La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival (On Demand)

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January 19 - January 27, 2021

An Online Event

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La MaMa presents Café La MaMa Live: La MaMa Moves! Online, curated and hosted by Nicky Paraiso. This edition of Cafe La MaMa Live will be the second in an ongoing process of choreographers exploring the creation/recreation of work for an online platform. This live presentation of works by Kevin Augustine (USA), Kari Hoaas (Norway), Anabella Lenzu (Argentina/Italy/USA), Tamar Rogoff (USA), Mei Yamanaka (Japan) will be streamed on La MaMa’s website and will include a discussion with the artists involved.

We hope you enjoy these five artists’ work within this still-innovating visual format, created out of necessity and a passionate willfulness.

Featuring

Kevin Augustine: BODY CONCERT
Kari Hoaas: Heat – the distant episodes
Anabella Lenzu: The night that you stopped acting/ La noche que dejaste de actuar
Tamar Rogoff & Mei Yamanaka: The Yamanakas At Home (working title) & Wonder About Merri

Tuesday, January 19 at 7pm EST
Kevin Augustine
Anabella Lenzu

Wednesday, January 20 at 7pm EST
Anabella Lenzu
Kari Hoaas

Tuesday, January 26 at 7pm EST
Kari Hoaas
Tamar Rogoff

Wednesday, January 27 at 7pm EST
Tamar Rogoff
Kevin Augustine

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KEVIN AUGUSTINE

BODY CONCERT

Puppet company Lone Wolf Tribe is crossing into the dance world for the first time with this hybrid work. Kevin Augustine’s Lone Wolf Tribe (LWT) offers a new multidisciplinary work where oversized body limbs stripped of their skin become a hauntingly romantic, moving sculpture of muscles, tendons and bone. Achingly animated in an extremely rigorous choreography, Augustine performs solo—bringing his puppets to unusual life with his hands, feet and outstretched legs.

Inspired by Butoh and performed to an original haunting score by Mark Bruckner, BODY CONCERT is a minimalistic spectacle coupling exquisitely sculpted foam-rubber puppets to wordlessly explore our partnership with life, death, nature and each other. Dream-like vignettes (50 min) elevate our shared human journey, highlighting our vulnerability and resiliency as the boundaries of puppetry itself are expanded. Performed without a text and accented with heartbreaking hints of nature, BODY CONCERT poetically resonates: we are all alive with life all around us.

This is LWT’s first NYC production since The God Projekt in 2016, which Laura Collins-Hughes of The New York Times said “pulsates with life”, received a Critic's Pick from Time Out NY and won the NY Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance Art Production.

Performed by Kevin Augustine (creator/puppet maker), BODY CONCERT is kinetically supported by Bruckner's electroacoustic score composed with melodic fragments of oboe, cello and piano. Designers include Ayumu Poe Saegusa (lights), Gloria Sun (masks & molds), Ilya Vett (technical advisor & set designer). Le Nouvelliste says, “Augustine takes you to previously unsuspected areas, redrawing the limits of puppetry while proposing a reflection on the discipline as well as the theme of his conscious dream.”

BODY CONCERT is a co-production with Canadian company Les Sages Fous. It was developed at artist colonies, Yaddo, Djerassi & Wildacres; awarded performance residencies in Norway (Ella Fiskum Danz), Quebec (Les Sages Fous) and NYC’s St. Ann’s Puppet Lab; funded by The Jim Henson Foundation, The Brooklyn Arts Council and a touring grant from USArtists International under the auspices of The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

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KARI HOAAS

Heat – the distant episodes

Heat – the distant episodes is a series of digital dancehaiku´s created in response to the isolation and uncertainty we are all facing as humans in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. As danceartists we can no longer share our work through live performance and touring. At this moment we have embarked on creating this series of digital mini dancepoems, premiering a new poem each Sunday. We offer these works as short contemplations on time and place; on listening and seeing, noticing the interplay of light, shadow, movement and sound, and what is.

Heat – the distant episodes is based on choreography from the original stage work Be Like Water (2015) which was supposed to have been touring to the USA when the pandemic hit. These video´s began as a way to continue to work and offer our work to the world during this time of isolation. Each video is a solo created for a specific site with each of the dancers in the Be like Water production. Be Like Water is the first dancework by Kari in an ongoing cycle of works about our relationship to nature. Created in an impressionistic and poetic vein, Kari used Bruce Lee´s famous quote as a starting point for the choreography, investigating different ways of moving through our changing world, negotiating obstacles, taking risks and finding opportunities for transformation.

Credits Heat – the distant episodes:

#1 POND
Premiere May 30th, 2020
Dancer: Katja Henriksen Schia
Photo and video: Marius Hauge
Costume: Signe Vasshus
Music: Fennecz
Concept and choreography: Kari Hoaas

#3 BRANCH
Premiere June 14th, 2020
Dancer: Gerd Kaisa Vorren
Photo and video: Marius Hauge
Costume: Signe Vasshus
Music: Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto
Concept and choreography: Kari Hoaas

#2 FALL
Premiere June 6th, 2020
Dancer: Andrea Winsnes
Photo and video: Marius Hauge
Costume: Signe Vasshus
Music: Björk
Concept and choreography: Kari Hoaas

#4 LEAVES
Premiere June 21st, 2020
Dancer: Magí Serra
Music: Kayhan Kalhor
Video and photo: Ignasi Castañé
Direction choreography: Kari Hoaas

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ANABELLA LENZU

The night that you stopped acting / La noche que dejaste de actuar

The night that you stopped acting/ La noche que dejaste de actuar, is a one-woman show which confronts the absurdity and irony of life, while being an artist and a spectator in today’s world. My work reflects my experience as a Latina/European artist living in New York and comes from a deep examination of my motivations as a woman, mother, and immigrant.

I have been working on a new dance-theater piece The night that you stopped acting / La noche que dejaste de actuar since July 2019, and it was planned to have its world premiere on June 6 & 7 at La Mama Moves Festival in NYC, but due the circumstances of the pandemic, we adapted the stage piece to create a new dance film!

Choreographer and Dancer: Anabella Lenzu
Direction: Daniel Pettrow
Videographer and Technology Advisor: Todd Carroll
Dramaturgy: Naoko Maeshiba

TAMAR ROGOFF

The Yamanakas At Home (working title) & Wonder About Merri

The Yamanakas At Home (working title) centers on an older couple living in a house in Japan. They eat, they sleep, they do laundry. A figure enters the house leaving mysterious rice circles that surround this man and woman. As much as they sweep up the rice it returns. They wonder if someone is haunting them or trying to protect them? Collaborating across the world, Tamar Rogoff (USA) and Mei Yamanaka (Japan) forge a partnership. Tamar envisions and directs. Mei directs, edits and dances the intruder/protector. Mei’s parents perform as the couple. For Rogoff this opportunity to mix truth and fiction, a cast of dancers and non-dancers, a kind of site work and merger of dance and film are what she loves. Tamar and Mei were scheduled to work together on Tamar’s piece, The Listeners for LaMama Moves in May 2020. When Covid struck rehearsals ended and Mei went back home to Japan. The Yamanakas at Home is their chance to get to know each other and work together despite all odds..

Wonder About Merri is a six minute short that looks at a surprising moment in Merri’s life. Diagnosed with Dystonia in 2012, she pursued a number of medical treatments and a lot of alternative routes recommended by friends. Some of these methods were crazy, some not, but all ineffective. A long-time dance student of Tamar’s, she had stopped going to classes in fear that she couldn’t do anything. When she returned, she and Tamar found some shocking evidence of movement they didn’t think was possible. Wonder About Merri is a hybrid, it’s not a documentary, nor a narrative, nor a dance film. In Merri’s words, it is “a cross between a music video and Lourdes.” Wonder About Merri was produced by Merri Milwe and Tamar Rogoff. The film stars Merri Milwe, and was directed by Tamar Rogoff. Editing and cinematography by Shachar Langlev. Sound design and original composition by Wilco Alkema. So far, the film has been shown at the Extraordinary Film Festival in Belgium, Dance on Camera, and the Dare to Dance in Public Film Festival where it received the award for Most Daring Film.

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Lone Wolf Tribe (LWT) is helmed by artistic director, Kevin Augustine. Harnessing visual storytelling with Augustine’s virtuosity as writer/director/performer & sculptor, LWT’s signature feature is its breathtaking tribe of hand-carved, foam-rubber puppets. Blending meticulous craft, physical rigor and decidedly dark humor, the company’s mission is to investigate, challenge and spellbind with fearless original stories that speak compassionately to the human experience. Augustine has written and performed 8 full-length Tribe shows since 1997, traversing monotheism’s ancient beginnings to the U.S. Veteran suicide epidemic.

Along with creating a new cycle of solo shows, Augustine continues to perform his roving clown pantomime, Clarion Call on American streets (since 2012) in partnership with Veterans for Peace, silently exposing the true costs of war. Offering monthly puppet workshops at LWT’s company headquarters in Brooklyn, Augustine also puppeteers at the Metropolitan Opera in Anothny Minghella’s Madama Butterfly (since 2006).

http://www.lonewolftribe.com http://www.lonewolftribe.com/body-concert-1

Kari Hoaas Productions was established by the award winning Norwegian choreographer Kari Hoaas in 2005, upon her return to Oslo after more than a decade working in New York City. She is known to create physical and complex performances that allow for ambiguity and contradiction, while retaining a profoundly human quality connected to our broader culture. Be Like Water (2015) is her first work in a cycle of works exploring our relationship with nature, responding to climate change.

Kari Hoaas is an award winning Norwegian choreographer, dancer and teacher. In 2005 she established Kari Hoaas Productions in Oslo, upon her return after more than a decade working in New York City. She is known to create physical and complex performances that allow for ambiguity and contradiction, while retaining a profoundly human quality connected to our broader culture. She has created ten evening length productions for KHP, touring in twenty countries on three continents, in addition to numerous shorter works, commissions, site specific projects and collaborations with other artists. She is Associate Professor at Christiania University College, Institute Norwegian College of Dance in Oslo and teaches internationally. More information: www.karihoaas.com.

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Originally from Argentina, Anabella Lenzu is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and teacher with over 30 years of experience working in Argentina, Chile, Italy, and the USA.

Lenzu directs her own company, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama (ALDD), which since 2006 has presented 390 performances, created 14 choreographic works, and performed at 100 venues, presenting thought-provoking and historically conscious dance-theater in NYC.

Her choreography has been commissioned all over the world for opera, TV programs, theatre productions, and by many dance companies.

Lenzu has written for various dance and art magazines, and published her first book in 2013, entitled Unveiling Motion and Emotion. The book contains writings in Spanish and English on the importance of dance, community, choreography, and dance pedagogy. Her second book, Teaching Dance through Meaningful Gestures, is expected in 2020 and explores basic exercises, visualization exercises, active imagination, and artistic application. The book explores how technique is a philosophy and a theory, and how the body is an instrument for expression.

Currently, Lenzu conducts classes at Peridance Center and NYU Gallatin and is Artist-in-Residence at CUNY Dance Initiative, 2019-2020. www.AnabellaLenzu.com

Merri Milwe is a theater director, a teaching artist, and an artistic director who has served as dramaturg and director on original plays and solo works for the past 20 years. Her work as a director and dramaturg of Deb Margolin’s solo work is a long collaboration, and includes Just Give me One Half Hour With My Mother, redesigned for Zoom and presented by Dixon Place, Smith College, and North Hampton Community Arts Center; Good Morning Anita Hill for the All for One Theater Festival in NY, Penn State University, the KO Theater Festival, Amherst, Mass, and Index to Idioms at The Culture Project in NYC and the Puffin Cultural Forum, Teaneck NJ. Merri directed Margolin’s full-length multi-character play Critical Mass in Hebrew translation at the University of Tel Aviv Her extensive teaching includes a 2017 stint directing at NSKI College in Norway. Merri has run acting workshops for Creative Alternatives of NY and been a Teaching Artist for Playwrights Theater of New Jersey, and served as Artistic Director at Puffin Cultural Project 2011-2012. Wonder About Merri is her first film

Shachar Langlev is a director and cinematographer whose films have screened around the country including at the Sundance Film Festival and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the cinematographer of ALIVE INSIDE, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, was short-listed for the Academy Awards, and released in theaters nation-wide. His narrative feature, A SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO LIVING AND DYING, premiered at the Tallgrass Film Festival in October 2018 where it won the Excellence in the Art of Filmmaking Award. Shachar directed and produced a series of high-profile documentary films featuring notable subjects such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Vice President Joe Biden (at the time), Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Noble Peace Prize recipient, Elie Wiesel. Shachar has also shot and directed numerous music videos (seen on MTV, VH1, BET) and commercials. He is an adjunct professor in the MFA, BFA and BA film departments at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York.

Mei Yamanaka is a dancer and choreographer from Japan. Mei moved to New York in 2008. Mei has worked and collaborated with artists including Tamar Rogoff, Catherine Galasso, Tiffany Mills, Mark Dendy, Jennifer Archibald, Christine Bonansea, Jody Oberfelder, among others. Mei’s work has been seen at Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, Mix Festival at HERE, Food for Though at Danspace, and more. Mei was a “Fresh Tracks” residency artist at Dance Theater Workshop(now New York Live Arts) in 2010 – 2011. Mei was also residency artist at Chez Bushwick Artist In Residence in 2014 at Chez Bushwick. Right now Mei is staying, dancing and creating in Japan, her home. Because of covid-19. Mei dances as sending good energy to the universe. www.meiyamanaka.com

Tamar Rogoff is a New York filmmaker and choreographer whose large scale site works, films, and more traditional proscenium performances house her life-long experimental process. Her films have been screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival, the Sarasota Film Festival, Dance on Camera, and the Extraordinary Film Festival, among others. Rogoff was a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Fellow where she worked on Enter The Faun, which addressed protagonist Gregg Mozgala’s cerebral palsy through unorthodox body practices. The documentary won awards, and was broadcast on PBS America Reframed and in Europe. Rogoff’s short, Wonder About Merri, recently won “Most Daring Film” at Dare to Dance in Public Festival. As a movement coach, Rogoff worked with Claire Danes on HBO’s Emmy-winning movie Temple Grandin. Rogoff’s live theater work has been seen at P.S.122, Danspace, La MaMa ETC, and Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and toured abroad. Rogoff is a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller, and the Fledgling Fund. At La Mama, she teaches her 38-year, ongoing laboratory where she explores Body Scripting, an approach she also uses to make choreography. Rogoff’s newly completed film, A Plague on All Our Houses, is a feature-length documentary that follows the lives of four dancers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tamar Rogoff’s Website – tamarrogoff.com
Enter the Faun Website – http://www.enterthefaun.com

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Online Happenings

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Presented by La MaMa and CultureHub, La MaMa is exploring ways to respond creatively to a situation that is potentially changing how we gather as a community in our theatres. La MaMa is working with CultureHub to provide online streaming of select productions and events on Howlround Theatre Commons.