Chen Dance Center Presents CLOSE

After a fulfilled career as a dancer working for over 20 years with some of the most notable choreographers of New York's downtown dance scene, Debra Wanner introduces her own choreography with her newly formed company, Debra Wanner Dance. Presenting four dance works created in collaboration with her dancers, Close will be performed Thursday through Saturday, April 15-17, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. at Chen Dance Center located at 70 Mulberry Street, 2nd floor, one block South of Canal Street. Reception follows the opening night performance. Tickets are $20 and $15 for students/artists. For tickets and information, contact 212.349.0126 or 212.349.0438. Debra Wanner Dance is co-presented by Chen Dance Center and Interaction Arts Foundation.

A multi-faceted dancer, performer and choreographer, Debra Wanner creates inquisitive dance works about evolving human experiences. "I am interested in exploring states of minds or unusual situations and the movement demands that each asks for," says the choreographer. "I am concerned with technical and fantastical movement, as well as movement that comes from our everyday lives and the objects we live with. At their best my dances invoke a universal terrain about life that an audience can feel on a gut level."

Wanner's work toys and struggles with the nature of self-image and human desire, ultimately exploring transformative experiences. Her dance combines pure movement with work that includes text, video, and improvisation. There is a structural formality to the work along with an emotional undertone that pushes against and through any constraints. In Close, Wanner explores how we share space, both inside and out, and the richness and malleability of physical and emotional environments.

Close features two premieres including Interview/Innerview, performed by Sam Ernst, Fiona Evans, Alessandra Larson and Molly Lieber, a sensual and deeply moving work that explores our attempts to get closer to each other. This emotional push-and-pull also deals with self-inspection and the wrestling between holding on and moving on. Sometimes the movement and gestures between the four dancers feel akin to an interview or interrogation, at other times a struggle between powers becomes obvious. Creating an increasingly abstract movement vocabulary, these images leave a vivid memory of four bodies in a bare space. The sound for Interview/Innerview was designed by Debra Wanner and Aural Fixation, and includes music composed by world reknown frame drummer Layne Redmond.

Bird, Stick, Lady is a new solo created by Wanner while she was in an isolated studio in the woods in Virginia. "There was a bird that kept throwing itself against the window, again and again. And though it was attacking its own refection, these repeated strikes directly influenced the territory of the dance," Wanner explains. "The dance is a bewitching ménage a trois of three colliding impressions; a bird, a stick and a lady. Performed by Wanner, the music is by The Swedish Radio Choir and also includes a short film by Wanner.

The duet, 2 Parts Whole, dramatically performed by Alessandra Larson and Molly Lieber, explores side-by-side, overlaid, and circling, the negotiation and renegotiation within a relationship. The music for the dance is composed by Galen H. Brown, and costumes are by Kate Hamilton. This work premiered in the Soaking Wet Series at the West Side Theater in New York City in 2007.

The opening piece, Place/Setting, is a revision of Wanner's 2006 solo work and is performed by Sam Ernst with live music created and performed by Bessie Award-winning composer Peter Zummo. The dance serves as an invocation that sets the stage for the evening. In her expressive movements, Ernst portrays a woman attached to two plates, who imaginatively embraces the role of a host, transcending that identity as she and Zummo welcome the audience. The costume for Place/Setting is created by Kate Hamilton. The work also includes a short film by Debra Wanner. Place/Setting was originally performed by Wanner premiering in DancemakersNYC at the Kumble Theater at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus.

Bessie-award winning lighting designer, Kathy Kaufman designs the lights for Close.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Wanner began creating works in the late 1970's working in dance, experimental theater and performance art with a number of diverse New York choreographers, artists and directors including Jerri Allyn, Bill Gordh, Joe Lowery, Rosalind Newman, Richard Schechner's Performance Group, Frank South and collaboratively with Clarice Marshall. She went on to become a founding member of Stephanie Skura and Company where she danced and toured extensively throughout the US and Europe from 1984-1990. She has since also danced with Erin Fitzgerald, Marilyn Klaus, Victoria Marks, Nina Martin, David Rousseve, Sally Silvers, Pat Catterson, Barbara Grubel, Aviva Geismar, Tina Croll, and collaborated with Amy Larimer.

Wanner's individual and collaborative projects have been presented in New York City at Movement Research, PS 122, the Franklin Furnace, Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place, Arts at University Settlement, The 92nd St. Y, Chashama, Dance Now, 40Up, Dancemakers NYC at Kumble Theater, Green Space, Solar One and the West End Theater by David Parker and Jeff Kazin. Her work has also been presented at Portland School of Design, in Dancemakers Critical Perspective, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Peck School of the Arts, and the American College Dance Festival North Central Regional Conference, representing the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, PSA. As a videographer Wanner's videos have been seen in New York at Movement Research, the Donnell Library, Global Village, Ryo Gallery, Locus Film Communications, Spontaneous Combustion as well as at Video Women in Pittsburgh, and at festivals in France, Portugal and on tour throughout the U.S as a part of Eyes Wide Open, curated by James Byrne.

She is a recipient of a young choreographers fellowship from The National Endowment of the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts in Video. She has also received an award from the New York Experimental Film and Video Festival. She is a recipient of a residency at Yellow Springs Institute and was a participant in The Fields Independent Artists Challenge Program. As a part of Interaction Arts, Wanner was a recipient of grants and awards from NEA and New York State Council on the Arts for collaborative interdisciplinary performance. Wanner is a dance professor at Queens College, a movement specialist at First Presbyterian Nursery School and a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner.