Ann Liv Young

Mermaid Solo

SAT JAN 8 . 10:30 PM
MON JAN 10 . 8:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

Ann Liv Young’s style of audience interaction has been compared to the US government torturing prisoners at Guantánamo bay. A well-known museum director has likened her to an artist who sets off bombs in public places. A Viennese police report describes her as conducting “forced” interviews. (For good measure, we’ll add that she gets a lot of emails telling her she’s crazy and going to hell.) These critiques suggest that when you see Young perform, she locks you in a room and throws away the key.

In her new show, Mermaid Solo, Young is a mermaid retelling her life story. Whereas mermaids are sanitized and disneyfied in modern culture, in folktales they seduce, capture and kill sailors. Their allure is inescapable. They are sexualized, but also grotesque fish creatures who are, in fact, sexless. We are disgusted, intrigued and turned on. A mermaid protecting her oceans or a woman speaking her mind becomes something dangerous. These stories don’t come out of nowhere, magic or an ability to squash free will. We make them up because we desire them.

Chris Cochrane, Dennis Cooper & Ishmael Houston-Jones

THEM

SAT JAN 8 . 5:00 PM
SUN JAN 9 . 7:00 PM
MON JAN 10 . 4:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street

THEM is an intensely physical interdisciplinary work that presents an unblinking look into the lives of young (gay) men. Conceived and directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones THEM features early texts by Dennis Cooper, and a cacophonous live electric guitar sound score by Chris Cochrane. Houston-Jones’ choreography, while rooted in improvisation develops the themes of connections that never quite happen, grappling and wrestling that seem inconsequential and ineffective, and support that disappears.

Trajal Harrell

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

SAT JAN 8 . 12:00 PM
SUN JAN 9 . 2:30 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE

“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 (XS) is a twenty-five minute solo danced by the choreographer and made for a maximum audience of twenty-five seated on the floor of the theater stage, gallery floor, or in the corner of the room.

Neal Medlyn

BRAVE NEW GIRL (…Her’s a Queen Part II, the Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus part)

FRI JAN 7 . 11:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER
466 Grand Street

Brave New Girl is the second installment of Neal Medlyn’s two-part Britney Spears/Hannah Montana opus. This pop culture spectacle conflates Medlyn’s personal feelings and stories, and the overlapping identities and twitter accounts of Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus and Miley Stewart. With snow, shaved armpits, hopes, dreams, diaries, 5am alone time, live music, theater, dance, and chickens Medlyn creates a concert performance like none other you have been to before.

Tarek Halaby

An attempt to understand my socio-political disposition through artistic research on personal identity in relationship to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Part One

NEW YORK PREMIERE

FRI JAN 7 . 7:30 PM
SAT JAN 8 . 1:30 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

An Attempt… is the result of a research process in which Halaby looks into the varying and matching points between collective and personal stories, inside the choreographic creative processes. By presenting this piece as a “product” in process, to finish or resolve, Tarek relates the work to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this solo, Halaby questions and explores the ironies and paradoxes of art works with a deliberate political content.

luciana achugar

PURO DESEO

FRI JAN 7 . 6:00 PM
SUN JAN 9 . 5:30 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE

In PURO DESEO, choreographer luciana achugar returns to the tradition of the proscenium stage. Embracing the darkness of the cavernous black box and its inherent magic and mystery, achugar draws inspiration from paranormal phenomena, the occult, and representations of monstrosity in Gothic film and literature. Through a visceral and intuitive experience of sound, movement, and the exaggerated presence of light, long-time collaborator Michael Mahalchick and achugar build their performance as an incantation.

Miguel Gutierrez

HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE

THURS JAN 6 . 10:00 PM
FRI JANUARY 7, 9:00 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 3:00 PM
SUNDAY, JANUARY 9, 9:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE

Set to music sung by renowned soprano Cecilia Bartoli, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE unfolds from a rambling monologue addressing the pitfalls of artistic success, the hypocrisies of an unstable world and dreams and desires of a more personal nature.

HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE was supported by Foundation for Contemporary Arts

SERVING: Entrée

John Jasperse & James McGinn, Kyle Abraham and Faye Driscoll

THURS JAN 6 . 10:00 PM . Jasperse/McGinn, Abraham
FRI JAN 7 . 9PM . Jasperse/McGinn, Driscoll
SAT JAN 8 . 3PM .  Jasperse/McGinn, Driscoll
SUN JAN 9 . 9PM . Jasperse/McGinn, Abraham

ABRONS ARTS CENTER, PLAYHOUSE

SERVING is a two-course meal; an evening of performance sampling short works and works-in-progress from some of New York’s most exciting choreographers. Entrée features John Jasperse and James McGinn’s Janitors of Lunacy, a mystical ritual dance/opera of poverty, along with a sneak-peak excerpt from Kyle Abraham’s Live! The Realest MC (Thurs, Jan 6 & Sunday, Jan 9) or Faye Driscoll’s forthcoming work snake, dog, dragon (Fri, Jan 7 and Sat Jan 8). Le Plat presents Miguel Gutierrez’s HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE a contemporary aria for an unstable world.

JOHN JASPERSE/JAMES McGINN, Janitors of Lunacy

Two men and two trash cans, shrouded in darkness, mystery and ridiculousness. Janitors of Lunacy is a duet set to the music of the proto-punk chanteuse, Nico. Initially a model turned Warhol Factory Superstar, Nico was also partially deaf, thus accounting for her reputation of occasionally singing off key. The piece is part mystical ritual; part dance/opera of poverty; part homage to a golden age when art, politics, rock, and fashion first collided and when artistic subversion still held the promise of real social change; and part celebration of the power within lunacy and playfulness. Sensorial explorations of seemingly anti-sensual objects make a spectacle of the anti-spectacular, where ridiculous actions are seen as a practice leading towards mystical transformation.

KYLE ABRAHAM, Live! The Realist MC

Inspired by the duality of Pinocchio’s plight to be a “real boy”, Live! The Realest MC investigates gender roles in the black community and societal perspectives of the black man through hip-hop and celebrity culture. Accompanying this overlying theme of realness is the juxtaposition of live performance versus all things prerecorded, articulated through Abraham’s original hip-hop lyrics and his love for the mysteries a karaoke system can evoke.

FAYE DRISCOLL, snake dog dragon

snake dog dragon examines the poignant tension between beauty, power and desire. Driscoll, collaborator Jesse Zaritt and composer Brandon Wolcott will probe ‘beauty'; as it is manifested in the ineffable promise of romantic love; as a perpetual dangling carrot of attainment; as Dance, the art form; as myth, ritual, masculine/feminine blur of power; as the performance of dissolving selves. Driscoll asks, What is the power of real transformation? A snake shedding it’s skin versus the contemporary botox phenomenon. How do these actions express the same impulse?

Larissa Velez-Jackson

Making Ends Meet

THURS JAN 6 . 8:30 PM
SUN JAN 9 . 4:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

Created while was suffering a broken toe and sprained ankle, Making Ends Meet embraces Velez-Jackson’s fear of failure, death, and cultural irrelevance. Through layered meaning, visual imagery, text, movement improvisation, live video, song, and direct audience engagement. Velez-Jackson seamlessly entertains and arrests the viewer.

Jen Rosenblit

salivate if you could

THURS JAN 6 . 8:30 PM
SUN JAN 9 . 4:00 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

salivate if you could localizes a context for the body to move. Images rise, allowing the potential for specificity to rein. Value is re-established and placed on the experiential, while the representational hosts an integral role in the process of negotiating experience. We begin from the body as a wet, fragrant and devastating site. We move into a blind, almost unexamined landscape of religiosity, ending with a stained and throbbing terror. This is a dance concerning two bodies as they create and succumb to the need for context, growing sound from soil with bodies that hum when still.