Lumberyard Sets 2017 NYC Season at The Kitchen

Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts (formerly American Dance Institute) is pleased to announce its 2017 season at The Kitchen, which will comprise the premieres of five new contemporary performance works.

Having presented its first New York City performances at The Kitchen to great success in 2016, the acclaimed organization will now offer a season in the city each year.

The establishment of an annual NYC season is the latest step in Lumberyard's rapid transformation, under visionary Executive and Artistic Director Adrienne Willis, from a Rockville, MD, ballet school and black box theater into a national, New York-based organization that evaluates the needs of artists throughout their creation process and fills gaps in the structures that exist to support them.

This year alone, Lumberyard also has broken ground on a state-of-the-art residency and performance facility in Catskill, NY; moved its offices from Rockville, MD, to Manhattan; adopted a new name; expanded its mission, beyond dance, to performance more broadly; and added a number of senior staff and consultants who will help maximize Lumberyard's contribution to the field.

On Thursday, December 8, in recognition of Lumberyard's potential to revitalize the Catskill waterfront and downtown, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Councils awarded the organization a $300,000 Empire State Development Grant-the largest Empire State Development Grant given to a cultural institution in the Capital Region. This year's award follows one of $500,000 Lumberyard received last year through the same competitive funding process.

Kicking off Lumberyard's 2017 season at The Kitchen is the New York premiere of writer-director-choreographer David Gordon's autobiographical performance work Live Archiveography, June 1-3. The performance is part of Gordon's years-long project to investigate a framework for his legacy and to annotate his own archive, which encompasses five decades in dance and theater and will soon be housed and accessible at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. At The Kitchen, Live Archiveography will deliver an evening of scripted storytelling, movement, conversation and images, giving audiences an opportunity to experience a revered artist interpreting his past. Prior to the New York premiere with Lumberyard, Gordon will present a preview performance March 30, 2017, at the Library for the Performing Arts.

Following Live Archiveography will be the world premiere of New Home (Working Title), a new work from Vicky Shick, who, like Gordon, has won acclaim throughout a career spanning multiple decades. Performances will take place June 8-10. The musical performance artist Cynthia Hopkins will perform the New York premiere of Articles of Faith (June 15-17), a work she created after-and whose raw form was inspired by-the destruction of her home, work studio, records and materials in a May 2015 fire.

The world premiere of the feath3r theory in: Another f-ing Warhol Production, or Who's Afraid of Andy Warhol? (June 22-24), from Raja Feather Kelly and his company the feath3r theory, finds Lumberyard continuing to support the New York-based choreographer's work. Kelly is the winner of the organization's 2016 Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, which includes $10,000 in commissioning funds, fee-free fiscal sponsorship, strategic marketing and development support, and this presentation of the commissioned work. Kelly describes the feath3r theory in: Another f-ing Warhol Production, or Who's Afraid of Andy Warhol? as a "docufiction"; in it, he and his collaborators perform a post-ballet theater musical composed of imagined unused footage from the 2015 episode of "Saturday Night Live" featuring Kanye West.

The summer season at The Kitchen will conclude with the New York premiere of Dearest Home (June 29-July 1), a new work abouT Loving and longing, love and loss, from 2013 MacArthur "Genius" Award-winner Kyle Abraham and his company, Abraham.In.Motion. Dearest Home consists primarily of solos and duets generated in conversation and collaboration with a variety of age groups and self-identified subcultures.

In 2018, Lumberyard's New York City season will take place in February, as their new Catskill, New York, venue-open that summer-will host a season of publicperformances every summer. The four-building facility on the Hudson River waterfront will allow the organization to drastically expand its activities, especially its premiere-residency program, which gives artists and companies from across the U.S. housing, space, time and comprehensive technical resources to develop new work before a New York or national premiere. Lumberyard's opening will make a significant contribution to the village's revitalization efforts. The complex, being built at the former Dunn Builders Supply complex, consists of a main lumberyard building in Catskill and three large adjacent barns along Catskill Creek. Phase I of the renovation, the 30,000 sf. main building, began in May and will include a large, column-free flexible theater, a lobby, administrative offices, housing for up to 20 resident artists, a chef's kitchen, an artist lounge and a public courtyard. Phase II of the project, for which a start date has not been set, encompasses the three adjacent structures, which Lumberyard will develop in collaboration with the Village of Catskill and in line with the Village's Downtown and Waterfront Revitalization Strategy. One barn will house a large dance studio.

Once open in 2018, Lumberyard's summer season will comprise premiere and work-in-progress performances by celebrated professional artists and companies, serving local residents and attracting tourists from across New York and beyond. From October through April, the facility will be available for collaborative residencies, subsidized and commercial rentals, and community programming.

In September of this year, the organization announced that it had changed its name from American Dance Institute to Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts; broadened its mission to encompass the performing arts, not only dance; and hired several women with careers spanning the non-profit and private sectors to assume leadership and key consulting roles, including Jilian Cahan Gersten (Director of Development), a lifelong New Yorker who was most recently Vice President of Development at BRIC, a multi-arts presenter in Brooklyn; Alison Schwartz (Chief Operating Officer), who was previously the Co-Founder & Editorial Director of Lulu, the first mobile app dedicated to millennial women; Karen Lombardo (Management Consultant), previously Executive Vice President of Gucci Group for Global Human Resources and now the President of KHL Consulting LLC; and Martha Cooper (Marketing Consultant), an arts marketing consultant with more than twenty years of experience in the nonprofit sector.

LUMBERYARD CONTEMPORARY PERFORMING ARTS - 2017 NYC SEASON AT THE KITCHEN:

David Gordon

Live Archiveography (New York Premiere)

June 1-3, 2017

"Gordon has never been too impressed by the difference between life and art. What he likes to do is set up shop right on the border."-New York Magazine

Writer, director and choreographer David Gordon is assembling his archive for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. As part of that process, Gordon has made performance works titled Live Archiveography, which reconsider conventional archival methodology. In Live Archiveography, live-scripted storytelling interlaces with projected collage. Performance photographs, videos and interviews with collaborators capture five decades of Gordon's work in movement and theater art. Through live performance, narration and media display, Gordon reexamines the artifacts of his past projects, uncovering the intense relationship between his family life and his work.

David Gordon was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s and, for over 50 years, has built a body of work challenging perceptions of what constitutes a dance or theater piece. He takes on the roles of actor, choreographer, dancer, theatrical director, and writer, sometimes all at once. In 1978, he incorporated Pick Up Performance Co(s), where he continues to create genre-blending work. Beginning of the End of the... (2012) incorporated writings by Luigi Pirandello over a half-hour sequence that actor-dancers repeated five times. He has often adapted material from the classical theater cannon for his creative investigations, in works including Aristophanes in Birdonia (2006) and Dancing Henry Five (2004-2011). Gordon has received three NEA American Masterpieces Awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships and multiple NEFA National Dance Project grants, among other honors. He is a member of The Actors Studio and a founder of the Center for Creative Research. In Spring 2014, with funding from Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, his Pick Up Performance Co(s), in collaboration with Susan Hess Modern Dance, worked with Philadelphia performing arts community members to conduct a residency to develop new material. He began depositing his annotated archives (Archiveology) at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center since 2014.

Vicky Shick

New Home (Working Title) (World Premiere)

June 8-10, 2017

"Her style-beautiful, tough and even a bit perverse-is reined in by a love of the absurd."-The New York Times

Vicky Shick has been part of the New York dance community for over three decades. During her six years with the Trisha Brown Company, she received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for performance. She has been making dances since the mid-1980s, and has created seven evening length pieces with visual artist Barbara Kilpatrick and Sound Designer Elise Kermani. Their 2003 piece Undoing received a Bessie for "outstanding creative achievement," and their 2013 work Everything You See received a Bessie nomination. Over the years, their work has been presented by the Brooklyn Museum, Danspace Project, Dance Theatre Workshop (DTW, now NYLA), The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church and PS 122, and internationally at Trafó Theatre in Budapest and the Project Art Centre in Dublin. This is Shick's second presentation at with Lumberyard.

Shick has taught and restaged Trisha Brown's work in festivals and at universities in the United States and Europe, including her hometown, Budapest. Colleges where she has created dances on students include Arizona State University, Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College and George Washington University. Shick has also worked with many other performers and choreographers, including Yoshiko Chuma, Risa Jaroslow, Lisa Kraus, Stephen Petronio, Wendy Perron, Susan Rethorst, and more recently with Meg Harper, Eva Karczag, Andrea Kleine, Jon Kinzel, Juliette Mapp, Jodi Melnick, Jimena Paz, Sara Rudner, Robert Swinston, Aynsley Vandenbroucke and Cathy Weis. In 2012, she began working with Swiss video artist Seline Baumgartner on a project that had its local opening at EMPAC (the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center). In the New York City area, Shick has taught at Princeton University, The New School, Fordham University and, regularly, for the Trisha Brown Company, Hunter College (since 2001) and at Movement Research (since the 1980s), where she is completing her second artist residency. Shick is a 2006 grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a 2008-2009 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow.

Cynthia Hopkins

Articles of Faith (New York Premiere)

June 15-17, 2017

"Charmingly eccentric."-The New York Times

An article of faith is a deeply held belief, theoretically unshakeable regardless of circumstance. It's like a flame that glows steadily from within a swinging lantern on a boat being tossed by the waves.

In late May 2015, Cynthia Hopkins emerged from Yosemite National Park to learn that a catastrophic fire had destroyed her home and work studio, obliterating all record of past performances and the items used to make them: costumes, wigs, instruments, thousands of pages of hand-written notes, lyrics, musical compositions, hard drives and computers.

It was as if the fire was saying, "It's time to tell a story unadorned, unmolested by theatrics, or wigs, or costumes, or lies. It's time to tell the truth that is always more complex, more uncanny than anything anyone could ever invent." Articles of Faith- created by Cynthia Hopkins in collaboration with designer Jeff Sugg-is that story.

Cynthia Hopkins is a writer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and internationally acclaimed musical performance artist. She writes and sings songs, records albums and creates groundbreaking multi-media performance works that intertwine truth and fiction, blurring the lines between edification and entertainment. Through the process of making performances, she attempts to alchemize disturbance into works of intrigue and hope that simultaneously stimulate the senses, provoke emotion and enliven the mind. She is dedicated to creating groundbreaking original works that investigate innovative forms of communication, melding music, text, technical and theatrical design, and video with unbelievable fact and outrageous fiction. Her mission is to obscure the distinction between edification and entertainment through the creation of works that are as philosophical as they are entertaining, as intellectually challenging as they are viscerally emotional, as deeply comical as they are tragic and as historically aware as they are immediately engaging.

Hopkins has produced seven musical performance works, eight albums of original music and one museum installation. Her work has been honored with many awards, including a 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award, a 2015 Grants to Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2007 Alpert Award in Theater. She most recently premiered The Alcoholic Movie Musical!, a collaboration with video artist Jeff Sugg, at commissioning venue The Bushwick Starr; and Memorabilia, an exhibit of five memorial quilts and one requiem in honor of five deceased musical performance works, at commissioning venue The Fabric Workshop & Museum in Philadelphia. Hopkins is currently at work on a new podcast entitled Moving to Philadelphia, chronicling the challenging and thrilling adventure of her relocation to Philadelphia after twenty years in Brooklyn (subscribe for free via iTunes!), while continuing to work as a performer, composer, voice over artist and musician.

Raja Feather Kelly/the feath3r theory

the feath3r theory in: Another f-ing Warhol Production, or Who's Afraid of Andy Warhol? (World Premiere)

June 22-24, 2017

"As a director/choreographer, Kelly is a mad scientist of an artist."-New York Theatre Review

Raja Feather Kelly describes the feath3r theory in: Another f-ing Warhol Production, or Who's Afraid of Andy Warhol? as a "docufiction performance." The work stars Kelly and his company, the feath3r theory (as themselves), performing a post-ballet theater musical that reimagines and attempts to re-create unrecorded, deleted and lost footage from a rumored 2015 "Saturday Night Live" episode on love and war ("The Love Episode"), featuring musical guest Kanye West.

In addition to Kelly, the cast includes Amy Gernux, Beth Graczyk, Sara Gurevich, Rachel Pritzlaff, Collin Ranf, Aaron Moses Robin and Aitor Mendilibar as the camera man.

Recipient of Lumberyard's 2016 Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, Raja Feather Kelly was born in Fort Hood, Texas, and is the first and only choreographer to dedicate the entirety of his company's work to Andy Warhol. He is the creator of Andy Warhol's 25 Cats Name Sam; Andy Warhol's Drella (I Love You Faye Driscoll); Andy Warhol's 15: Color Me, Warhol; Another 37 Reasons to Cry (Another Warholian Production; Andy Warhol's Tropico; and many short works, all of which have been created and performed in New York City theaters. For over a decade, Kelly has worked throughout the United States and abroad (Austria, Germany, Australia, United Kingdom, and France) in search of the connections between popular culture and humanity and their integration into experiential dance-theater. Kelly currently choreographs, writes and directs his own work as Artistic Director of the feath3r theory, a culture-driven dance-theater company.

Kelly is a two-time recipient of Jerome Foundation commissioning funds for emerging artists (Dixon Place 2015, Danspace Project 2016) and has received a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant recipient (2013-2015 Paris + Lyon, France), been a 2016 Dancemapolitan Commissioned Choreographer, been a 2015 Dixon Place Dance Artist in Residence, been an LMCC Workspace Residency Recipient, and won an Emerging Choreographer residency at Bates Dance Festival. He has been the Guest Choreographer in Residence at Princeton University, University of Maryland College Park, University of Florida, University of Utah, and Middlebury College; the Harkness Choreographer in Residence at Hunter College; a 2009 and 2011 Dance Web Scholar (Vienna, Austria); and has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts EmergenCy Grant. Kelly is a 2016 Gelsey Kirkland Academy Artist in ResidencE. Kelly can be seen in the work of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, Rebecca Lazier and Christopher Williams. He has formerly been a company member with David Dorfman Dance, Zoe | Juniper, Racedance and PearsonWidrig DanceTheater. He collaborates with Tzveta Kassabova and Paul Matteson and has performed in the work of Colleen Thomas and Dancers and Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion.

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion

Dearest Home (New York Premiere)

June 29 - July 1, 2017

"Choreographer Kyle Abraham couldn't be hotter right now."-The Boston Globe

Dearest Home is an interactive dance work developed in a multi-year process focused on loving and longing, love and loss. Comprised primarily of solos and duets generated in conversation and collaboration with a variety of age groups and self-identified subcultures, the work interweaves movement, in its most vulnerable or intimate state, with cross-cultural conversation and community action.

The mission of Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion is to create an evocative interdisciplinary body of work. Born into hip-hop culture in the late 1970s and grounded in Abraham's artistic upbringing in classical cello, piano, and the visual arts, the goal of the movement is to delve into identity in relation to a personal history. The work entwines a sensual and provocative vocabulary with a strong emphasis on sound, human behavior and all things visual in an effort to create an avenue for personal investigation and exposing that on stage. A.I.M. is a representation of dancers from various disciplines and diverse personal backgrounds. Combined together, these individualities create movement that is manipulated and molded into something fresh and unique.

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Connect with Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts at thelumberyard.org.