Premiering Darkling!

I haven't been the most prolific blogger on the planet, but it strikes me that I am premiering this new work next week, and so maybe it is worth posting a few words.

The amazing group of artists/collaborators I have worked with over the last year live in Providence, New York City, the Catskill Mountains, Troy, and Berlin/Nuremberg... we skype, email, phone. Much of the piece lived in my mind, and in snippets, for a long time. It only really came together, magically and manically, when we were finally in the same theater together for tech rehearsals last week. "Darkling" emerged. This piece is full of firsts for my work: live interactive media, writing a full throttle text-driven script, making an evening-length solo, a radio play (not really, as there is no dialogue!), a beast. Obviously my years as curator in an experimental media and performance center have had an impact. But also, there is something about the clash of media and live performance with ancient stories and images that suddenly feels like the right direction to me.

So, we are about to send "Darkling" out into the world, like a ship in the night, into the unknown - which is basically what the piece is about. I hope dear reader, you will be able to see it live. This is one that is going to have a hard time being made for TV.

"Darkling". Image credit: Hélène Lesterlin

New project under construction: Darkling

After a long hiatus, Atlas Dance is back in action, creating a new solo dance/radio play/sound piece with collaborators Stephan Moore, Kimberly Young, and Kyra Miller. Here is the short description we are currently running with:

Darkling is a performance in the round for 1 dancer, 5 speakers, and 4 disembodied voices. Starting from fables passed through the ages, sprinkled with rumors of monsters and magic, steeped in superstition and ominous ritual, this event is halfway between solo performance and multichannel radio play. The audience sits on four sides of a play space containing meagre projected light and a solo dancer. It is a nether region of semidarkness, surrounded by sound, music and the voices of 4 actors, located somewhere cold, hearty, violent, in the best be forgotten past.

"Praxis" premiered in August

The performances of PRAXIS at HERE Arts Center were a blast!
For more photos, go to the ATLAS gallery: www.atlasdance.org

"Praxis" premier coming up on August 12-13

Shows are at 8:30pm on Sunday, August 12 and Monday August 13.

For tickets go to the HERE website: www.here.org

Latitude 5: Catalyst

Draft: Our last rehearsal before the show on January 27. No ambient sound, added in Stephan Moore's second draft for the music on top.

This short piece was commissioned by the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company. It was made using a similar structure to Latitute IV, which I made with students at Bennington, a kind of chain reaction where the timing was sequential but the movement material was set. The company showed the piece at The Egg, the State Theater, in Albany, NY on January 27, 2007.

The videos below are two excerpts from Latitude IV, a work I choreographed at Bennington College in 2002. I am reworking this piece and creating a new version, with original music by Stephan Moore, for the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company in Albany, NY. Entitled "Latitude V: Catalyst" the piece will be shown at the Egg (NY State Theater) in Albany on January 27.