Full Description:

For this night at Roulette choreographer and dancer Melanie Maar invited composers, vocalist Shelley Hirsch and musician Kenta Nagai, to further explore performance in terms of situational choreography and composition.  Maar has been working with several musicians and dancers over the last years, creating performances in which a theatrical aesthetic and the artists improvisational selves feed each other. The emphasis lies on the attention to the specific visual, structural, sonic, and kinetic elements that are coming together anew in each performance experience. The body as an instrument and the instrument as a body. Maar is  approaching dance, music and audience relationship as a symbiotic and empathetic performance practice.

Melanie Maar is a New York based choreographer and dancer originally from Vienna, Austria. She runs a space in Brooklyn called the Loft. Her latest project Same Selves is a trio with performer Marilyn Maywald and musician Taylor Ho Bynum. Her evening work Spaces and Bones was a collaboration with audio-visual artist Kenta Nagai commissioned by The Chocolate Factory NYC in 2010. It was presented at Impuls Tanz Festival Vienna in 2011. In 2010 Maar co- curated the Movement Research Festival HARDCORPS. In 2009 her piece Phenomenal Bodies premiered at New York Live Arts (formerly DTW). She is currently a member of Quartet Collective with Taylor Ho Bynum, Rachel Bernsen and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. Experimenting with the body of music in performance, this project just returned from their first tour through several cities in Europe.  Maar was also part of a new project by composer Anthony Braxton, called Pine Top Aerial Music. As a dancer Maar has worked with NY choreographers Luciana Achugar and RoseAnne Spradlin and Daria Fain amongst others.
www.melaniemaar.com

Kenta Nagai is an audio-visual artist and performer, originally from Niigata Japan. His keen sense of physicality is reflected in his current exploration of the physical properties of sound and its impact on human emotion and the body. This interest has led to numerous collaborations with dancers (Boaz and Anika K Barkan, Daria Fain, DD Dorvillier, Bob Eisen, Zack Fuller and Jennifer Monson among others) throughout his career as an improvisor and performer in New York City and abroad. Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues including Carnegie Hall, Roulette, Issue Project Room, Lincoln Center Out Door Stage, Rubin Museum, Hershhorn Museum at Smithonian Institute, Sculpture Center, Japan Society and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Shelley Hirsch is “an unorthodox, extraordinary fusion of vocalist, composer, and performance artist ” (Anne LeBaron) whose work encompasses story telling pieces, staged performances, compositions, improvisations, collaborations, installations, and radioplays, which have been presented on 5 continents… Hirsch has performed hundreds of concerts of improvised music with great musicians including Anthony Coleman, Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, Toshio Kajiwara, Hans Reichel, Min Xiao Fen, Tony Buck, David Simons, Johannes, Connie and Matthias Bauer, Paul Lovens, David Watson, Marina Rosenfeld, Jim Staley, DJ Olive, Denman Maroney, Joey Baron, Mark Dresser, Ned Rothenberg, Marc Ribot, Cyro Baptista, Butch Morris, Elliot Sharp, Uchihashi Kasuhisa, Joe Williamson, etc, etc.

 

 

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

Tess Dworman - Bear Enters, Scoffs
Clarinda MacLow- Tribute- short improvisation scores from dance luminaries Jennifer Monson, Yvonne Meier, and Linda Austin, and one score from a surprise guest.
Melanie Maar - Same Selves

Tess Dworman - Bear Enters, Scoffs
Performed by Tess Dworman and Caitlin Marz

Tess Dworman is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer originally from Chicago, IL.  In New York, Tess' dance works have been seen at AUNTS, Dixon Place, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Danspace Project, RoofTop Dance, and the Tank.  She is currently in the process of co-organizing the 2012 season for CLASSCLASSCLASS with Laurel Atwell (more info at classclassclass.org).

The creation of Bear Enters, Scoffs was inspired by the inherent yet careless expressivity of faces.  The work references an imaginary room and imaginary circumstances that remain unidentified but important.  Characterizations and mock narratives are explored as a template for physicality. Â

Clarinda MacLow - Tribute

As the beginning of a year of tributes to her community, dance and otherwise, Mac Low will perform short improvisation scores from dance luminaries Jennifer Monson, Yvonne Meier, and Linda Austin, and one score from a surprise guest. Mac Low will use her continuing connection to the living artists who influenced her earliest development to excavate past through physical autobiography,

CLARINDA MAC LOW started out working in dance in the late 1980s and now works in performance and installation and creates participatory events of all types. Shown at PS 122, the Kitchen, X-Initiative, the Center for Performance Research, Proteus Gowanus Gallery and others in NYC and elsewhere, including the 2010 Manifesta Biennial in Spain. Recent work: TRYST, interventions into everyday life; Cyborg Nation, public conversation on the technological body; and Salvage/Salvation, investigating re-use. She is also co-director of Culture Push, a cross-disciplinary organization encouraging hands-on participation and strong hybrid ideas, and a medical writer specializing in HIV/AIDS.

Melanie Maar - Same Selves
Inspired by works on metamorphosis and splitting images, this dance is guided by visual musicality and light. Maar's sense for the supernatural within the recognizable self serves a visceral urgency of the performers and a space where movement and sound
exist inseparably.

Melanie Maar is a New York based choreographer and dancer originally from Vienna, Austria. Her latest evening work Spaces and Bones, a collaboration with musician
Kenta Nagai, premiered in 2010 at The Chocolate Factory and was presented at Impuls Tanz Festival Vienna in 2011. During the last years she has deepened her performance practice with live music. She is currently part of a performance collective of musicans and dancers with Taylor Ho-Bynum, Abraham Gomez-Delgado and Rachel Bernsen as well as in a new project by composer Anthony Braxton, called Pine Top Aerial Music. Maar co-curated the Movement Research Festival 2010. Studies in cognitive science developed through her solo Off and On, which toured Movement Disorder Congresses from 2005- 2007. Her performances have also been seen in San Francisco, Washington D.C., Lisbon, Glasgow, Oslo and Berlin. She is a student of Gertraud Maar, Janet Panetta and Daria Fain. Maar teaches a Qi Gong based movement class and workshops on performance context for dancers. She has worked intensively with New York choreographer Luciana Achugar, as well as with RoseAnne Spradlin, Levi Gonzalez and others.
www.melaniemaar.com

Full Description:

DANCEROULETTE

Dedicated to the collaborative efforts of composers and choreographers, this event brings both music and dance to Roulette. Some of the partnerships presented are years in the making while others have joined forces for the first time. Over the course of two nights, Melanie Maar & Kenta Nagai, Jessica Cook & Ashcan Orchestra, Katy Pyle & Jules Skloot, Beth Gill & Jon Moniaci, and Tess Dworman, Kyli Kleven, Steve May & Tristan Shepherd share their varied perspectives on the relationship between sound, movement, composition and choreography.



After the successful premiere of "Spaces and Bones" in 2010, the
rigorous collaboration between choreographer Melanie Maar and musician
Kenta Nagai continues. Both artists explore the outer limits of their
own physicality in material and intensive ways. Pairing essential
movement and sound with dramatic phrase and gesture, the duo pushes
their expressive vocabulary beyond narrative into a space of immediate
kinetic experience. For DANCEROULETTE, the two build on their recent
performances together, extending the stark imagery and vivid sound
palette they have created between them.



Melanie Maar is a New York based choreographer and dancer originally
from Vienna, Austria. Her latest piece, Spaces and Bones, a
collaboration with Kenta Nagai, premiered at The Chocolate Factory
Theater in December 2010. Maar recently co- curated the Movement
Research Festival 2010- HARDCORPS. Other choreographies and
improvisations have been seen in New York, San Francisco, Vienna,
Lisbon, Milan, Oslo and Berlin. Her teachers include Gertraud Maar,
Janet Panetta and Daria Fain. She has worked extensively with New York choreographer Luciana Achugar, as well as with RoseAnne Spradlin, Levi Gonzalez, Daria Fain, Luis Lara Malvacias and others.

www.melaniemaar.com for more info.



Kenta Nagai is an audio-visual artist and performer, originally from
Niigata Japan. His keen sense of physicality is reflected in his
current exploration of the physical properties of sound and its impact
on human emotion and the body. This interest has led to numerous
collaborations with dancers (Boaz and Anika K Barkan, Daria Fain, DD
Dorvillier, Bob Eisen, Zack Fuller and Jennifer Monson among others)
throughout his career as an improvisor and performer in New York City
and abroad. Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues
including Carnegie Hall, Roulette, Issue Project Room, Lincoln Center
Out Door Stage, Rubin Museum, Hershhorn Museum at Smithonian
Institute, Sculpture Center, Japan Society and the Whitney Museum of
American Art.




Study #2 for E.M.

Choreography by Beth Gill

Sound by Jon Moniaci

Performed by Danielle Goldman, Jennifer Lafferty, Tara Lorenzen and Marilyn Maywald



Study #2 for E.M. is a work in progress showing of Gill's current choreographic work Electric Midwife, which is set to premiere at The Chocolate Factory Theater in Long Island City, with a two and a half week performance run from June 17th - July 3rd. Performers include: Anna Carapetyan, Danielle Goldman, Jennifer Lafferty, Tara Lorenzen Nicole Mannarino and Marilyn Maywald. The work will include an original sound score by Jon Moniaci and lighting design by Madeline Best.



Beth Gill Beth Gill is a Brooklyn-based artist, who makes contemporary dance and performance in New York City. Since graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2003 she has accumulated a body of work that critically examines issues relating to the fields of contemporary dance and performance studies, through an ongoing exploration of aesthetics and perception. Ranging from short-term improvised structures to long-term choreographed performances, her work has been commissioned multiple times by The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place, Food For Thought and Catch!



Jon Moniaci lives in Brooklyn where he is a composer, performer and computer programmer. Interested in improvisation and live electro-acoustic performance, he has collaborated extensively with dance artist Chase Granoff. He has also worked with Beth Gill, Peter Kerlin, Anna Sperber, Chris Peck, Steve Rush, Marissa Perel, Alex Escalante, Mark Jarecke, Nancy Forshaw-Clapp, Dean Moss, Peter Jacobs and is a member of the Brooklyn Adult Recorder Choir. His performance collaborations have been presented in New York, Milan and Berlin. In July he will be performing in San Francisco as part of the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival collision series with â ¤ the band (Granoff, Peck, Gill and Eleanor Bauer).