Showing posts with label movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movement. Show all posts

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Jennifer Hicks (& Matt Samolis)
- Country Shoes May 25 2009







photos: Bob Raymond (MAG)

Jennifer Hicks (former MAG) and Matt Samolis
"Country Shoes"
Mon May 25, 2009: butoh performance with live music

Video of Jennifer Hicks and Matt Samolis "Country Shoes"

Jennifer Hicks / Matt Samolis : Country Shoes @mobius 05-25-09 from MobiusArtistsGroup on Vimeo.

Jen's in depth study of Butoh and other forms of movement are a natural pairing for Matt's unusual flute style which also draws largely on eastern cultural influences.

The politics of shoes is the politics of leather, which is the politics of meat, which is the politics of land use and corn and fuel and hunger and of poverty. It is of confinement and freedom, allowing one to do something one could not do otherwise, while also restricting so much on another end. But this is a simple dance in a complicated world, a series of movements which will be performed in shoes made of only wood and rope from China. These are shoes of the land and shoes of the poor and shoes that limit ones movements.

Jennifer Hicks M.F.A., R.Y.T, director of CHIMERAlab Dance Project, is a performer, choreographer, teacher and visual artist. She received her MFA from Naropa University in Contemporary Performance, her BFA from Tufts University and Degree in Fine Arts from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. She is a guest artist for the 4th year at Naropa University in the MFA Contemporary Performance Department directing The Embodied Poetics Project. Jennifer has won several prestigious awards for her work including The Traveling Scholars Award from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Franklin Furnace for an installation/performance about medicine called “Training For Uncertainty”. She is an alumni of the experimental performance collective called Mobius and a founding member of the former Pan 9 in Boston.

As a dancer, Jennifer studied ballet, modern and jazz since childhood but began her interest in Butoh back in the mid 1980's. She began to study Butoh seriously in the early 1990’s at the San Francisco Butoh Festival. Her main performance influences are Tatsumi Hijikata, KATSURA Kan, Maureen Fleming, Wendell Beavers, Barbara Dilley, puppet work, early cartoons, nature and silent films. She has been dancing in KASTURA Kans International Dance Company for over 8 years and has her own company based in Boston and Boulder CO. She has been teaching movement, creating original work and performing for over 25 years. Ms. Hicks is a certified Shintaido Instructor, certified TranceDance International Facilitator and a Yoga Instructor registered with the National Yoga Alliance. Her training also includes graduate level training in The20Viewpoints with Wendell Beavers, Roy Hart Vocal Training with Ethie Friend and Jonathan Hart, Body Mind Centering® principles with Erika Berland, Suzuki Actors Training with members of SITI Company, Contemplative Dance with Barbara Dilley, Vocal Training with Meredith Monk, Lecoq Neutral Mask with Amy Russell, Grotowski Based Physical Theater with Stephen Wangh, Performance Art with Marilyn Arsem (founding director of Mobius) and Moment Work from Moises Kaufman and Leigh Fondakowski.

She has also studied shiatsu massage and acupuncture at Boston School of Shiatsu and New England School of Acupuncture. She studied her puppetry with Julie Szabo ( who worked with Bread and Puppet for over 10 years) and Julie Morrison (who trained at the University of Connecticut's Puppet Arts Program). Both Julie’s enjoys “putting an edgy twist on traditional forms of puppetry, as well as exploring connections between the puppet, the audience, and the performer”. This work translates into puppetry techniques for the body which Jennifer uses as a tool in choreography.

Links:

http://www.fragilecreep.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxG9Q99izZE

http://www.archive.org/details/TrioImprovisationsForVoiceFluteAndPreparedCelloOpenCircuits

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Karen Krolak & Jason Ries
- dance and spoken word May 25 2009

May 25, 2009 - Improvisation #1












May 25, 2009 - Improvisation #2






photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

Karen Krolak & Jason Ries
“a series of dance improvisations using shoes”
Mon May 25 - dance performance (Piece #1 and Piece #2)


Videos:

Video of Improvisation #1, Part A:


Video of Improvisation #1, Part B:


Video of Improvisation #2, Part A:



Video of Improvisation #2, Part B:



Using a character by the author, in 1999, named Princess Pamplemousse, Karen plays with how shoes make us move and how they make us feel. As part of the performance she initially planned to record people's shoe stories or encourage the audience to write their stories down.

Karen Krolak is choreographer, performer, costume designer, teacher, and writer. Since 2000, she has been the Founder/Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse (www.monkeyhouselovesme.com) , an award winning nonprofit that connects communities to choreography. Through Monkeyhouse, her work has been presented at First Night 2009, the Cool NewYork Dance Festival 2009, Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, Mobius, and fringe festivals in New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Winnipeg.

She recently traveled to Italy for a workshop and performance and danced in David Parker and the Bang Group’s Nut/cracked, was invited to the Jacob’s Pillow Choreographers’ Lab, and became the Artistic Director for the BoomTown Festival.

She is a professional shoe blogger and was quickly dubbed Fitness Footwear Guru for Shoetube.tv (http://shoetube.wordpress.com/).

Karen choreographed Coriolanus for Actors’ Shakespeare Project. For the last 13 years, she has been a faculty member at Impulse Dance Center in Natick, MA where she developed the Modern Dance curriculum. In 2005, she co-taught two workshops on movement and technical design at Theater Methods 05 in Malpils, Latvia with her favorite collaborator Jason Ries.

http://conversingwithchoreographers.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/monkeyhouselovesme
www.monkeyhouselovesme.com


Notes from the Curator:

1. Due to a last minute variation in the program, I asked Karen Krolak if she would be willing to do two improvisations instead of one (her proposal suggested the possibility of more than one performance). Fortunately, she was willing and able. The start of the program for the Monday May 25 2009 set of performances was:

i. Improvisation #1: Karen Krolak & Jason Ries
ii: Moving Sound Meditation on Sam Tan's "63 in '08": Jane Wang
iii: Improvisation #2: Karen Krolak & Jason Ries

2. A technical note: Charles Daniels and the curator had to swap out ultraflip video cameras between Parts A and B of Improvisation Piece #2 (hence the jittery camera work and loud sound of a screw turning).

3. The "true" endings of both pieces were almost sabotaged unintentionally. As Karen Krolak and Jason Ries' Improvisation #1 was ending, I started the next piece too early because I had misunderstood my start cue - thus not giving the audience a chance to give Karen and Jason much well-deserved applause. For Improvisation #2, David Chin was trying to wait until both dancers relaxed into "we're finished" body language but since that didn't happen, Jason got up and ran to pick up all the shoes which I actually thought added a nice tag to the ending.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Sara June & Joleen Westerdale
- butoh May 24, 25 2009

May 24, 2009:













May 25, 2009:












photos: Bob Raymond (MAG)

Sara June and Joleen Westerdale
Untitled
May 24-25, 2009 - butoh dance performance

Videos:

Sara June / Joleen Westerdale Untitled #1 @mobius 5-24-09 from MobiusArtistsGroup on Vimeo.



Sara June / Joleen Westerdale Untitled #2 @mobius 05-25-09 from MobiusArtistsGroup on Vimeo.



Butoh performance with human installation (Joleen Westerdale), power drill and taped music by Richard Lainhart.

Sara June is an independent choreographer and artistic director of the Umi no Bodi dance troupe. Her movement work is known for its odd, humorous, and other-worldly qualities; she finds her dances through stripping away the foundations of movements we create in our daily lives to uncover states of stillness, birth, and the primitive qualities of animals and machines.


Sara founded Umi no Bodi (a Japanese phrase meaning ‘Ocean’s Body’) in 2008 with the goal of creating large-scale, site-specific installations that transform outdoor spaces not traditionally used for performance. Umi no Bodi dancers create isolated movement studies that explore a range of states and conditions in nature; troupe members train through an image-based choreographic process that results in spontaneous improvised work based on each mover’s internal process developed during rehearsals. Essential elements of the site environments feed this process; dancers train using methods that will help them to experience and transform these spaces on several sensory levels, (e.g., through blindfolds and partner work). The installations are shaped by thematic structures and each performance includes innovative costuming, original sound compositions performed live, and the use of machines as non-human dancers.


In addition to Juddertone, Sara co-curates the Zeroplan performance series with musician Max Lord. This series was created in order to offer seasoned experimental musicians and dancers an opportunity to improvise together in informal performance settings. Other projects include the Anywhere Performance Project, an online collaboration with California-based artist Deborah Butler that utilizes remote video technology as a basis for dialogue between the two dancers. Sara’s training and background is based in a decade of study in butoh, a Japanese avant-garde form, and other indigenous dance forms. Since 2000, she has shown solo and group work at venues in Boston, Providence, Philadelphia and New York City. Sara is a former member of the Boston-based Kitsune Butoh (2003-06) and the NYC post-modern butoh troupe, the Vangeline Theater (2006-08). She has performed with Master butoh artist Katsura Kan (Curious Fish, 2002, 2008), and trained with international artists Hiroko Tamano, Su-En, and Diego Pinon. She received her formal education at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1997), and Harvard University (Ed.M., 2005).


http://www.oceanbody.com

http://anywherepeformanceproject.ning.com

http://juddertone.ning.com

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Liz Roncka / Haggai Cohen Milo
- movement/music May 23, 24 2009


Photos from Saturday May 23rd, 2009 performance:


photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)


Video from Saturday May 23rd, 2009 performance:

Liz Roncka / Haggai Cohen Milo: Improv. #1 @mobius 5-23-09 from MobiusArtistsGroup on Vimeo.



Photos from Sunday May 24th, 2009 performance:

video still: Jane Wang (MAG)

video still: Jane Wang (MAG)

video still: Jane Wang (MAG)


photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)


Video from Sunday May 24th, 2009 performance:

Liz Roncka / Haggai Cohen Milo : Improv. #2 @mobius 5-24-09 from MobiusArtistsGroup on Vimeo.



Liz Roncka and Haggai Cohen Milo
"a site-specific improvisational duet of movement and music"
May 23, 24 2009 - movement and live music performance


The piece will be a structured improvisation and will incorporate interactions with the audience, artists and installations in the space. The architecture of the space (physical, sonic, energetic) will also heavily inform the improvisation. Thematically, the question of what it means to be "political" in one's "art-making" will be explored.

Liz Roncka is an avid practitioner of movement improvisation and contemporary dance. Her early training was in the tradition of classical ballet at the School of the New Bedford Ballet. In college, Liz’s focus shifted toward contemporary dance and improvisation. She was a member of the Dance Collective of Boston from 1998-2005.

Liz has had the pleasure of performing modern dance and improvisational work under the direction of: Ramelle Adams, Emily Beattie, Ruth Benson-Levin, Debra Bluth, Alissa Cardone, Sean Curran, Andrew Harwood, Dawn Kramer, Light Motion, and Micki Taylor-Pinney.
Her improvisational work has been presented in Boston, NYC, Paris and Budapest. In addition to her own improvisational work, current performance projects include the Falling Flight Project, Moving Sound, The White Box Project and the Moment Quartet.


Liz has a daily blog "The Dance-a-Day Project" wherein she creates and videotapes improvised dances on a daily basis: "The intent of this project is to deepen my practice of improvisation. The commitment to and repetition of this process will inevitably lead to the evolution of my work. I am seeking information regarding patterns and themes in my work; my personal responses to the dances; the viewers' responses; what is my technique/my method; what characteristics define my work; where are the blocks; where is the magic; where is the "truth"?!"