchen, Bomba Suicida / organisation funded by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Secretary of State for Culture/Directorate General for the Arts (DGArtes). Rehearsal space also provided by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Additional Funding has been provided by FUSED (French U.S. Exchange in Dance). With support from La Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) and Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. Francois Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea are associated artists of La Ménagerie de Verre (Paris). VLOVAJOB PRU is funded by the DRAC Poitou-Charentes and receives support from the French Institute for its overseas projects.

John Jasperse

Canyon

FRI JAN 6 . 9:00 PM
SAT JAN 7 . 2:30 PM

Run time: 70 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE THEATER
466 Grand Street

A canyon is formed by the simple act of erosion—in which the earth yields over time to a repetitive force, giving birth to a landscape of opening rather than of imposition. Many have described witnessing nature on this scale as life-changing—an experience not easily put into words. While abstract in nature, this new work by Jasperse and his collaborators seeks to reflect these qualities by exploring the extraordinary that originates with the ordinary. Six dancers, including Jasperse, turn the stage into a space beyond language, where strangeness, subtlety, spaciousness, density, and fervent shifts all play a role—centering on the transformative power of losing oneself in visceral experience, where intellect is humbled into a state of wonder.

“Mr. Jasperse has a keen eye for detail and composition; the subtle internal logic of his choreography tends to drive both sense and sensibility in his dances.” – Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

Canyon is commissioned as part of the BAM 2011 Next Wave Festival, and is co-commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Canyon is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Canyon is supported by The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Canyon is commissioned through Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program and by the American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program. Canyon is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the James E. Robison Foundation, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.  Canyon was developed in residencies at The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), MASS MoCA and CPR – Center for Performance Research.

Daniel Linehan

Zombie Aporia

U.S. Premiere

FRI JAN 6 . 7:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 . 7:30 PM
SUN JAN 8 . 4:00 PM
MON JAN 9 . 4:30 PM

Run time: 45 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street

Zombie Aporia is a dance performance that is composed of many small pieces, like a rock music concert, or a book of poetry. The dancers use their voices in order to create an intricate connection between dance and music, so that the dance and the music are both being generated by the very same bodies. The performance breaks down the boundaries that separate body from voice, sound from image, rhythm from meaning. 
Zombie Aporia seeks to discover possibility within apparently impossible contradictions: music that is the result of dancing, emotional expression that begins physically, spontaneous feelings that are designed, words that give more of a sense of vibration than meaning.

“Linehan dissipated minimalism by breaking the nuclei of its structures.” – Gerard Mayen, Mouvement

Co-production support for Zombie Aporia was provided by Rencontres chorégrapiques internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Centre national de la danse (Pantin, FR); Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse / Midi-Pyrénées (FR), in the context of the European project ‘Departs’; Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Gent, BE); BUDA Kunstencentrum (Kortrijk, BE), and was supported through residencies at L’Agora, Cité International de la danse, Montpellier Danse (FR); Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Toulouse / Midi-Pyrénées (FR); O Rumo do Fumo & Forum Dança (Lisboa, PT); Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Gent, BE). Funding was provided by the Flemish authorities (BE) and Arcadi – distribution (FR).

Eleanor Bauer & Heather Lang

THE HEATHER LANG SHOW BY ELEANOR BAUER AND VICE VERSA
Trash Is Fierce Episode 2: Destiny’s Realness 

U.S. Premiere

THURS JAN 5 . 10:00 PM
SUN JAN 8 . 6:00 PM
WEDS JAN 11 . 11:00 PM
SUN JAN 15 . 9:00 PM

Run time: 60 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street

The Heather Lang Show by Eleanor Bauer and Vice Versa is a double one-woman show: double the woman, double the show. In the uniquely gregarious context of a drag show cum spiritual talk show cum QVC infomercial, two outrageous and entertaining performers appropriate and reinvent the language and performance ethics of “realness”. Combining genres of performance, remixing character prototypes and archetypes, challenging the economy of stuff with the immeasurable value of experience, these unlikely partners in crime fashion a homemade and uncanny amalgam of critiques on cultural identity, capitalism, creative expression and entertainment that holds a broken compact mirror up to the real(ness) world in all its twisted glory.

“Eleanor and Heather together is a whole lotta fierce in one place, ok? GET INTO IT.” – Miguel Gutierrez

Trash Is Fierce Episode 2: Destiny’s Realness was made possible with space grants from Kaaitheater and Heather’s living room

Big Art Group

BROKE HOUSE

World Premiere

THURS JAN 5 . 8:30 PM
SAT JAN 7 . 9:30 PM
FRI JAN 13 . 8:30 PM
SAT JAN 14 . 7:00 PM

Run time: 75 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE THEATER
466 Grand Street

Broke House is the new performance by Big Art Group inspired by Chekhov’s Three Sisters. It explores social aspects of modernity and time: the frustration of social progress and the problem of presence in a world compromised by the virtual. From a bare stage the company constructs and dismantles the wooden skeleton of a house as they simultaneously film a documentary of its residents. Issues about the tragic entrapment of nostalgia and the futility of escapist fantasies of the future play out through colliding and disintegrating stories refracted across Big Art Group’s sculptural scenography and lightning fast Real Time Film matrix.

 “True to their name, Big Art Group’s performances are big in every possible way: prismatic visuals hurtle across a panoply of screens, dazzling with flashing colors; strange conjunctions of video imagery captured live by a battery of cameras and spliced together in real time, ambush the eye; digital soundscapes thrum, groan, and roar at synesthesia-inducing volumes.” – Jacob Gallagher-Ross, The Drama Review

Broke House is produced by Big Art Group with support from King’s Fountain and New York State Council on the Arts. 

Laura Arrington

Hot Wings

New York Premiere

THURS JAN 5 . 7:00 PM
SAT JAN 7 . 4:00 PM

Run time: 55 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street | tickets $15

Hot Wings is a charged dance that’s probably feminist, examining artifice and authenticity in representations of sex, gender, and violence. The work follows a cast of three women and a drag queen who are femme, fearlessly engaging, strong, and smart women, as they sing, scream, and dance towards resolution. Looking at how femininity is performed, Hot Wings aims directly at the contemporary fabricated female in a critique that uncovers a deeper feminine truth.

Hot Wings was created with generous support from CounterPULSE Artist Residency Commissioning Program.

Sarah Michelson

“THE Sarah Michelson”

Sarah Michelson with paintings and décor from her works by TM Davy, Claude Wampler and Charlotte Cullinan

THURS JAN 5 – SAT FEB 4, 2012
OPENING RECEPTION THURS, JAN 5, 5:00-7:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER MAIN GALLERY
466 Grand Street | FREE

Sarah Michelson’s rigorous experiments in formalist dance have long deployed reflexive tactics through iconic and mythological, sculptural or decorative representations of the self. Michelson owns and authors her work through the consistent presence of the artist as historicized object. This tactic has functioned as a nod to Michelson’s own legacy, trajectory, geography and economy in the lineage of modern, postmodern and contemporary dance.

“THE Sarah Michelson” exhibits TM Davy’s portraits of Michelson with histrionic overtones as seen in Devotion (2011), a Claude Wompler painting from Daylight (2005), the iconic neon sculptural décor by Charlotte Cullinan for DOGS (2006) and the ready-to-wear tracksuits for Devotion (2011).

Michael Hart & Ryan Tracy

UNREAL

THURS JAN 5 – SAT FEB 4
OPENING RECEPTION THURS, JAN 5, 5:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER CULPEPPER & UPPER GALLERIES
466 Grand Street | FREE

Artists are people too; people with lives; people who chose to make art for a living. It’s easy to forget that. Photographer Michael Hart has been capturing the art and lives of artists in photography for nearly a decade. UNREAL presents this photographic work in a survey of artists involved in and around the American Realness festival. The photographs include images from live performances as well as staged and improvised photo sessions where the line between artist and art, real and unreal is ecstatically blurred. The images will be accompanied by a text piece by writer and performer Ryan Tracy in conversation with the photographer.

Wally Cardona

Intervention #4

SAT JAN 8 8:30 PM

BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER, STUDIO 6A

Each Intervention is a five-day collaboration between acclaimed dancer/choreographer Wally Cardona and an expert in a field other than dance. They enter the studio as strangers. Through their intimate encounter, they generate a new work, performed by Cardona. Each public performance provides the imperative.

Trajal Harrell

Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (S)

MON JAN 10 . 1:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

“What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the Voguing dance tradition in Harlem had come down to Judson Church to perform alongside the early postmoderns?” is the proposition for Trajal Harrell’s series of dances that comes in five sizes- Extra Small (XS), Small (S), Medium (M), Larger (L), and Extra Large (XL). The (S) is a sixty minute solo danced by the choreographer with audience on three sides of the stage. Here, Trajal Harrell rewrites the minimalism and neutrality of postmodern dance with a new set of signs.