Geneva-based Foofwa d'Imobilité will return to The Kitchen with the New York premiere of a choreographic comedy, Pina Jackson In Mercemoriam, for one performance only on Sunday, March 11 at 4 p.m., as part of Thinkswiss: Genève Meets New York, a citywide festival that explores the global impact of the European city (March 6-12). The Pina Jackson performance is free and open to the public. RSVP is required at samara@thekitchen.org.
In the comedy, d'Imobilité, a former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, conjures three legends of dance who died within a month of one another in 2009: the king of pop, Michael Jackson; the queen of tanztheater, Pina Bausch; and the emperor of the revolution dance, Merce Cunningham. Dante's cousin, Danze Alleghieridere, narrates their path to paradise. The live performance is preceded by an audio-visual variation, YOUTUBING MPM, in which the three protagonists are finally dancing together.
The concept and text for Pina Jackson in Mercemorian is by Foofwa d'Imobilité with lighting by Jonathan O'Hear and costumes in collaboration with Coco Charnel.
The Kitchen is located at 512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th avenues). For more information on ThinkSwiss: Genève Meets New York, go to
www.thinkswissny.org.
The performance is supported by Fluxum Foundation. Foofwa d'Imobilité/Neopost Ahrrrt is supported by Pro Helvetia (Swiss
Arts Council), the City of Geneva (Department of Culture and Sports), and the State of Geneva (Department of Public Instruction, Culture and Sport).
Foofwa d'Imobilité studied at the Ecole de Danse de Genève and was a member of the Geneva-based Ballet Junior. He danced professionally with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany (1987-1990) and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, in New York (1991-1998). In 1998, he started his own work with solos and duets. Basing himself in Geneva, d'Imobilité made numerous dance videos and collaborated with artists such as Alan Sondheim, Nicolas Rieben, Christian Marclay and Antoine Lengo and has had large group pieces commissioned by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2, the Bern Ballet and the Ballet Junior. He won several international dance competitions, among them a bronze medal at the 1986 International Dance Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, a 1987 Prix Professionnel at the Prix de Lausanne, a 1995 New York Bessie Award and the 2006 Swiss Prize for dance and choreography. He is a recipient of a 1999 Swiss-based Fondation Leenaards cultural grant and a 2009 individual grant from the New York-based Foundation for Contemporary Arts. D'Imobilité has performed as a dancer around the world, notably at the Paris Opera, the Fenice Theater in Venice, Italy, and at the
Brooklyn Academy Of Music in New York. His work has been presented by The Kitchen, Chez Bushwick and the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, the Maison de la Danse and the Biennale de la danse in Lyon, France, and over 40 other cities in Europe.
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