This RTV episode features selections from the performance of “Let Me just Try to Explain / Come Again?” the second work in a new trilogy by Elke Rindfleisch and Sarah Weber Gallo. They discuss their history of working together, how this history plays into their current work, and what it means for them to make art.
The first part, “This Dance is Nonfiction,” premiered at Roulette in June 2014 as an evening-length solo danced by Rindfleisch. The second part furthers the challenging conversation reopened in “This Dance Is Nonfiction,” addressing various states of disconnect, moving through unspoken territories, trying to explain. Mining their rich shared history as collaborative artists, their signature visceral physicality, and a backbone of fairy tale archetypes, Rindfleish and Weber Gallo hurtle themselves away from safety into various limbic states and through a few bad places, and perhaps find that the moon isn’t really all that blue.
Supported by a pop/punk score and the music of Joshua Morris, the dramaturgy of Joseph Gallo, and a design team including Sam Meredith, Joy Havens, and Matthew J. Fick, Just Let Me Try to Explain / Come Again? shifts between performed art installation and explosive dancing to penetrate the protective veils and armors of human relationships.
Since 1999, Elke Rindfleisch has created a rigorous, critically acclaimed body of raw, highly physical and emotional works. At the root of her choreography lies the focus on investigating movement—researching its origins, its appearances and effects, and its emotional worth.
Sarah Weber Gallo is a dancer, choreographer, and educator located in Hoboken, NJ, where she is Dance Education Director for Mile Square Theatre Dance Academy, Hoboken’s premier pre-professional dance academy offering classes in Ballet, Modern, Theatre Dance, Hip Hop, and Tap for children and adults. Sarah is also a senior dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and an independent choreographer whose work has been commissioned and presented by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Roulette Intermedium, Mile Square Theatre, unShout the Noise, and Indy Convergence, among others.
Performance date: 04/08-04/09/2015
Episode release date: 10/21/2015
Originally from Germany, Elke Rindfleish has lived in NYC since 1994. During the last three years she split her time between NYC and Berlin, but fully relocated to NYC earlier this year. Since her inaugurating season at Joyce Soho in 1999, she has created a rigorous, critically acclaimed body of work. Venues include the Ohio Theater/Ice Factory, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/Sitelines, Movement Research@Judson, Danspace Project Dance: Access, Dixon Place, and the company’s former home Wallabout Studio, Brooklyn. She has worked as a guest teacher/choreographer in Europe and the US, and has been awarded residencies at Mt. Tremper Arts, Künstlerhaus Lukas Ahrenshoop, Germany, and Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Denmark. Elke has danced for various choreographers, most recently Kimberly Bartosik and the artist collective Magnetic Laboratorium. She holds a B.A. from the Dansakademie Rotterdam.
Sarah Weber Gallo is a New York-based dancer and choreographer. Her recent evening-length dance/theater installation, MUCH ADO ABOUT CUCUMBERS & CIGARS (an indecorous dance), brought provocative dance to Hoboken NJ’s Mile Square Theatre. Her work has also been shown at Center for Performance Research, The Ohio Theatre, La Mama, Greenspace, Indy Convergence, and Dancemakers, MKE. She is a member of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and has had the great pleasure to work with an array choreographers and directors including Graciella Daniele, Mary Zimmerman, Steven Wadsworth, Doug Varone, Mark Dendy, Sean Curran, Robert LePage, Benjamin Millipied, Christopher Wheeldon, Carolyn Choa, Fiona Shaw, Andre Serban, and Julie Taymor. Additional performance credits include Sean Curran Company, Donald Byrd/The Group, Mark Dendy Dance and Theatre, NeoLabos Dancetheatre, and The Radio City Rockettes. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Goucher College and an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, where she has been honored with the New Work Award.