BAX Hosts DO IT LIKE CHUCK CLOSE 1/13-14

BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange has announced DO IT LIKE Chuck Close, curated by Victoria Libertore as a part of BAX's PERFORMANCE & DISCUSSION SERIES.

featuring work by:
Meadow Blum
William Ryan Kipp
Lea Robinson

Friday & Saturday, January 13-14, 2012 at 8pm

Discussion with the artists following each performance.

Tickets: $15 General | $8 Low-Income [Buy Tickets]

Directly engage the artists as they reveal their creative process. Preview works-in-progress and give your impressions in a moderated post-performance discussion. The curators, either current or former Resident Artists bring the kind of diversity of thought, research, interest, and aesthetics we look forward to and celebrate.

Visit BAX's website for more information on the PERFORMANCE & DISCUSSION SERIES.
Ms. Libertore's Curatorial Statement:

DO IT LIKE Chuck Close

The artists that have been brought together for this performance are very diverse in their backgrounds, levels of experience in creating their own work and artistic vision. I've curated them in the same weekend for this very reason. It is their diversity that I believe will make each one of them pop and come together to form a beautiful painting of humanity. This makes me think of what Chuck Close's recent work does with brilliant, individual spots of color making for a riveting portrait when you stand back.

What these artists, Meadow Blum, Ryan Kipp and Lea Robinson, have in common is they are all very engaging and approachable. These are qualities I seek in solo performers. Those that work from the heart rather than the ego, but have the chutzpa to stand out on stage alone, vulnerable, and willing to be seen on a very deep level. I've given them total free range to use the time how they like with what interests them at this point in their career, and I always encourage artists to take this opportunity when performing at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange to experiment since it's such a wonderful, supportive environment for this kind of approach.

Meadow Blum is using humor and physical comedy to explore boundaries and the people pleasing that occurs for many young women. Ryan Kipp takes his amazing faculties with technology to have a dialogue with himself sharing snippets from a racier time in his life. Lea Robinson calls on her charm and intelligence to chronicle her adventures as a genderqueer actor in New York City. All come together to paint a portrait, a snapshot, a stroke of insight into a generation that some call X, some call Y, and some call forgotten. But these artists represent a generation of 30-somethings that are thoughtful, searching, witty, compassionate and worth remembering.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

VICTORIA LIBERTORE, curator
VICTORIA LIBERTORE is an actress, writer, curator and teacher. She has performed her work throughout New York City in venues such as BAX, Carolines on Broadway, Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, Joyce Soho and PS122 as well as in Boston, Washington, D.C., Montreal, Philadelphia, Provincetown and Toronto. She is the author of six solo shows including GIRL MEAT and "My Journey of Decay." Libertore teaches performance workshops incorporating her original, archetypal energy technique. She is a member on the board of New Dance Alliance. Libertore is passionate about encouraging other artists to create their own work and provides opportunities for artists to perform through her curated evenings at BAX and Dixon Place. She was a 2008 - 2010 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Theater Artist-in-Residence. Libertore will be collaborating with Leigh Fondakowski ("The Laramie Project") who will direct her newest piece, "Dreams of Incest in Bali." www.howlingvic.com

MEADOW BLUM
MEADOW BLUM's first performance was the part of The Shoemaker's Wife in her 2nd grade play of The Shoemaker and The Elves. Thus began her love of theater. She next moved into lip syncing, and she and her friends won third place for a lip sync of The Roaches song, "Nerds." (She highly recommends listening to this song if you have never heard it.) In high school she was part of an improv group, and in college she performed the part of Prince Boogerslas in Ubu Roi. After all this fame and glory, she settled into a quiet life of solitude (actually she was a bit of a wild woman but don't tell anyone please), and, until last year's Performance Workshop at BAX, had forgotten completely about her love of performance.

Imagine that one day you wake to find that you have been trapped in habitual, unconscious responses for most of your life. Well, more like you have had many years of a slow-growing awareness of these habitual, unconscious responses, and then it all suddenly becomes so very clear that you want to throw up all over yourself. Then, instead of wildly puking all over yourself, you may decide to take a Performance Workshop with Victoria Libertore and transform all that angst into a somewhat wacky but wholly satisfying creative expression of your deepest disgust! Oh yeah, and in the process gain some new-found love for yourself. This is how Miss Nicey Nice was born. She evolved out of my growing awareness of the ridiculous, compulsive, people-pleasing aspects of myself. I hope you enjoy her mini-journey as she is egged on by the Ring Master, an altogether different character! (I leave the psycho-analyzing of him up to you.)

WILLIAM RYAN KIPP
WILLIAM RYAN KIPP received a BFA in Acting from Emerson College. After graduating, he served as the Artistic Director for The Other Theatre, a professional company whose productions included both classical and modern texts. Kipp then worked regionally as a professional actor at companies such as Florida Studio Theater and The Alliance Theater Company in Atlanta, GA. Seeking to create more of his own work he formed 89 Second Productions, and has dedicated most of his time to producing GLBTQ themed films. Ryan's first documentary short, The Collector, won Best Documentary at the 2011 NYC Downtown Short Film Festival. In addition to his work as a filmmaker, Ryan has established a career as a production editor in NYC, working for advertising and PR firms, production houses and boutique shops. Kipp is extremely grateful to be able to share his first solo-performance project with BAX and a NYC audience.

At the only all-male, all-nude club on the Eastern Sea Board, Gavin has taken on the lucrative task of stripping for men. As this strange, taboo world begins to unfold, he is unexpectedly confronted with his own role as a straight man in a gay world. From his perch at sexuality's ground zero, Gavin discovers there is more that ultimately connects us than divides us.

LEA ROBINSON
LEA ROBINSON is a multi-talented butch. You may recognize her as the emcee for Boxers Off! An Evening of Butch Burlesque, L Boogie of L Boogie Productions, or from New York's Butch Voices conference (www.butchvoices.com). You may have also seen her as "Officer Ruffins" in the lesbian serial ROOM FOR CREAM at La MaMa, as "Alma" in BUTCH MAMAS at WOW Cafe, or in the Bulldyke Chronicles at Dixon Place. She is currently working on a new solo show, YOU AIN'T SPECIAL, which chronicles her adventures as a genderqueer actor in New York City. She was also featured in GO Magazine's 2009 Edition of 100 Women We Love. In her former life, she was a baller and played in a final four, which has led to her ongoing work with the National Center for Lesbian Rights and It Takes a Team! on homophobia and transphobia in athletics. She is a gay for pay at a local university and very happy to be here with you this evening! www.learobinsonactor.com

It's Officer Ann Ruffins' first day at her new job delivering singing strip-o-grams and she is hoping that no one from the office is in the audience--this address looks mighty familiar. Will she make it as a sexy, stripping cop, or are her beats better on the streets?

About BAX
BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange is a is a multi-faceted community performing arts center located in Park Slope, Brooklyn offering an annual presenting season, artist services, and educational programs for youth and adults. For more information about BAX and its programs please call 718-832-0018 or visit us on the web at www.bax.org.