Yale Rep Presents Three New Artists as Part of NO BOUNDARIES Dance Festival

No Boundaries: A Series of Global Performances, presented by Yale Repertory Theatre and World Performance Project at Yale, kicks off its 2008-09 season with the FESTIVAL OF INTERNATIONAL DANCE AT YALE November 10-15, featuring new work by Israel’s Yasmeen Godder, Kenya’s Opiyo Okach, and the USA’s Yvonne Rainer.

These three artists express sharp individual aesthetics that articulate powerful—often subversive—personal statements transcending boundaries of nationality, art, and culture.

 
YASMEEN GODDER
November 11 at 7PM
November 12 at 7PM
New Theater (1156 Chapel Street)

Israeli-born Yasmeen Godder studied American modern and postmodern dance, performance art, and performance theory in New York City before returning to her home country.  For nearly a decade, she has transformed these principles to comment incisively on the politics and culture of Israel.

SINGULAR SENSATION

US Premiere

In the hyper-informed, self-conscious world of “look at me,” how can we know who we are, or manage to find a true thrill or deep connection to sensation?  In Singular Sensation, five individuals explore the range of sensation—from the artificial to the authentic—and push the boundaries of their own numbness to provoke a singular sensation in each other and themselves.

The running time for Singular Sensation is approximately 1 hour.

 
OPIYO OKACH
November 11 at 9PM
November 12 at 9PM
New Theater (1156 Chapel Street)

 
Making his US debut, Opiyo Okach exemplifies the cosmopolitanism of contemporary African choreographers.  Traveling between his home country of Kenya and France, Mr. Okach absorbs and reprocesses the cultures of both environments in his subtle poems-in-motion.

NO MAN’S GONE NOW

US Premiere

Feeding on the character of the space in which it is performed, No Man’s Gone Now, created with choreographer Julyen Hamilton for Festival Avignon 2003, evokes the transience of experience—the ephemeral nature of time, place, objects, and choices.

 
TERRITORIES IN TRANGRESSION

US Premiere

Territories in Transgression, which premieres in France only days before arriving in New Haven, explores the body as the site of transgression—personal, social, cultural, and political—and its attempts to negotiate and construct its own identity.

The running time for No Man’s Gone Now and Territories in Transgression, which will be performed consecutively, is 75 minutes including a transition.

 

YVONNE RAINER
November 14 at 7PM
November 15 at 7PM
New Theater (1156 Chapel Street)

American choreographer, filmmaker, and writer Yvonne Rainer is credited as a pioneer of postmodern dance.  Her work, which draws from a variety of disciplines and media, has influenced generations of performance and visual artists.

RoS INDEXICAL

RoS Indexical is Yvonne Rainer’s radical re-vision of The Rite of Spring, the brilliant and controversial collaboration between choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky and composer Igor Stravinsky which shocked Paris audiences in 1913 with its “primitive” movement vocabulary and dissonant musical score. In RoS Indexical, “Rainer not only destabilizes the notion of The Rite of Spring as an iconic achievement in dance history, she allows us to see that a work may live on in greatly altered form” (Marcia B. Siegel, The Hudson Review).

SPIRALING DOWN

World Premiere

Commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Research Institute, and World Performance Project at Yale, Spiraling Down draws its inspiration from a variety of sources—including newspaper photos, soccer moves, old movies, classic modern dance, ballet, Steve Martin, Sarah Bernhardt, and Rainer’s own disinterred dances from the 1960s—all of which contribute to the melancholic and contradictory subtext of Rainer’s new dance.  

The running time for RoS Indexical and Spiraling Down, which are performed consecutively, is approximately 90 minutes including a transition.

TICKET INFORMATION

All FESTIVAL OF INTERNATIONAL DANCE AT YALE tickets are $15 ($10 for students), and are made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Tickets are available online at www.yalerep.org, by phone (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office at 1120 Chapel Street.

No Boundaries, presented by Yale Repertory Theatre and World Performance Project at Yale, celebrates the diversity of voices and experiences in today’s world.  No Boundaries explores—and explodes—the frontiers of theatrical invention through cutting-edge, thought-provoking dance, music, and theatre.  Tearing down cultural, linguistic, and geographic barriers, No Boundaries extends and enhances the educational mission of Yale University through a series of performances by artistic innovators from around the globe—right here in New Haven, right here at Yale.

The 2008-09 Season continues with the break/s: a multimedia odyssey through the US, Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and back again.  Fusing music, theatre, dance, and film, spoken-word virtuoso Marc Bamuthi Joseph performs the living history of the hip-hop generation as well as his own deeply personal and often humorous exploration of race and identity (January 22-24).  Unfolding simultaneously in the realms of documentary and drama, the US Premiere of Witness to the Ruins by Mapa Teatro (March 26-28) is the powerful testimony of Santa Inés-El Cartucho, one of the most ancient and emblematic neighborhoods of downtown Bogotá that was systematically demolished to pave the way for a new public park, displacing thousands of its working-class residents

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