Velocity to Host Next Fest NW: TOUCH, Dec 2013

Velocity presents Next Fest NW: TOUCH, a week of performances, screenings, installations and participatory audience labs featuring fresh new voices in contemporary dance from the Pacific Northwest. This year's festival focus is TOUCH - interaction and sensation. Performances for blind audiences. Sing-alongs. Artist-constructed social experiences. TOUCH means everyone in this room is in this dance. TOUCH means to perceive through the tactile senses.

Next Fest NW 2013 launches with Next Dance Cinema - this year expands to include the best in local, national, and international dance on screen.

Next Fest NW Performance unveils new work by GENDER TENDER, Nathan Blackwell, Coleman Pester/Tectonic Marrow Society, Alana O Rogers, Dylan Ward, Matt Drews + Coulliette [the Pendleton House], kt Shores + Lexi Hamill.

Leading up to Next Fest NW, ticket buyers can join artist Vanessa DeWolf for Closer Through Other Means, a series of three participatory audience labs in which an intimate group of curious participants cultivate new ways of perceiving performance. The lab includes a ticket to Saturday night's performance and post-show Q+A.

Nest Fest NW was established to support new work and to encourage investigation of different approaches to dance, not bound by discipline or criteria.

NEXT FEST NW PERFORMANCE//

FRI - SUN / DEC 13 + 14 + 15 / 8PM

Velocity Founders Theater 1621 12th Ave

SAT // POST-SHOW Q+A with the artists

Selection Panel: Juniper Shuey, Kate Wallich, Tonya Lockyer and Kim Lusk.

- Syniva Whitney and Will Courtney are the co-founders of GENDER TENDER, a performance project that began out of the desire to make work in a safe and rigorous environment for trans*, queer*, questioning and allied artists of all kinds to investigate identity through movement. A real-life couple, they test the limits of romance in GO/LONG, a duet using the elastic strength of a single jock strap. Fueled by the sounds of Ariskany Records, they attempt to go the distance. Drag and drills connect one body to another. GENDER TENDER's work has been featured in Mo'Wave: Seattle's Queer Arts and Music Festival and seen at On the Boards.

- Coleman Pester (Tectonic Marrow Society) is a recent transplant from Australia where he was Assistant to Choreographer Anouk van Dijk on her inaugural creation An Act of Now as Artistic Director with Australia's Chunky Move. Coleman earned his BFA from the LINES Ballet/Dominican University program and has presented original work in Israel, San Francisco, New York, and Melbourne.

Working with a stellar Seattle cast featuring Erica Badgeley, Fausto Rivera and Markeith Wiley, Pester's new work 30 unsure steps to my seat guides the audience through a multi-layered experience beginning with sight deprivation. Blindfolded, the audience experiences the choreography through touch, hears it unfold throughout the space, and finally sees the performers' movement visually.

- You've seen newcomer Dylan Ward blazing through the work of Jeffrey Fracé, Matt Drews [the Pendleton House] and Cabin Fever and on the stages of Velocity and On the Boards. His new work, MELODY NELSON is an intergenerational dance project exploring the line between appropriate and inappropriate touch, set to sampled music from Serge Gainsbourg's infamous album Histoire de Melody Nelson.

- Seattle transplant Nathan Blackwell's new work #selfie refers to the sensation and tactile perception of self-touch and the narcissistic tendencies of pop culture. His work has been described as an "immersive dance-theatre experience ... exquisitely crafted and passionately performed" and has been presented at the Atlas Institute for Technology, The Garage SF and The Laundry/Control Group Productions in Denver. For #selfie Blackwell will be working with dancers Devin McDermott, Jamie Maslach and dramaturg Lexi Hamill.

- Alana O Rogers investigates gender identity in her new work SIGHT. Audiences choose how to experience the work through "vision-obscuring devices." Rogers's work has been showcased at the BOOST Dance Festival, On the Boards, MOVE! and Full Tilt. As a sought-after performer she has worked with Jason Ohlberg, Deborah Wolf, Veronica Mendonca/VAM, Sonia Dawkins, Danny Herter, Mark Haim, Coriolis, ARC, and Spectrum Dance Theater. She is also a Velocity Teaching Artist.

- Matt Drews + Coulliette [the Pendleton House] bring together film, sculpture, performance and Seattle band Newaxeyes in a "sensorily dense, vibratory" installation. Audiences move freely throughout the space, immersed in video projections of underwater landscapes and a solo performance by the "Adonis-like" Matt Drews (City Arts).

Matt Drews has danced with with Danielle Agami's Ate9 Dance Company, Portland based tEEth, and is currently collaborating with Saint Genet, the Pendleton House, and Kate Wallich + The YC. He is also a Velocity Teaching Artist.

Coulliette is an interdisciplinary artist whose focus includes painting, video/film, sculpture, photography, and digital work. Driven by the desire to work fluidly between all art mediums he is currently collaborating within the Pendleton House.

WATCH Coulliette's No Eye Contact

NEXT DANCE CINEMA//

MON + TUES / DEC 9 + 10 / 7PM

Northwest Film Forum 1515 12th Ave

$10 general / $7 students + seniors / $6 NWFF member + MVP

Curated by Dayna Hanson, Lou Karsen, Tonya Lockyer, and Northwest Film Forum's new Program Director Courtney Sheenan.

New this year, the only dance cinema festival in the Northwest is extended to two nights and features the best in local, national and international dance film; plus, the winning selections from On the Boards' 15-Second Dance Film Contest, organized by Jim Kent.

Next Dance Cinema is followed by a weeklong run of Velocity 2013 A.I.R. Dayna Hanson's full-length feature film Improvement Club at Northwest Film Forum.

Presented in partnership with Northwest Film Forum. Next Dance Cinema filmmakers will be announced in early November.

SPECIAL EVENTS//

- AUDIENCE LAB: CLOSER THROUGH OTHER MEANS

NOV 25 + DEC 2 / 6:30-8:30PM + DEC 14 / 4-6PM

Velocity 1621 12th Ave
$30 Includes three labs + ticket to SAT performance

Next Fest NW ticket buyers can join artist and creative wrangler Vanessa DeWolf for Closer Through Other Means, a series of three participatory labs where audience members cultivate new ways of perceiving performance, engage in activities to demystify experimental dance, and experience the ideas guiding this year's Next Fest NW choreographers.

Vanessa DeWolf is a poeto-improviser who has been performing, coordinating and facilitating in the arts for more then two decades. She runs Studio Current and PROJECT: Space Available to encourage artists to engage in dialog while they develop their works-in-progress.

SEATTLE DANCE MAP

Lexi Hamill's Seattle Dance Map is a digital archive sample commissioned by Velocity to illustrate the scope of Seattle's dance community. Accompanied by interview recordings of Seattle dancers from different walks of life, the map serves as an ever-evolving, living archive. Lexi Hamill is a member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and is Velocity's Dramaturgical Intern.

TICKETS for Next Fest NW Performances:
206.325.8773 | velocitydancecenter.org/box-office + at the door

FRI - SUN $18 / $12 students + seniors / $15 MVP
Velocity Founders Theater 1621 12th Ave on Capitol Hill

TICKETS for Next Dance Cinema:
1.800.838.3006 | nwfilmforum.org

MON + TUES $10 / $7 student + senior / $6 NWFF member + MVP
Northwest Film Forum 1515 12th Ave

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