BAX Hosts Performance & Discussion With Space Grant Recipients

BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange announces the PERFORMANCE & DISCUSSION featuring BAX's 2011/12 Space Grant Recipients

XAN BURLEY + ALEX SPRINGER (dance)
LEE SUNDAY EVANS, a Collaboration Town Project (theater)
KATY PYLE (dance)

Friday & Saturday, December 2-3, 2011 at 8pm

Discussion with the artists following each performance.

Tickets: in advance (online) $12 General | $7 Low-Income
half-hour before show (at the box office) $15 General | $8 Low-Income

One of BAX's longest-running programs, the Space Grant Program is designed to give Brooklyn based choreographers, playwrights, and multi-disciplinary artists the opportunity to create new work in a setting that is conducive to working deeply and exploring new territory. Each year, BAX awards 6-7 Space Grants to dance and theater artists. Each is awarded up to 70 hours of free rehearsal space through a competitive panel process to develop new work. Space grantees have the choice of two work periods: the Summer which has no performance component, and the Fall which culminates in December's PERFORMANCE & DISCUSSION SERIES.

Join us as these artists take their new works-in-development from the studio to the stage. These evenings are designed to offer both artists and audience the opportunity to exchange their impressions of the work. After the artists show their excerpts (up to 20 minutes each), they return to the stage for a moderated discussion that delves into their intentions and inspirations, and the audience's perception.

Visit our website for more information on the Space Grant program [click here].

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

XAN BURLEY + ALEX SPRINGER
XAN BURLEY + ALEX SPRINGER, a Brooklyn-based duo, have been making work together since 2006. They have shown work at various venues and festivals in NYC, as well as in Michigan and Chicago. Their first full-length production A Veritable Smorgasbord was presented by Triskelion Arts & Steelhead Entertainment in March 2010. Their work has been hailed as "wittily astute," and "traumatically effective," and noted for its "humor, absurdity, ...and numerous invitations to laugh." They also experiment with dance for the camera and recieved the silver award in DFA's 48-Hour Challenge for their film daylighting. Burley regularly dances for Shannon Gillen & Guests, Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance, and Daniel Charon. Springer currently works with Doug Varone and Dancers. Together they have performed for Amy Chavasse, Elizabeth Dishman and Leyya Tawil. They also produce WAXworks and are active teachers and administrators.

This project is a guided experience attached to a live dance theater performance in which each individual audience member will create the framework for their viewing by choosing whether or not to employ provided sensory-inducing items. It examines the autonomous and highly specific physical feedback elicited by nostalgia and the random, unpredictable and candid way memories arrive.

LEE SUNDAY EVANS, A COLLABORATION TOWN PROJECT
LEE SUNDAY EVANS is a director, choreographer and teaching artist. For CollaborationTown: THE PLAY ABOUT MY DAD (59E59), THE MOMENTUM (FringeNYC 2010 Best Play, Laurie Beechman, Emerging America's Festival). As Associate Director to Young Jean Lee: LEAR (Soho Rep), THE SHIPMENT (Wexner Center, The Kitchen), CHURCH (Assistant Director, Under the Radar). Other directing credits include: HOISINGTON KANSAS, PRAGUE (The Jam, New Georges), THE NEXT THING, WAYS TO SURVIVE THE WORLD (Williamstown Workshop), HOW I WON THE CAMPBELL PRIZE, THE DROWNED WORLD (Triskelion). As choreographer: FULL (The Tank), BIG MONEY, a new musical by Kyle Jarrow and Nathan Leigh (Williamstown). In addition to her work as a director, Lee has danced at locations around NYC with ann and alexx make dances, taught theater workshops in NYC public schools and was a Teaching Artist with the International Theater & Literacy Project in Arusha, Tanzania. New Georges Affiliated Artist, Lincoln Center Director's Lab. Lee currently works with Outside the Wire and Theater of War Productions. BFA: Boston University.

THE BIG FIX begins as an earnest town-hall meeting where a group of captivating and impossibly idealistic performers pitch us an irresistible vision about how we can affect Change. The performers speak as intoxicatingly about the promise of collective grassroots action and revolutionary innovation as they do about people's desire to feel safe, have a home, and truly sense that they belong. But the show is slippery and unfamiliar: it blends aspects of an electrifying political speech with an emotionally cathartic family dinner and the unpredictability of a Tom Waits concert. The structure of the town-hall meeting is continually subverted as the performers get increasingly uncomfortable with inspiring rhetoric or elaborate solutions and find themselves grappling with the aspects of our lives that often drive our decisions and form our opinions - our friends and families, our daily struggles, our most dearly held dreams, and our deep-seated fears of experiencing pain, loss and hardship.

KATY PYLE
KATY PYLE is a Brooklyn based Multimedia Performance Artist who has been performing and creating in NYC and abroad since 2002, when she graduated from Hollins University. She has worked with many choreographers and directors, including Faye Driscoll, John Jasperse, Karinne Keithley, Jennifer Monson, and Young Jean Lee. Her own dance/theater works have been presented at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, PS 122, La Mama, Dance Theater Workshop, and many other venues in the city. She has received creative support from Dragon's Egg in Mystic, CT, and the Rockbridge Artist's Exchange in Lexington, VA. She teaches Yoga at OM Yoga Center, works as a Integrative Yoga Therapist at Beth Israel PACC, and teaches knitting at Downtown Yarns.

This "FIREBIRD" is a trans/lez queering of the classical story ballet of the same title. This piece follows a disenchanted Princess and a tranimal(part boy, part bird) on a journey through a magical landscape towards liberation. The work is a humorous, socially critical look at the roles that contain us, and the possibilities for their dissolution. Classical dance forms clash up against vaudevillian style storytelling and transformational performative embodiment, all in an effort to create a highly stylized kind of truth.

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.