Performance in the Park: Dance Siteworks 2011

For the past 7 years, Solar One has presented the Solar-Powered Dance Series, a curated group performance series featuring some of NYC’s best emerging choreographers. This year, we’re changing things up a bit: instead of an open call for 12 choreographers to present dance on our outdoor eco-stage, we’ve asked previous participants in the SPDS to create dance siteworks for Stuyvesant Cove Park. This year, Julie Troost (SPDS 2009 & 2010) and Gabriel Forestieri (SPDS 2009) will present work that inspires us to participate, and to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the Park and of Stuyvesant Cove in a whole new way. we hope you’ll join us for these special events in June , July and August!

Handleless at Solar One by projectLIMB

Times

UPCOMING PERFORMANCE August 26 and 27
Rain Date August 28
Performance 5:00 (begins at the southernmost end of park and moves back to Solar One)

Melissa Gurrero in Handleless Photo by Luka Kito

ProjectLIMB (www.projectlimb.net) creates, evolves, and performs work where real time relationships, rather than content, are primary. Handleless is an investigation of all our interactions, an attempt at revelation of the places we inhabit. Most performance is about control; Controlling the lights, controlling the sounds, controlling the movement, and controlling the experience. Handleless relinquishes these controls, and celebrates the ephemeral, including as much as is possible from what surrounds us. What better place to engage in this inquiry than Solar One and all that surrounds it.

We will introduce our process with a 30-minute guided walk/ meditation before the performance. It is the perfect way to connect with our inquiry in and with the space. The meditation is an offering: a gift of engaging, seeing, and listening to the venue itself.

ProjectLIMB works to bring performer, space, and audience back into relation. Using an immersive language that joins us all together in a celebration of this moment. Which is infinite and can never be “understood”, nor separate from. A living space is opened, where transformation and illumination act independent of design. Just as Solar One receives its power from the Sun, so Handleless will take its cues from the multitude of stimulus that is Stuyvesant Cove.

Benjamin Asriel in Handleless Photo by Luka Kito

projectLIMB is
Gabriel Forestieri – Director
Benjamin Asriel, Melissa Guerrero, Ted Johnson, Emily Moore – Dancers
Loren Dempster – Composer
Django Carranza – Percussionist

Artist Bios

Benjamin Ford Asriel grew up in Glasgow, Kentucky where he cultivated his love of art in his mother’s dance classes, on the soccer field, and playing trumpet in the GHS Band.  He studied music theory at Brown University (AB Music ‘03) and dance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts (MFA ‘06).  He lives in Brooklyn and is grateful to have performed extensively with many amazing regional choreographers, most recently Walter Dundervill, Juliana F. May, Edisa Weeks, Susan Rethorst, and Jack Ferver.  Ben also makes dances; his new work, Utility Pet, will premier at CPR June 23-25.   Tell him what you think: basriel@gmail.com.

Django Carranza is known for playing a variety of drumming styles, from Mikey Dread to the members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Count Basie Orchestra. He has worked with blues great Eddie Kirkland, the Fully Celebrated Orchestra and poet Allen Ginsburg.

Loren Kiyoshi Dempster uses a combination of computer, electronics, cello and extended techniques to create and perform music.  An active chamber musician and improviser, he might be found in the next while performing with Dan Joseph Ensemble, Trio Triticali, and Left Hand Path.  Ever interested in the relationships between movement, space, and sound, he may be found composing and performing music for many choreographers in 2011, including Chris Ferris, Jonah Bokaer, Merce Cunningham, Project Limb and Margaret Paek

Gabriel Forestieri is Choreographer/Director of projectLIMB. He is intent on connecting communities with their landscape, resources, and each other. ProjectLIMB has performed in Hawaii, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Washington D.C., Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Thailand, and New York City. ProjectLIMB’s work has been presented in NYC at DTW, the Tank, Solar One, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, White Wave, The Puffin Room, and Symphony Space. ProjectLIMB has been involved with numerous residencies including SEEDS at Earthdance, DTW’s Outer/Space, and The Wave Rising Festival. ProjectLIMB also received a fellowship to go to Hawaii and perform at the Ulua Theatre. Gabriel is an alum of the MFA (2006) dance program at NYU. He was a Dance Omi International Dance Collective Resident in the summer of 2005 and was nominated for a total of four Isadora Duncan awards (San Francisco’s highest dance achievement) in 2004 and 2005. He is currently performing in the NYC production of Sleep No More.

Melissa Guerrero explores internal and external landscapes, and practices the art of being human. She has had the pleasure of working with koosil-ja/dance KUMIKO, David Hurwith, Edisa Weeks, Kathy Westwater, Stochastic Ensemble, Body Cartography Project and Kirstie Simson. With collaborator Margaret Paek, she presented work at the Movement Research Festival and Mulberry Street Theater’s newsteps series. Guerrero graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and takes root in a personal daily practice of yoga, meditation and Contact Improvisation.

Ted Johnson is currently an adjunct dancer with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. He was a member of Bebe Miller Company and Ralph Lemon Company. He has also worked with choreographers Amy Sue Rosen, David Alan Harris, Sarah Pogostin, Eun Me Ahn, Cheng-Chieh Yu, Colleen Thomas and Bill Young, among others, over a career of 25+ years. His improvisational work has been featured in collaborative ventures onstage with Kirstie Simson and Gabriel Forestieri. Ted has a background in visual arts (drawing, painting and design), theater and voice. He has been a student of Klein Technique with Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein for nearly two decades, and continues a practice in contact improvisation (CI). His most recent dance/theater endeavor is the NY production of “Sleep No More.”

Emily Moore is a Somatic Educator and Dance Artist. She graduated with a BFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Currently, she lives in NYC where she practices and teaches Dance, Gyrotonic®, Gyrokinesis®, MELT Method-the Art of Self-Care, Thai Bodywork, Qigong and the Healing Tao, Contact Dance Improvisation, and many other wonderful treasures. She’s been dancing with projectLIMB since 2004! She is also an Altaer Educator, www.altaer.org.

H U G- A Performance Installation by Julie Troost

Times

June 24 and 25 at 6pm
Rain Date June 26 at 2pm
FREE
Open to the public and suitable for all ages

Groups embracing in a city park surprise New Yorkers walking by.
Negative memories of personal loss and conflict are healed through a simple act of compassion.

H U G is a public performance installation that effects social change by spreading a healing message of compassion and human connection. H U G is the distillation of one powerful human gesture that is understood universally and without bias. Surprising park-goers in the midst of their day, H U G travels through Stuyvesant Cove Park. Appearing without warning, pairs embrace in stillness surrounded by dramatic urban nature. They create a seamlessly choreographed grand gesture that sparks a jarring moment of vulnerability easily discernible to those who happen upon it.

H U G relies on two common avenues of communication: personal interaction and electronic messaging. Prior to the performance, personal stories of loss and conflict are collected from the public in order to be honored and commemorated. At the performance, the audience is invited to add themselves into the installation and contribute their own memories. The project is an artistic act of public compassion which presents the body as the location where difficult memories dwell. Healing takes place through the physical interaction of individuals immersed in the transformative natural environment of the riverfront park setting.

H U G promotes community and individual healing and creates an opportunity to replace painful memories with new memories of hope. It supports small acts of kindness as the cornerstone of global social change. H U G creates opportunities for the people of a community to practice compassion for others, to collectively mourn its lost members and to memorialize tragic events.

Artist Bio

As the Artistic Director of Anima Productions, Julie Troost is a New York City-based artist creating concept-driven, collaborative work in modern dance, theater, video, and performance art. She has a profound interest in portraying the intangible, yet her work is firmly rooted in the physicality of the body. She both sculpts the human experience onstage and breaches daily life with site-specific work and public participation. Conscious of its political and social relevance, her art inspires essential dialogue for a healthy society. Selected works: H U G: performance installation (Conflux festival on Manhattan streets, Brazilian T.V.: Lugar Incomum); H U G: video (Chashama film festival, NYC and Heaven Gallery, Chicago); Congregation: dance theater deemed “a moving spectacle” by The Brooklyn Rail (PS122, Dumbo Dance festival, Dance Conversations @ The Flea); The Interim: a physical play (Players’ Theater, NYC); Assimilated: site-specific dance theater (Solar One, 3rd Ward, MNN); Resuscitation: site-specific dance (Solar One); FrEdem: movement theater (Linhart Theater); I’m Still in my Underwear: choreography for Edy Ferguson’s film (group art project, Song Poems, at Cohen Leslie & Brown gallery, NYC, Low Gallery, Los Angeles); I Am Here.: site-specific dance (Shelley Stefee’s store). A graduate of Northwestern University, Julie is a member of The Relationship, Fiona Templeton’s theater company. Julie was a resident artist at Harold Arts Residency, Workspace for Choreographers, and Outpost. She is a recipient of the Re-Discover Your Heart award and a Lincoln Center Director’s Lab member.

Participate in H U G – an open call to the community:
1) Contribute your own memory of personal loss or conflict that you would like us to heal for you by emailing us at hugperformance[at]gmail[dot]com. Your name will be kept anonymous. A list of submissions as you describe them will be made available to the audience. Some ideas for memories to contribute include: a loved one who has passed on, something you regret, something that begs your forgiveness, a conflict, a violent act, or a negative or painful experience. Let us heal your negative memories by creating a new memory of compassion.
2) Come out and support this movement of compassion by either witnessing the event or hugging someone at the installation.
Receive updates on all H U G projects at:
www.myspace.com/hugperformance
& on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hugperformance
Follow the project on Twitter @julietroost