IN THE WORKS 2020
La MaMa Presents
Meredith Boggia Productions (Brooklyn, US) and NordbergMovement (Stockholm, SE)'s
In The Works 2020
Now in their third year of partnership, In The Works 2020 is produced together with Magnus Nordberg/Nordberg Movement (Sweden), Meredith Boggia (Brooklyn), and a rotating cohort of brilliant artists and collaborators. Started in 2013, In The Works was created and conceptualized by Meredith Boggia to serve as a value- centered forum by and for independent artists and arts workers to share work with colleagues during the January conferences and festivals in a relaxed and artist-centered setting. By experimenting with partnerships and support models, we aim to highlight the under-recognized labor of artists, the power of collectivity, and the import ingenuity that to builds a stronger future, economy, and ecology.
Full schedule HERE
Shared works by artists working in New York, Portland, Philadelphia and Stockholm include:
Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald
Laurie Berg and Bessie McDonough-Thayer
Prosodic Body / Daria Faïn
The Make Hay While The Sun Shines Project
Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects
Presentation support generously provided by the Swedish Arts Council, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and the Consulate General of Sweden in New York. Space support from La MaMa Experimental Theater Club.
SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES
Wheelchair accessible, light refreshments served, RSVP is greatly appreciate
Sunday January 12, 2020
11:30AM – 12.15PM
EZ Pass
Laurie Berg & Bessie McDonough-Thayer
12.15PM – 1.00PM
Wind in the Pines
Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald
1.00PM – 1.30PM
The undergird:solo & Blood Baby
Meg Foley
1.30PM – 2.00PM
Being/With
Nichole Canuso Dance
2.00PM – 2.45PM
Abject of Desire
Shirley Harthey Ubilla
2.45PM – 3.15PM
metamorphosis
Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects
3.15PM – 4.00PM
EZ Pass
Laurie Berg & Bessie McDonough-Thayer
4.00PM – 4.45PM
Wind in the Pines
Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald
5:00PM – 5:45PM
Abject of Desire
Shirley Harthey Ubilla
5:45PM – 6:15PM
Make Hay While The Sun Shines
Make Hay While The Sun Shines Project
6:15PM – 7:00PM
Patch The Sky With 5 Colored Stones
Prosodic Body LLC / Daria Faïn
7:00PM – 9:00PM
THISENTANGLEMENT
QUARTO
Monday January 13, 2020
11:00AM – 11:45AM
Patch The Sky With 5 Colored Stones
Prosodic Body LLC / Daria Fain
11.45AM – 12.15PM
metamorphosis
Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects
12:15PM – 1:00PM
The undergird:solo & Blood Baby
Meg Foley
1:00PM – 1:30PM
Abject of Desire
Shirley Harthey Ubilla
1.30PM – 2.00PM
Make Hay While The Sun Shines
Make Hay While The Sun Shines Project
2:15PM – 2:45PM
Being/With
Nichole Canuso Dance
2:45PM – 3:15PM
Artist Presentation
QUARTO
3:30PM – 4:15PM
In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky
iele paloumpis
4:15PM – 4:45PM
Make Hay While The Sun Shines
Make Hay While The Sun Shines Project
ARTISTS AND PROJECTS IN BRIEF
Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald
Portland, ME (USA)
Presenting Excerpts of Wind in the Pines
Wind in the Pines is an hour-long interdisciplinary dance piece that can be performed in both theater and gallery spaces. Wind in the Pines weaves memoir, Noh theater, digital animation, sound and dancing to create an immersive excavation of a mysterious family past. Centering around Aretha Aoki’s Japanese family history during World War II, Wind in the Pines attempts to make the past feel present, despite language barriers, geographical and cultural distances, and the imperfection of memory. Multiple mediums, references and images create a space where history, fiction, imagination and embodiment can co-exist. Live and animated video projection references and embellishes the setting in the classic Noh play Matsukaze. Two “sisters” dance almost entirely in mirrored unison in unwavering, almost telepathic, connection. A third dancer roams the edges, acting partly as stagehand and partly as agitator. This work has premiered and ready to tour. Aoki/McDonald also offer a series of gallery or raw-space appropriate mask making workshops and installation options.
Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald
Choreography by Aretha Aoki in collaboration with the performers
Performed by Aretha Aoki, Shaina Cantino and Alice MacDonald
Video and sound by Ryan MacDonald
Lighting Design by Christopher Akerlind
Wind in the Pines was made possible in part with a research and development residency and support by Vermont Performance Lab and Studio 303 with support from New England Foundation for the Arts. Wind in the Pines was funded in part by New England Foundation for the Arts’ New England Dance Fund, with generous support from the Aliad Fund at the Boston Foundation. Wind in the Pines is the recipient of generous residency and production support from the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (SCDT) and Bowdoin College.
Prosodic Body LLC / Daria Faïn
New York NY ( USA)
Presenting excerpts of Patch The Sky With 5 Colored Stones
Patch The Sky With 5 Colored Stones is an ontological introspection on what divides people and what brings us together, proposing a distinction between difference and aversion. The work models a reorientation of societal values via the dismantling of the construct of the self in the examination of the relationship between the individual and social bodies. Full production at the Chocolate Factory September 2020.
Conceived and performed by Daria Faïn with invited guests including performing artists Athena Kokoronis (U.S.), Tuomas Laitinen (Finland), Robert Kocik (U.S.), Melanie Maar (U.S., Austria), Christian Schrœder (Austria), David Thomson (U.S.), Marýa Wethers (U.S.) and Tuçe Yasak (U.S.,Turkey).
The development of patch the sky with 5 colored stones has been possible through: a 9-month residency at BkSD; a week long residency at Zagreb Dance Center in Croatia supported by the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of Movement Research with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding; a 2-week residency at the Saari residency in Finland funded by the Kone Foundation; and through a 2019 Movement Research Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund.
iele paloumpis
New York, NY (US)
Presenting excerpts of In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky
As a disabled, queer, trans survivor from a working class background, iele empathizes across multiple axes of oppression and brings this awareness to their work a dance artist and death doula.” In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky is an exploration in transgenerational resilience and disability justice. What somatic tools have we received from our ancestors? What embodied magics are all our own? As a visually impaired choreographer, iele paloumpis, and collaborating performers traverse these questions through voice and movement, creating a multi-sensorial environment that de-centers sight as a primary mode of experiencing dance. Full production and premiere at Danspace Project May 21st-23rd, 2020
Performers: Marielys Burgos-Meléndez, Seta Morton, Alejandra Ospina, Monica Rodriguez, Ogemdi Ude, Krishna Washburn, and Marýa Wethers
Set Designers: Nora Chavooshian, Lily Gold and Marisa Prefer
The creation of In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky is made possible, in part, by the Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative and Production Residency Program funded by the Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Laurie Berg and Bessie McDonough-Thayer
New York, NY (US)
Presenting excerpts from EZ Pass
EZ Pass follows the path of least resistance, creating the space to opt in or out as relationships shift from duets to quartets to solos to nothing at all. A layered landscape of crystal clear unison choreography and group improvisations, juxtaposed with 20 blow-up sex dolls, EZ Pass inevitably deflates into a pile of jumbled limbs (some real, some fake). Among this tumbling mess of vulnerability, power, absurdity, and misrepresentations of the female form, four humans find one another to offer support and snacks. Originally created to be performed when Laurie was almost 8 months pregnant, the piece developed with systems of care as part of its choreographic structure, finding ways to strategize for a rapidly changing body. The 20 blow-up dolls – leaky by-products of several years of research and two works involving a blow-up doll cast member – points to a different kind of physical representation of the labor of creation. This work premiered April 2019 at DANCEROULETTE and ready to tour. Berg/Thayer also offer a series of gallery or raw-space-appropriate workshops and installations.
Created by Laurie Berg and Bessie McDonough-Thayer in collaboration with performers Jodi Bender and Anna Adams Stark.
Original Sound by Karl Scholz. Costumes by Michael DiPietro
EZ Pass was presented as part of DANCEROULETTE and is supported, in part, by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. EZ Pass was also supported by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
SHIRLEY HARTHEY UBILA
Chile and raised in Sweden
Presenting excerpts from Abject of Desire
In this showing you will see excerpts of the solo work Abject of Desire. In this performance, focus is directed towards questions regarding lesbianism and race through Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection. By “doing” otherness, Shirley directs the voyeur’s eye, whose perception becomes the mirror of the subject. In Abject of Desire, carnal desires are embodied by extensions and dislocations of the otherwise despised. This work premiered in 2018 and is ready to tour.
Idea and concept: Shirley Harthey Ubilla & Hanna Kisch
Choreography: Shirley Harthey Ubilla
Costume design and Scenography: Hanna Kisch & Nina Johansson
Wigmaker: Jessica Hedin
Music and sound design: Maya Lourenço
Light design: Angela Ximenström
Artistic advisor: Halla Olafsdottir
“Being trained as a street dancer, the genre is evident in all my work. Yet, over the past few years her focus has shifted, from emphasizing freestyle and traditional expressions within street dance to being influenced by a broader movement practice and various performative contexts”.
Make Hay While The Sun Shines
movements moving between Stockholm and New York
New York, NY (US) and Stockholm, SE
This collective is actively working through 2020 in many iterations. In this presentation, Iréne Hultman, born in Borlänge, Sweden, and who moved in early years to New York, performs with the New York-based performer and choreographer Katy Pyle. Katy in turn has spent time in Stockholm, both performing and teaching.
Made possible with support by Kulturrådet/The Swedish Arts Council and Stockholms Stad. co-production MDT
QUARTO
Brazil and Stockholm, SE
Presenting an excerpt of THISISENTANGLEMENT
In THISISENTANGLEMENT, two bodies are captured in 1000 metres of black rope. The work navigates the transitional space that trespasses the object/subject divide through an ongoing metamorphoses of a massive black thread: a pile of it becomes a lasso, a whip, a snake, and then a huge knot, a multidimensional pattern, an accidental spatial ornament, a labyrinth, a sprawling mass entwining, hiding, revealing, becoming the bodies that it connects and divides. The work is the second part in the ten yearlong research project ROPE series. THISISENTANGLEMENT premiered in 2018 and is actively touring
Choreography, Concept & Performance: QUARTO (Anna af Sillén de Mesquita and Leandro Zappala)
Dramaturg: Igor Dobricic
Curator: Camilla Carlberg, Moderna Museet
Distribution: Koen Vanhove & Julia Asperska from Key Performance
Co-produced by Moderna Museet and MDT
Supported by: The Swedish Arts Council, Stockholm’s Culture Committee, The Stockholm County Council and The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
Meg Foley
Philadelphia, PA, Minneapolis, MN and Los Angeles, CA (US)
Presenting excerpts from The undergird: solo and Blood Baby
The undergird began as a quest to communicate the actual sensation of mortality: a solo about death and grief as bodily experiences that expanded into a quintet to encompass the collective experience of loss. Now in its latest manifestation, Foley returns again to the solo form, with the residual influences of the people and processes the work has gathered across its life. Developed using her singular improvisational practice “action is primary,” Foley’s masterful performance is crafted in the moment—painstakingly, rigorously. The undergird is a dance about mortality, birth, earth monuments and the body, alone and in congress. It asks: Where does one body end? What gets carried forward, and what remains?
Foley’s most recent work, Blood Baby, an exploration of queer motherhood and somatic drag, picks up where The undergird left off, delving into the interior experience of identity as an evolving physical material, a somatic experience that has the potential to transform and re-identify your body, through a series of intimate performance encounters. Blood Baby uses movement and ‘somatic drag’ to explore gender identity’s physical prescriptions in tandem with the transition to motherhood through the lens of queer experience and belonging. Continuing my pursuit of radical self-determination as choreography, Blood Baby makes space for queer sexuality and sex positivity to emerge from and be a part of motherhood. Blood Baby is being developed 2020-21, and we are currently looking for partners in development support as well as presentation opportunities. “
The undergird: solo is part of a larger body of work which premiered in 2018 and will continue touring through 2021. Blood Baby is a new work seeking development.
The undergird: solo is created in collaboration with Drew Kaiser, Jungeun Kim, and Annie Wilson;
lighting design by Natalie Robin; costumes by Allison Pearce and Foley; set by Foley
Blood Baby is created in collaboration with Sylvan Oswald, Michèle Steinwald, and Margot Bassett Silver
The undergird was made possible in part by support from The University of the Arts and a Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant
Nichole Canuso Dance
Philadelphia, PA and Los Angeles, CA
Presenting a brief lecture on her forthcoming work Being/With
Being/With is a performance experience that connects two solo audience members, separated by venue and connected in virtual space. Participants are united via live-feed technology and guided through a duet and a conversation with their “partner,” who initially is a stranger to them. A meditation on separation and connection, loss and embodiment, Being/With builds poetic bridges across neighborhoods (West Philadelphia and South Philadelphia in 2020) and across borders (US and Mexico in 2021), making space for the intimacy and immediacy of simple exchange. People with divergent life experiences move together, listen to each other’s stories, experience being seen and heard, and collaborate. Being/ With will premiere in West and South Philadelphia in September 2020. It is a recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Touring Award and is actively seeking collaborating partners.
Conceived and Directed by Nichole Canuso in collaboration with n (Sound
Designer/Composer), Pablo N. Molina and Jesse Garrison (Video and Interactive Software
Designers), Christopher Ash (Scenic Designer) and Emily Schuman (Object design).
Funding/Commissioning partners Being/With is being developed with support from The National Endowment of the Arts, a William Penn Foundation New Audiences / New Places grant, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Projects Award and support from our presenting partner, FringeArts. Development residencies include MacDowell Colony (NH), Bryn Mawr College (PA), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA) and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences (GA). Being/With is on the touring roster of NEFA/NDP, with presenting subsidy available to interested presenters.
Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects
New York, NY (US)
Presenting excerpts from metamorphosis
metamorphosis is a surreal, dark, environment where other worldly beings inhabited two female bodies. They evolve and morph, but never become the fully finished version of “her”. Within the genres of suspense, horror, and sci-fi, this work collages sound/text/lights/costumes and video to create an experience that allows for multiple interpretations. The work emerged from my subconscious, always rooted in my identity as a white woman, holding contempt for aspects of society, namely the upper-class white woman. I am fascinated and repulsed by her and how she seems not equipped with empathy. She seems not human. The performers are imagined characters that neither I nor they can relate to. I am interested in working on things I don’t know how to make. Nola, Alex and I began exploring this world together just before and after the 2016 election. It was a particular time when there was an oversaturation of opinions in the news and other social medias about what a woman is or isn’t. What she’s capable of and not capable of, and what she’s supposed to act like or do.” metamorphosis was presented in process in 2019 and is ready to tour.
Created by Stacy Grossfeild in collaboration with the performers: Nola Sporn Smith and Alexandra Albrecht
Video Designer: Gil Sperling
Sound Designer: Byron Westbrook
metamorphosis was created in Dance and Process at The Kitchen – Dance and Process: mayfield brooks, Stacy Grossfield, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, and Rebecca Serrell Cyr was presented at The Kitchen in April 2019.
Aretha Aoki is a choreographer and performer whose collaborations have been performed nationally and internationally. Aretha was a dancer and collaborating performer with Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance for seven years (Terrible Things, the New York performances of The Thank-you Bar, Niicugni, SHORE, and Then a cunning voice and a night spent gazing at stars). She is currently in rehearsal with Heather Kravas and Victoria Haven for their work, solid objects which will premiere at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis in Oct. 2020. Aretha is Assistant Professor of Dance at Bowdoin College. She holds an MFA from Smith College.
Ryan MacDonald has worked in sound, text, video and dramaturgy with choreographers Aretha Aoki, Sara Juli, devynn emory and Vanessa Anspaugh. Ryan was nominated for a 2017 Bessie Award in Outstanding Composition and Sound Design. He is the author of the story collection The Observable Characteristics of Organisms (FC2) and the winner of the 2012 American Short(er) Fiction Award. He has an MFA in Studio Art and an MFA in English from Umass, Amherst where he taught New Media in the art department for several years until moving to Maine to teach Advanced Design: Media in the theater and dance department at Bowdoin College.Ryanamacdonald.com
Daria Faïn was raised in France and has lived in Brooklyn, NY since 1996. Her performance practice is informed by four decades of studies in the Asian philosophies of the body. Additionally, Faïn has conducted extensive research on ancient Greek theater/architecture as it relates to culture, society, politics, and economics. These studies led her to an investigation of sensory perception and its complex role in human behavior patterns. In 2006, with architect Robert Kocik, she founded the Prosodic Body, a new field of research to explore language as a vibratory medium interrelating art, health, and society. Its performative branch is called The Commons Choir. Commission and Residency Highlights include Saari Residency, Finland (2019) Zagred Dance Center, Croatia (2028), BkSd (2018-2019, )BRIC Arts Media (AIR 2015-2017); Gibney (2014,2017); New York Live Arts (2013); Danspace Project (2006, 2008, 2010); LMCC (2008, 2010, 2014); The Chocolate Factory (2005, 2010). Awards Highlights include NYFA Fellowship/Build Grant (2008, 2016); New Music USA (2008, 2016); NYSCA (2008, 2017); Doris Duke Impact Award nominee (2015); James E Robison Foundation (2008, 2010, 2013); LMCC (2008, 2010, 2015); Mertz Gilmore Foundation (2013). www.dariafain.net
iele paloumpis is a dance artist, death doula and intuitive space-holder. their work is rooted in kinesthetic awareness and ancestral healing practices – all within a trauma-informed framework that centers social justice. Choreographic works have been shown through the Chocolate Factory Theater, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York Live Arts, Dixon Place, the Flea Theater, Movement Research, Painted Bride Art Center, and Franklin Street Works, among others. iele received a BA from Hollins University in 2006 and was awarded end of life doula certifications from Mount Sinai, Valley Hospice, and the Quality of Life Care, LLC Accompanying the Dying Program between 2014-16.
Laurie Berg and Bessie McDonough-Thayer began making work together in 2008. Recent collaborations include EZ Pass presented by DANCEROULETTE (April 2019) and Ziegfeld Goes Down as part of Charles Atlas Presents The Kitchen Follies (May 2018). Their choreographic works center on rigorous play and many years of dancing together to build a common language and trust, with a mutual love for detail, humor, and idiosyncratic rhythms. Other presentations include WeisAcres Sundays on Broadway, BAX Site Lines curated by Catherine Galasso, Mount Tremper Arts, Movement Research Fall Festival 2018, 303 Gallery, Dixon Place, CounterPulse San Francisco, WiM Festival, and Movement Research at the Judson Church.
As an artist and an educator Shirley Harthey Ubilla explores questions regarding gender, whiteness and intersectionality:
”As a female, non-heterosexual, non-white body, I am highly aware of the fact that bodies matter, as do their performances of gender, race, class, functionality and sexuality. The lived flesh experience of a non-conforming body, on and off stage, is one that influences all of my artistic and educational work”.
Recent work includes her debut solo performance Abject of Desire presented in Dansens Hus in Stockholm (2018) and reperformances of Marina Abramović Freeing series and Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful at Moderna museet in Stockholm (2017). She is also a member of the dance and performance group. JUCK. that made its breakthrough in a 2013 viral video JUCK (2013) where they pushed the limits of how the female body is allowed to express itself and make a statement.
Make Hay While The Sun Shines project is a collaborative exploration of movements between New York and Stockholm.This collective is currently working and collaborating, the project appears in a series of iterations during 2019-2020 with a group of international dancers and choreographers. Next up, the group will collaborate with the electronic musician KABLAM at MDT in Stockholm in May 2020.
Iréne Hultman has since a long time acted as a bridge-maker between New York and Stockholm. In 2015 Iréne introduced Meredith Boggia and Magnus Nordberg to each other. This led to Nordberg Movement being invited to collaborate on “In the works” since 2016.
QUARTO is an artist duo founded in 2003 by Anna af Sillén de Mesquita and Leandro Zappala. Based in Stockholm they live between Brazil and Sweden collaborating with other artists, researchers, academics and institutions devoted to research and development in the art field. This permanent dialogue in-between two distinct countries forces QUARTO to deal with different working conditions, politics, economies, cultures, infrastructure etc. Placing them in constant challenges and impermanence in a transient and nomadic lifestyle. Their work has been shown internationally at museums, in different venues and galleries throughout the world. 2018 QUARTO received the Birgit Cullberg award.
Meg Foley is a choreographer, performer, educator, and mother. Her work is influenced by her identity as a queer artist and parent and is rooted in a loving tumble with formalism in dance and what constitutes performance. She makes dances, events, and objects that explore the materiality of physical and social identity as choreographic form. From 2012-2016 she danced daily at 3:15pm, culminating in a collective documentation and performance project with three collaborators: Action is Primary. Her work has been presented in performance and visual art venues in Philadelphia, NYC, Los Angeles, Canada, Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland. She has received grants from Dancemakers Centre for Creation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Art Stary Browar, Polish Cultural Institute, University of the Arts, the Independence Foundation, and has been supported by a Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant. megfoley.org
Nichole Canuso, Artistic Director of Nichole Canuso Dance Company, is interested in the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell other people. This artistic obsession manifests in performances that explore presence and absence, participation and spectacle. For the past two decades, sitting at the crossroads of movement, visual art, and theater, Canuso’s choreographic projects have been presented nationally (New York Live Arts (NYC), American Repertory Theater (MA), Los Angeles Performance Projects (CA), The International Festival for Art and Ideas (CT), among others) and internationally (Hungary, Mexico, UK and others). Choreographic residencies include the Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography (FL), MacDowell Colony (NH), Millay Colony for the Arts (NY), NCCAkron (OH), Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences (GA), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA). Support for her work includes The National Endowment for the Arts, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and The New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Projects. She is a 2017 Pew Fellow.
Stacy Grossfield was a 2019 Bessie Award nominee for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer. Originally from Lakeland, FL, she has choreographed and performed in New York City since 2003. Her most recent work, “metamorphosis”, was presented at The Kitchen in the Dance and Process series, April 2019. That work was recognized by a 2019 Bessie nomination for Outstanding Performer for Nola Sporn Smith. Her previous works include “hot dark matter” presented by JACK, “Fur & Tulle”, and “Red, Pink, Black” – the latter for which she received a Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant in 2013. She has shown her work at 92nd St. Y, BAX, BRIC Studio, CPR, CATCH, DTW, Food for Thought at Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Roulette, and through AUNTS at various venues including Arts@Renaissance, NADA Art Fair, and the New Museum. Grossfield choreographs other projects as well, like “Quiet, Comfort”, a Hoi Polloi production at JACK and the Okkervil River music video “Judey On A Street”. She was a 2008-2009 Fresh Tracks AIR at DTW. She has served on dance panels in NYC and taught a feedback class at Brooklyn Studios for Dance called Show & Listen. She holds a BFA in Dance Performance from SUNY Purchase.