As part of an alternative marketing strategy, the Contemporary Circus and Immersive Arts Center (I’m in charge of some stuff there) brought in Caroline Wright, Ernesto Lea Place, as well as Mickey Lonsdale and Jesse Cody (of Circus Splendiferous) for a very special performance at a very special series! The city of Troy produces “Troy Night Out” regularly as a way to build art-centric community, and the June “Troy Night Out” was pride-themed! Bonus-fun!!
Lost Boys
New York Academy of Ballet put on a unique production of Peter Pan for their annual recital this year. I captured the performance from behind the video camera, but naturally managed to grab some behind the scenes footage because - hey - I just can’t help myself! It’s too easy!
Tiny Dancers
I only work with one recreational studio on a regular weekly basis - and that’s a very special studio that celebrated its 10th Anniversary this year. Dutchess School of Performing Arts opened under the direction of Denyse Looney for the 2012-2013 school year, and I remain responsible for the Irish and Contemporary curriculum after all this time. I love these kids, I love the process of bringing their progress to light at each recital, and I love being able to capture it a bit on the side!
Clowning around
As part of my role with Contemporary Circus and Immersive Arts Center, I produced Karen Gersch (one of the co-counders of the Big Apple Circus and) a phenomenal visual artist, giving a talk on Circus in Art through time. I picked up an embarrassingly large number of her works for my own collection and laughed a whole lot more than I usually do than something titled “lecture” !
Mountain House
Sharon Penz is a local Hudson Valley based choreographer, dancer and artist with a profound interest in the local and regional history. We did a film shoot at the Empire Railway Museum in Phoenicia, NY and the site of the former Catskill Mountain House in Kaaterskill, NY to create a dance on film project. I look forward to sharing the final draft with you!
gap junction
Katie Messina heads up RogueWave, a dance company presenting a new work ‘gap junction’ this fall at The Tank NYC. Katie and I met while working on a project for another choreographer, and it felt very much like a playdate to shoot with her and her dancers. We crafted a number of promotional films in preparation for the fall presentation. Head over to instagram to view them all!
Circus in the Park
For the last six months, I’ve served as Director of Operations for non-profit Contemporary Circus and Immersive Arts Center, in an effort to bring their summer season of Circus in the Park to fruition. August 16th through 28th featured performances from professional company CirqueUS, a residency for artists to create a new work, kids camp, free workshops for kids, adult workshop, and an immersive dinner experience all under a circus tent! I look forward to what we might do next.
Acrobat of Innocence
In early November, Katherine Duke brought me out to Las Vegas with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company to film her re-imagining of the 1947 Hawkins work “Stephen Acrobat”. The piece features a 14’ Isamu Noguchi sculpture as a set piece. It has been an absolute highlight of my career to be part of this historic project, and there is much more to come! Special thanks to Louis Kavouras and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for being integral in bringing this project to life.
hypha's open-process
I’ve been working for the last year with collaborative group hypha and at the end of October we offered an open-process showing at 5th Wall Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Thanks to a grant from CityCorps, we were able to offer the showing free of charge. It felt good to be a performing aerialist again, even if it was on an unusual apparatus (you should see our ropey web thingy!). Also, you can view the open-process digitally. Just click here!
Festival Theater Hudson's Inaugural Gala Concert
I’m delighted to hold the title of Director for Dance & Film for Festival Theater Hudson - a new opera company dedicated to the intersectionality of arts and opera. For their first ever concert, I held the role of Executive Producer. Act 1 was a gorgeous violin duet composed by Ittai Shapira and performed by Shapira and Hagai Shaham and Act 2 was actually Act 3 of Richard Wagner’s Die Walkure opera, performed by Jon Morrell, Othalie Graham and Charles Martin. A 32-piece orchestra conducted by Elias Miller, under the direction of Concert Master Elizabeth Silver had audiences delivering three ovations. I look forward to showing you what else we have up our sleeve!
Venus Rising
As part of a longer term film project for Festival Theater Hudson, I had the pleasure of shooting with Heather Green as Venus. I had the challenge of creating a film that shows Venus rising out of the water completely dry. I can’t wait for you to see!
make it worth it
Check out this collaboration with mover Nicki Miller and singer Adar.
Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair
I set this piece on two groups this spring - the music, BLACK IS THE COLOR OF MY TRUE LOVE’S HAIR, is an original folk song arranged and performed live by my good friend Brian Coughlin on the stand up bass. One group, Dutchess School of Performing Arts, we also made a film for. It was extra special looking for a place to film - and we found out that our chosen spot was in a habitat for the endangered “bloodroot” plant, which was used in indigenous medicine. The piece, which was built as a statement on climate change, felt extra fitting being filmed (carefully) on this particular land. Please enjoy the film!
Source: https://vimeo.com/571859976
Still, Together
“I’ve become increasingly interested in what a stillness-effort becomes when it is extracted from dynamic redirections and worked with as a movement in and of itself.” -clyde forth, Artistic Director
The Still,Together dance film is an invitation for people to enjoy, study and appreciate the tenderness of sharing space together through dance, even when viewing from outside or through a screen.
Our aim is to bring the audience and performers into contemplative attention together. Light, time and stillness connect the dancers, the space and the viewer over the twenty-four minute duration of the film, set to a composition by Morton Feldman. On the heels of the pandemic, questions about solitude, space, time and how we share each of these are our focal point in creating this work.
It’s such a joy to be part of this ongoing project. Look out for the complete dance film this summer!
The Illusion of Stationary Stars
Inanimate48 is a 48 hour film festival where artists are challenged to use apparatus in a new or unusual way. I gathered with my new collaborative pals, Hypha, and created The Illusion of Stationary Stars. We received two honorable mentions and a ton of praise that made us feel like we had achieved what we set out to creatively. And on top of that - it felt damn good doing it! Check out the complete film!
Hypha - March 2021 Residency
For about six months before finally gathering in person, four other humans and I talked alot about the wisdom of the trees. We questioned creative process and whether there was a way to approach things differently, and we acknowledged socializations that create interesting dynamics. We moved creatively together over video call, and kept track of threads we hoped to pull in the future. Finally, in March, we held space together in the flesh. We’ve realized how much potential there is - between live performance, filmed works, and larger artistic impact. This gathering was very much the start of many more - things - to come. Check out www.ritualofinquiry.com for more information on what we’re working on!
Teton Rock Gym - Aerial Silks!
Midway through March I travelled to Driggs, ID to teach beginner aerial fabric classes at Teton Rock Gym. Aside from the sheer beauty of being surrounded on all sides by high rising mountain peaks, the trip was a welcome breath of fresh air. I worked with young kids, adults, dancers, and rock climbers, and even got to do a little bouldering myself! I look forward to returning in the summer to collaborate with Teton Rock Gym and Summit Arts Center to offer a dance/aerial intensive!
I STILL MARVEL AT HOW LIGHT THEY ARE
I STILL MARVEL AT HOW LIGHT THEY ARE:
In January 2021, I had the privilege of (safely) re-setting a piece from 2015 with almost the same cast. They are better trained movers, and I am a wiser choreographer. Much of the movement was inspired by words from Hugh Aldersey-Williams’ “Anatomies”. As a synesthete, phrases like "Never mind the quality, feel the width", make so much sense to me. Often I would coach movers based on sensation rather than objective. "Can that moment feel more like velvet than like plastic", for example.
I hope you’ll enjoy the full film capture of the piece, along with more excerpts from the book below.
Pg 131 - the study about the heart being a little brain of its own - being capable of information processing.
One of the clips I've offered below is actually inspired specifically by that idea, and includes inspiration from
Pg 128 - "Unlike all the other internal organs, the heart is clearly discernible as a site of activity: it beats, and beats at a rate that changes in response to the world around it..." as well as "When I hold a heart in my hand, it is immediately obvious that it must once have done something." and not least, from Pg 127, "The heart is forever inexperienced".
Pg 107 - at several moments, one of the dancers departs from the rest of them and experiences a bit of an "identity crisis", as inspired by "How do we know we are the same person we were ten minutes or ten years ago?" "Is it even important to be the same and to know it?". and how then, do we feel confident in pg 102, "asserting our individuality".
Pg 92 - "Sometimes, languages wander off round the body in search of new inspiration...".
Pg 62- Perhaps mostly deeply at the root of the movement: "I am forced to acknowledge that the skeleton is not a rock-hard armature like the steel frame of a building, but an entirely organic fluorescence, subject to shaping by chemical and external forces."
Pg 60 - "It must perform its structural function at the same time as it grows with the rest of the body. Bones develop in response to stress. Tiny cracks form when they are subjected to forces during normal exercise. These cracks send chemical messages instructing new bone tissue to form." There is a section where the movers are entirely on the ground. They do not look out at the audience, they go within. They patch some cracks, they nurture new tissue.
Pg 56 - "As you might expect for a substance that spends most of its time supporting our weight, bone is somewhat stronger in compression than it is in tension."
Crystal Clear
I managed to choreograph during this global pandemic! Yes! I said it! I actually managed to create some art! I made a piece rooted in a study on grief. The kind of grief where all you can really do is stare at your hands to remind yourself you’re still real. As we filmed the work, I directed movers at the start and end to spend a few moments “just being in your humanity”. In this season where so many are “Merry and Bright”, I honor those for whom these emotions are very far away.
Artist Improvisation
One source of rejuvenation that I’ve found collaboratively with artists is simply to meet with them, film them improvising, and create art that is purely, selfishly, a celebration. I’ve been participating in 2-3 a month for the last several months. Ashley Laracey, a beautiful mover who has taken up residence as one of my neighbors during the pandemic, had been thoughtfully sharing studio space, and agreed to collaborate in this way. She lamented her self-identified lack of originality in improvisation, and I lamented being rusty at collaborating - but together we quietly played, and made some celebratory art.