PS 122 Presents Emerging Artists Showcase April 28 - May 15

For its 25th Anniversary Season, Performance Space 122 has re-vamped its longstanding series New Stuff to create a brand new residency program for emerging artists working in the fields dance, theater and multi-disciplinary performance. Over the course of the year, six of New York's most promising and innovative emerging artists have created new works which will culminate in repertory presentations during The New, New Stuff, April 28-May 15, 2005.

Curated by Natalie Johnsonius, this year's The New, New Stuff features world premieres from writer/performer Clay McLeod Chapman, puppeteer Gretchen Van Lente and her company Drama of Works, choreographer Ryuji Yamaguchi, dance-theater company The Vangeline Theater, choreographers Sarah Vasilas and Leonardo Smith, and choreographer Christopher Williams.

For complete schedule please see attached.

Performance Space 122 is a not-for-profit arts center serving the New York City dance and performance community. P.S.122 has become a major contributor to the cultural life of NYC and has achieved national and international recognition as one of this country's most important and innovative alternative presenting organizations.

The New, New Stuff plays at P.S. 122 (150 First Avenue @ E. 9th Street) from Thursday, April 28th and runs through Sunday, May 15th on the following schedule: Thursday through Saturday at 8:00pm, with a Sunday matinee at 5:00pm. Tickets are $15.00 and may be purchased by phoning the P.S. 122 Box Office 212-477-5288 or online at www.ps122.org.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

April 28 – May 1

Drama of Works in: WARHOL™
Directed by Gretchen Van Lente
Warhol puppet designed and built by David Michael Friend
Sound design by Jill DuBoff
Costumes by Mary Trumbour

Before the nose job and legal name change, Andrew Warhola was a sweet gifted boy who loved his mother. Society would love to believe he was a sex-obsessed, druggie, party- hopper. But with pop icons, the truth doesn't really matter, does it? In their latest puppet-theatre piece, Drama of Works probes into the double life of this consumerist icon, where a soup can plays his mother and his life is literally boxed up into his signature Brillo Pad creations.

The Pumpkin Pie Show in: the cardiac shadow
Written by Clay McLeod Chapman
Music by Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst (of One Ring Zero)
Choreography by Blair Bodie
Performed by: Hannah Bos, Hanna Cheek, Alexa Scott-Flaherty, Jordan Simmons, and Paul Thureen

Four women were procured from the Ravensbruck concentration camp, hand-selected by SS Second Lieutenant Dr. Sigmund Rascher, Air Force physician. These four women were "volunteered" for a series of experiments that would eventually come to be known as the cold conference -- tests specifically designed to determine the endurance of the human body to extreme temperatures. The voices of these four women have since disappeared. Where does the human spirit go when the body must remain behind, frozen inside an atrocity?

May 5 - 8

mundane Choreographed by Ryuji Yamaguchi
Lighting by Dan Scully
Sound by Peyton Sherwood
Costumes by Sarah Cubbage
Performers: Cynthia Koppe, Christina Shelby, Kathryn Sydell, and Ryuji Yamaguchi

mundane is a navigational journey through space, time, and memory. Through linear tracings of points and nodes, mundane surrounds itself with an eerie stillness and a vague clouded atmosphere.

The Vangeline Theater in: C.A.R.O.U.S.E / L.
Choreographed by Vangeline
Lighting by Pierre Mansire
Video projection by Laurent Briet
Music by The Mitgang Audio aka Ray Sweeten
Dancers: Nicole Baxley, Ayako Sana, Mandy Caughey, Sarah McCollum, kat Mac Millan, Yukiko Yumiwaki, Jessi Peterso, Michele Moritz, Vangeline, Coco, Hadley Nunes, Jeremy Scott, Seth Abramson, Peyton Biederman, Katherine Adamenko, Leslie Katonis, Andrea Keung, Banaue Miclat and Scott P.

Loosely inspired by the cult movie Blade Runner and the French sci-fi thriller la Nuit des Temps, Vangeline's electronic butoh ballet C.A.R.O.U.S.E/L is a sensual re-telling of the apocalyptic story of a golden sphere buried deep in the Antacrtic ice. Encapsulated in the sphere are the bodies of a man and a woman, survivors of a civilization that perished 900,000 year ago.

May 12-15

Fusion FEED
Choreographed and directed by Sarah Vasilas and Leonardo Smith
Video and sound design by Chelsea Snider

Choreographers Sarah Vasilas and Leonardo Smith's new multi-media dance piece is a fusion of sculpture, video, original music and dance, delving into the question "What feeds us?". Through the use of live, improvisational, and set media, Fusion FEED explores the visceral responses people have to their environment, society, relationships and imagination.

Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins
Choreography by Christopher Williams
Original Music by Peter Kirn
Dancers: Kindra Windish, Vicky Shick, Nami Yamamoto, Deana Acheson, Beth Simons, Wendy Perron, Hallie Glickman-Hoch, Janet Charleston, Jennifer Lafferty, Elizabeth Zimmer, and Derry Swan
Singers: Jacqueline Horner and Susan Hellauer (of The Anonymous 4)
Costumes by Michael Oberle and Christopher Williams

Inspired by the bizarre and gory legends of early virgin martyr saints, Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins combines eleven short solos for women ranging from a young girl to older women in the NYC dance scene. Existent medieval hymns and songs with new original music set the tone for this playfully macabre look at the lives of these mysterious women.

ARTIST BIOS

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the Pumpkin Pie Show, a rigorous storytelling session backed by its own live soundtrack. In its eight years of existence, the Pumpkin Pie Show has traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival ('98), the New York International Fringe Festival ('97, '99. '01), the Romanian Theatre Festival of Sibiu ('97, '01), as well as performed at such various venues as colleges, theatres, and theme parks in and around the country. With music composed by McSweeney's house-band One Ring Zero, the Pumpkin Pie Show continues to perform within New York City -- including the Red Room, the Kraine, St. Marks Theatre, the CSV, the Zipper, the Belt, and the Culture Project. Chapman is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel -- both published by Hyperion books. miss corpus was recognized in part of the New Yorker's Reading Glasses series in 2003. His short story "late bloomer" was recently made into a film by director Craig Macneill, winning the audience award for best short at the Lake Placid Film Festival -- as well as becoming an official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Chapman was a contributing author to One Ring Zero's "As Smart As We Are" album, featuring Paul Auster, Rick Moody, AM Homes, Margaret Atwood, and others. He contributed an introduction to the catalogue for Pierre Huyghe's "Streamside Day Follies" installation project, exhibiting at the Dia:Chelsea gallery, along with such authors as Dave Eggers. Chapman he is currently working on a new collection of short stories.

Gretchen Van Lente has been performing, building and directing in the field of puppetry for the past three years. She has worked with such artists as Peter Wallace, Travis Preston, Peter Schumann, Great Small Works, Janie Geiser, Dan Hurlin and Ralph Lee. She has adapted and directed every thing from guerilla Shakespeare to political puppet satire. Her productions have been seen in New York City at the Sidonia Milano Atrium, Clockworks Experimental Puppetry Theater, HERE, Dixon Place, Present Company Theatorium, Los Kabayitos Puppet Theater, Arts at St. Anne's, and CBs 313. She has traveled for exclusive engagements to Perishable Theater in Providence, Rhode Island and Industrial Arts Co-op in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Gretchen is also an award-winning three dimensional illustrator and a teacher of puppetry. Drama of Works has also performed internationally at the World Festival if Puppet Art (Prague) and the Istanbul International Puppetry Festival.

The Vangeline Theater is a dance/theatre troupe fostering a general appreciation of French, Japanese and European culture through performances and workshops. The company offers Butoh classes to performers, members of the incarcerated population as well as the general public. The Vangeline Theater includes performers: Ayako Sana (Japan), Deena Marcum (USA), Denver Latimer (USA), Julia Kulakova (Russia), Nicole Baxley (USA), Sarah McCollum (USA), Katjia McMillian (USA), Kasjmeera Cardula (Germany), Luise Mahler (Germany), Vangeline (04France), Katherine Mester (USA), Jason Viseltear (USA), Christina Lewis (USA), Michele Moritz (USA), and Simone (Jamaica). Artist Director Vangeline has performed in New York City in Off Broadway productions as a dancer, actor and singer. She performed with recording artist Storm Lee; sand has modeled for Anton Corbjin, Jean Paul Gaultier, Manolo, Ali Smith, Michel Tcherevkoff, and Bill Forshee. For more information, visit www.vangeline.com.

Sarah Vasilas graduated from The College of Santa Fe with a self-designed degree in interdisciplinary art, Vasilas creates theatrical productions that fuse dance, sculpture, video projection, attachable body screen costumes and original music. As well as creating her own work, she performs with various New York City based Dance companies. Since she arrived in New York two years she has become a principle dancer of The Vissi Dance Theater and a member of The Sybarite dance Agency. She has performed in shows with Grace Jones, Savion Glover, Medusa and Barbara Tucker, as well as showcased her own work in various productions such as The Jennifer Muller Hatch Series, "Six Moments of Dance", Performance Space 122's Avant-Garde-Arama, and CBGB's Gallery "Arcadia" show.

Christopher Williams is a dancer, choreographer, puppeteer, and performance artist based in New York City. Williams performs with Tere O'Connor Dance, Douglas Dunn and Dancers, as well as Risa Jaroslow & Dancers, and is a founding member of Rebecca Lazier's TERRAIN, and The Eliza Miller Dance Company. He has also performed for artists such as Fred Ho, John Kelly, Edisa Weeks, Nanine Linning, Beppie Blankert, Charles Atlas, Wendy Rogers, Lisa Gonzales, and Anita Cheng. As a puppeteer, Williams has worked with Bessie award winner Basil Twist both serving as the Ballet Captain for the puppets' choreography as well as performing the title role in his version of Petrushka performed through Lincoln Center, and has toured extensively with both the Bessie award winning work of Dan Hurlin, Everyday Uses for Sight no. 3, at the Barbican Theater in London, and with his recent work, Hiroshima Maiden. Williams dance and puppet works have been presented both domestically in many New York City venues including Saint Mark's Church through the Danspace Project, BRIC Studio, HERE Arts Center, P.S. 122, through the Arts at St. Ann's Puppet Labapalooza, Dixon Place, La Mama, One Arm Red, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, the Mulberry Street Theater, and internationally in the Casa del Teatro Nacional in Bogotá, Colombia. He is the recipient of grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and was a commissioned artist of Dream Music Puppetry through the Here Artist Residency Program for 2003. He has also received a Bessie Schönberg Memorial Endowed Fellowship for a residency in 2002 at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and has been granted residencies at the White Oak Plantation, Yaddo, and The Yard on Martha's Vineyard. He currently serves on the Artist Advisory Board for the Danspace Project and lives in Brooklyn.

Ryuji Yamaguchi graduated from Harvard University in 2003 with an A.B. in East Asian Studies. At Harvard, Yamaguchi choreographed more than 15 works including "Findings" and a solo, "Self-Portrait," which were selected to be performed in the American College Dance Festival Gala Concert in 2001 and 2002, respectively. He was also a choreographer for "Against the Grain" (2001) and "Titus Andronicus" (2001) on the Loeb Mainstage in Cambridge, MA, and a co-director for the multimedia dance production "Ex-Rated" (2002) in the Loeb Experimental Theater, also in Cambridge, MA. Yamaguchi has performed in works by such artists as Mark Morris, Douglas Dunn, Kraig "bopi" Patterson, Brenda Divelbliss, Jodi Leigh Allen, Gianni Di Marco, Derrick Sellars, Billbob Brown and Liz Santoro. He was a scholarship student at the American Dance Festival in 2003, where he assisted Eiko & Koma in creating their world premiere "Tree Song." He is the 2003 recipient of the Emerging Artist Grant from LEF Foundation and Green Street Studios (Cambridge, MA), and was a guest artist for Hot Head Works 2003 World Session, a multimedia arts festival in Yokohama, Japan.