Full Description:

Biba Bell and Ben Hall present three works: Mouth w/ Objects, THE BELLS, and Cold Vein. Mouth w/ Objects dances things without saying so. The mouth and its objects force ventriloquist moans across the body that stammer and collapse distances of communication. THE BELLS traces localized geographies over a choreography, an architecture, a city, excavating the characteristics of daily life. Cold Vein is a dance through proxy, proposing a lack of adornment as singularity, where one voice vibrates into three. Bell and Hall are based in New York City and Detroit.

Biba Bell (b. 1976, Sebastopol, CA) is a choreographer, dancer, and writer based in Detroit and NYC.  She is a member of the collaborative trio MGM Grand (Modern Garage Movement) with Jmy Leary and Paige Martin, represented by Callicoon Fine Arts in NYC. She is a PhD candidate in the department of performance studies at New York University writing her dissertation about issues of site specificity in contemporary choreographic practice. She teaches at NYU and Wayne State University. Bell's work has most recently been presented at the Garage for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, The Garage in San Francisco, and the Jam Handy and the Detroit Institute of Art in Detroit. She delivered a talk on post/para studio dance for the Movement Research Festival 2012's Studies Project. Bell also currently works with artists Maria Hassabi, FACADE/FASAD, Walter Dundervill, Xavier Cha, Davide Balula, and Ben Hall.

Ben Hall received his B.A. from Bennington College, studying Quaker-based mediation, painting and percussion and his MFA from Columbia University where he studied with Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sarah Sze and Liam Gillick. Hall splits time between Harlem and his native Detroit where, as a co-owner of the Russell St. Deli, he works as an advocate around issues of food, hunger and obesity, including membership in the Garden Resource Program/ Detroit Agricultural Network which provides support and infrastructure for urban farming initiatives, the Restaurant Opportunities Center which works towards improving working conditions and increasing opportunities for the advancement of low-wage employees in restaurants, as a fundraiser for Gleaners Community Food Bank and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and as a chef/teacher for Share Our Strength which develops cooking, shopping and nutritional skills in at-risk and low-income communities. Recent projects include Bap-Tizum.com an open source survey of Black American spiritual music. Recents exhibitions include Spatial City at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Outside Mediation at the Green Gallery at Yale University. Recent fellowships includes Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship 2012 in NYC. Recent publications include an interview in The History of American Graffiti as well as writing reviews for UK music magazine The Wire.

Photo by Michelle Andonian

Full Description:

DANCEROULETTE, a five night festival of performing artists working within movement, sound, spatial design, visual cacophony, choreography, improvisation, ephemeriality, and theatrical re-imagining.

Julie Alexander - From nothing real
Megan Byrne - Untitled dance for Stephanie Waddell
Biba Bell - Mouth (w/ objects)

From nothing real
Choreography and Performance by Julie Alexander
Vocal Composition and Performance by Gelsey Bell

From nothing real is a solo piece created and performed by Julie Alexander, developed as part of the Kitchen's Dance and Process program 2011. Intimate and expansive, meditative and visceral, From nothing real explores the play between the power and vulnerability of a solo body in space, bringing our attention to what is present and what is invisible; how we present the body and how we exist in our bodies. Alexander is joined live by vocalist and improviser Gelsey Bell.

Julie Alexander is a dance artist based in New York, who has been performing locally, nationally and internationally for the last 9 years. She is originally from Houston, TX and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002, where she recently returned as the Marcus Artist in Residence in Dance. She has had the pleasure of performing in the works of Beth Gill, Miguel Gutierrez, Trajal Harrell, Anna Sperber, Michou Szabo, Donna Uchizono, Antonietta Vicario and Yasuko Yokoshi, among others. Most recent projects include performing in Anna Sperber's FOREVERANDADAY and Yasuko Yokoshi's Tyler Tyler and she will be performing in a new work by Michou Szabo in April 2012. Her own choreographic work has been presented by AUNTS, Dixon Place's Body Blend series and The Kitchen's Dance and Process program.

Gelsey Bell is a singer, songwriter, and scholar. She has four albums of original work and recently appeared on Jay Vilnai's Shakespeare Songs. This fall, she premiered her new song cycle, SCALING, as part of the Vital Vox festival at Roulette, co-created the site-specific adaptation of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives with Varispeed as part of Performa '11, and appeared in Ashley's That Morning Thing at the Kitchen. She has premiered over a hundred works by contemporary composers as a core member of thingNY. She is also a PhD Candidate at NYU in performance studies currently writing her dissertation on American experimental vocal performance and the Critical Acts Editor for TDR/The Drama Review. www.gelseybell.com.

Untitled dance for Stephanie Waddell
Choreographed by Megan Byrne with movement by the performer
Performed by Stephanie Waddell
Music performed by Charly & Margaux

Description - Megan Byrne creates a solo performance for Stephanie Waddell accompanied by the violin and viola duet Charly & Margaux.

Biba Bell - Mouth (w/ Objects)
with Ben Hall (music)
Biba Bell (b. 1976, Sebastopol, CA.) is a choreographer, dancer, and writer based in Detroit and NYC. She makes her own work, and is a member of the collaborative trio MGM Grand (Modern Garage Movement) with Jmy Leary and Piage Martin. Currently a PhD candidate in the department of Performance Studies at NYU, she is writing her dissertation titled "Dancing There: (un)Specifying Site and Performing Space" while teaching a course on contemporary experimental choreography. Bell has performed at MOMA PS1, Pace Wildenstein, Callicoon Fine Arts, Greene Naftali, MOCAD Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Jack Hanley Gallery, Esalen Institute, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Rosas Theatre, Creative Time Pavilion at Miami Art Basel, Adobe Books, Henry Miller Library and The Kitchen amongst others.