PS 122 Announces Spring 2009 Schedule

Performance Space 122 is proud to announce the spring 2009 schedule. Tickets may be purchased online at www.ps122.org or via phone at (212) 352-3101. All programs are subject to change. Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York, New York 10009. 

Performance Space 122 is New York's ultimate destination for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art, cross-media, and performance events. Founded in 1979, Performance Space 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists whose work challenges the traditional boundaries of dance, theatre, music, and performance. Committed to exploring innovative form as well as material, P.S. 122 is steadfast in its search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures and points of view. www.ps122.org.

The following is a detailed roster of companies that will be appearing at Performance Space 122 in the coming months.

COIL
Performance Space 122 presents its annual winter event, COIL, a festival of new and groundbreaking theatre, dance, and music from NYC and around the globe.

January 6-13, 2009

Ella Hickson / Tantrum Productions
EIGHT
New York Premiere, Extended from COIL
Theatre
Downstairs Theater
Wednesday, January 14 - Sunday, January 25
Wednesday - Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 5pm
Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Winner of the 2008 Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award and Fringe First Award Winner, EIGHT is a collection of extraordinary tales of remarkably self-aware young adults smartly crafted by breakout playwright Ella Hickson. The play presents obsession in its moral, sexual, and religious guise and works to find the glimmers of faith in a world of wholesale cynicism. A politically conservative prostitute keeping old values alive; a hugely successful stockbroker walking out of his life; a gallery owner discovering the suicide of his partner hanging by an Hermès scarf.

Writer, Ella Hickson has worked as a producer for BBC comedy troupe The Penny Dreadfuls, Offstage Theatre, The Edinburgh Film Festival and in 2006 established her own Production Company, Escape Artist. Ella has written and published poetry since her late teens and completed her first novel in 2004.

* * * * *
The highly anticipated return of Dublin's foremost experimental theater company who brought Oedipus Loves You to P.S. 122 last season

Pan Pan
The Crumb Trail
U.S. Premiere, Extended from COIL
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, January 15, 8pm
Friday, January 16, 8pm
Saturday, January 17, 8pm and 10:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Where did being good ever get anyone? The Crumb Trail is a decamerous contemporary installation and performance dealing with the notion of crisis and engagement. It's the death of the Fairy Tale. It's a detective story, sharp and blunt. Detecting where we are at - but in the dark. Can we not engage with reality anymore? Ice caps are melting and I'm watching people I don't know on ‘I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.' It is Hamlet, it is Hansel and Gretel. They're all dead lost.

Co-produced by: Forum Freies Theater, Dusseldorf; Culture Ireland; Arts Council Ireland; Dublin City Council

* * * * *
The TEAM
ARCHITECTING
New York Premiere, Extended from COIL and Under The Radar Festival
Co-Presented with Under The Radar Festival
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, January 22 - Sunday, February 15
Tuesday - Saturday at 7:30pm / Sunday at 5pm
Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Architecting is an exhilarating saga that weaves through past and future to create a requiem for modern America. A collision of horses, sex and hoop skirts, burning plantations and nasty hurricanes, this musical, time-bending, multi-media epic rockets between reconstructions, real and imagined, of citizens and nations.

The TEAM is the Theatre of the Emerging American Moment, a theatre company dedicated to dissecting and celebrating the experience of living in America today. 3-time Edinburgh Fringe First Winners (2005 - 2008), 2008 Total Theatre Award, 2007 Best Production Dublin Fringe, and TimeOut New York's Top Ten 2007. The TEAM's work has been seen stateside, all over New York, including Performance Space 122; nationally, including the Walker Art Center and Vanderbilt University; internationally, including London's Battersea Arts Centre, the Bristol Old Vic, Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, and the Galway Arts Festival.

Architecting is the first co-production between the TEAM and The National Theatre of Scotland and was created with support from The National Theatre of Scotland Workshop, the Greenwall Foundation, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the Battersea Arts Centre in London, and the Orchard Project.

Early workshops were presented at Manhattan's 3LD Art and Technology Center and the BAC in London.

* * * * *
Okwui Okpokwasili
PENT UP: A REVENGE DANCE
World Premiere, Extended from COIL
Theatre
Tuesday, February 10 - Sunday, February 22
Tuesday - Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 5pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (P.S. 122 members)

Bessie Award-winner and beloved downtown actress Okwui Okpokwasili spins a modern multi-character folktale. In it, she portrays a woman in exile that sees and seeks revenge as a way of reconciling her present impoverished condition with the belief that she's a direct descendant of the sun. Interweaving legacy and the loss of old tongues, rituals and original songs, and a good old attempt to get a grip, the story sheds new light on traditional spells and third world brothels, and transforms every scratch & win ticket into a lucky one.

Okwui Okpokwasili has been developing Pent-up with Peter Born through workshops and residencies with 651 ARTS, P.S. 122 and Centre National de la Danse from 2006-2007. She was a collaborator and performer in Achill in Modern Wars and Death of Nations: Heimwehen at the FFT in Dusseldorf, Germany. Most recently she performed in Annie Dorsen's Democracy in America at P.S. 122. A Bessie Award recipient for her work in the final part of Ralph Lemon's Geography Trilogy, "Come Home Charley Patton", she continues to collaborate with Ralph Lemon.

* * * * *
National Theater of the United States of America
CHAUTAUQUA!
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Saturday, February 21 - Sunday, March 15
Tuesday - Saturday at 7:30pm / Sunday at 5pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Winners of the 2007 Spalding Gray award honoring innovative theatrical vision, the National Theater of the United States of America explore the hotly debated relationship between High Culture and the Mass Mind. Channeling the form and style of the original Chautauqua Lectures through their own inimitable aesthetic and theatrical rhythm, NTUSA combines lecture, debate, scientific demonstration and tales of explorers with more traditional forms of entertainment such as dance, dramatic recital, feats of strength, and joke telling. The company examines their own role as "entertainers" as well as "artists" and question whether or not the convergence of art and commerce is possible, sustainable, or even good for either party.

Firmly establishing themselves in the New York theatre scene in 2000 with their launch of Garvey and Superpant$: Episode #23, the NTUSA made their Performance Space 122 debut in 2006 with the premiere of Abacus Black Strikes Now: The Rampant Justice of Abacus Black and won a Village Voice OBIE for the production. The NTUSA was awarded Arts International's DNA Project Grant in 2002 and remounted Episode #23 at the ESB - Dublin Fringe Festival. The NTUSA also offered a one night only special presentation of Jack Russell's Superconfidence Seminar! at Galapagos in Brooklyn.

* * * * *
David Levine & CiNE
VENICE SAVED: A SEMINAR
World Premiere
Theater/Visual Art
Upstairs Theater
Saturday, March 21 - Sunday, April 5
Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30pm / Sunday at 6pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

A performance piece that takes theater as its topic. Truly interactive theater (ugh). Peformance as education. A performance about the nature of performance (ugh). Topics include: theater, performance art, torture, outsourcing, anorexia, Israel, Palestine, Charismatic Leadership, the Shock Doctrine, theater vs. performance, Night School, Tino Seghal, learning vs. "learning," talking vs. "talking", performing vs acting, democracy vs. Authenticity. Totally Bitchen. Simone Weil (100 years). Seminar format. Participatory. A project that looks at American Theater, and asks "What the fuck were you thinking?" . Topics range from TCG to Blackwater. On the 100th anniversary of Simone Weil's birth, CiNE takes the philosopher's unfinished play and uses it to ask theater, "What the fuck were you thinking?" But then again....

David Levine fuses performance, theater, and visual art. His work has appeared in Europe and the USA at Documenta XII, Galerie Magnus Muller (Berlin), Gavin Brown@Passerby (New York) and HAU2 (Berlin), and Curators Without Borders (Berlin), as well as appearing in Cabinet Magazine, the New York Times, Art Review, BOMB, and Theater der Zeit. He is the recipient of a Kulturstiftung Des Bundes grant for BAUERNTHEATER, and a NYFA award for Cross-Disciplinary/Performative work. He lives in New York and Berlin, where he is the Director of Performing Arts at the European College of Liberal Arts.

CiNE examines the conditions of spectacle and spectatorship across a range of media. Recent initiatives have included: Re-Public (Theater Magazine); Babylon is Everywhere; and Venice Saved.

 

* * * * *

Sally Silvers
YESSIFIED
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Sunday, March 22 - Sunday, March 29
Tuesday - Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 6:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Iconoclassical choreographer Sally Silvers returns to Performance Space 122 with her first New Group dance since 2005's Puppy Skills.

Whiteness is on the hook and down for the hybrid. Silvers answers the seductive call of a stable/single racial life by outing and othering it. Whiteness as symbiotic, open face Blackness. Sudden turns and shocks, bleed-throughs and angularity, pivoting centers, conflict embrace -- a new world is ever unexplored and the night's secret is to make the day swing blue. Jutting and swerving, Yessified is a hyperactivating dance of quirky, fun wired physicality & imagery, a provocative text by Bruce Andrews, electronica star-crossed with sweet soul music and 10 duper super dancers: Javier Cardona, Alan Good, Sara Beth Higgins, Takemi Kitamura, Alejandra Martorell, Miriam Parker, Julia Planine-Troiani, Marion Ramirez, Keith Sabado, and Sally Silvers.

Sally Silvers & Dancers has performed nationally and internationally in South Korea, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Europe, the American Dance Festival, and many other locations. Artistic Director Sally Silvers has an on-going fascination with the poetic as well as the social meanings of movement -- to offer a no-holds-barred exploration of movement possibilities often wittily tilted toward the eccentric, awkward, and unexpected. Resonating from the movement are the motifs of risk, vulnerability, playfulness, and extremity. Often operating in areas between idiomatic dance and unconventional movement, the work keep its focus on clearly defined, if unusual structures for the articulated body. Her meticulously madcap dances engage experimentation at The Edges of drama, fierceness and hope.

* * * * *
Octavio Campos
Title TBA
World Premiere
Theatre
Downstairs Theater
Thursday, April 9 - Sunday, April 19
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm / Sunday at 5:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Octavio Campos - Miami born, Cuban American choreographer, performance artist and teacher - has been creating risk taking theater since 1989. After attending SUNY Purchase and the Martha Graham School he went to Germany to work with Birgitta Trommler and studied dance theater at the Folkwang Schule of Pina Bausch. After an extensive performance and directing career in Europe collaborating within the works of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Vivienne Newport, he returned to Miami and founded, CAMPOSITION- a multidisciplinary ensemble dedicated to pushing the boundaries between contemporary performance and activism. He has received numerous grants, commissions and awards notably by Miami Light Project, Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Florida Dance Festival, Miami Dade College, Teatro Municipal Lima, Klapstuk, Berliner Theater Treffen, The Bolschoi Berlin, State Theater Darmstadt and the Civic Theater Munster. He has served on the faculty of the New World School of the Arts since 1995.

* * * * *
Object Collection
PROBLEM RADICAL(S)
World Premiere
Theatre
Downstairs Theater
Saturday, April 25 - Sunday, May 10
Wednesday - Saturday 7:30pm / Sunday 5:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

An experimental opera, Problem Radical(s) mixes everyday radical acts, a sprawling sculpture, massive inflating tarps, industrious performers, and hardcore noise. Performers navigate an ever-expanding, unstable installation. Musicians and singers reassemble the modular electronic and instrumental score, evoking American radical thinkers, civic activists, and maneuverable personal blimps.

Inspired by the music of MiLes Davis, John Cage, the Dead Kennedys and the installations of Dieter Roth and Jason Rhoades, Problem Radical(s) is a project headed by New York-based performance group Object Collection: Kara Feely (writer-director) and Travis Just (composer), in collaboration with visual artist Hannah Dougherty (installation), Berlin-based artist Daniel Kötter (video), and New York-based designers Peter Ksander (costume) and Miranda Hardy (lighting).

Excerpts from Problem Radical(s) have been presented at KuLe (Berlin, August 2007), Experimental Intermedia (New York, December 2007), and Loopline (Tokyo, May 2008). In June-July 2008, Object Collection developed the piece further during month-long artist residency at Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement.

* * * * *
Jennifer Miller
Title TBA
World Premiere
Theatre/Circus Arts
Upstairs Theater
Saturday, April 25 - Sunday, May 10
Wednesday - Sunday at 8pm
Additional Shows: Saturday, May 2 at 11pm / Saturday, May 9 at 11pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Jennifer Miller is the director of the acclaimed NYC political performance troupe Circus Amok, which she founded in 1989. She was a focus of Tami Gold's documentary Juggling Gender. Circus Amok is the subject of a French documentary film, "Un Cirque a New York" 2002 and Brazilian documentary, "Juggling Politics" 2004. Miller has performed with Cathy Weis, Jeff Weis, Jenny Monson, John Jasperse, Johanna Boyce, Otrabanda and They Won't Shut-up among others. She had a seven-year stint at Coney Island Sideshow by the Seashore.

Jennifer Miller is widely recognized for her work and is the recipient of awards including the Obie, Bessie, BAX 10, and most recently the Ethyl Eichelberger Award. She currently teaches in New York at Pratt Institute, and has taught at several universities including UCLA, Cal Arts, Scripps College, and NYU.

* * * * *
Megan Sprenger / mvworks
Title TBA
World Premiere
Dance
Downstairs Theater
May 2009
Performance Times TBA
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

People experience aggression on a daily basis - in their homes, on their street corners, in their countries. Inspired by the images of violence in Jacob Landau's work and focusing on the repression that exists all over the world and across time periods, mvworks examines the raw unfiltered human instincts that lay at the core of physical and emotional conflict. Intensely kinetic and driven by the forces of intent the performers weave in and out the audience creating palpable tension and relief.

mvworks, a contemporary dance company based in New York City, was founded in 2005 by Megan V. Sprenger. mvworks strives to engage viewers in dance through an intensely kinetic, raw movement style that is driven by clear emotional intent, creating powerful performance that connects with the audience beyond their viewing experience.

mvworks' first evening length work, No Where, was commissioned by Performance Space 122 in 2006. We have also been presented at Abrons Art Center, Fridays at Noon at the 92nd Street Y, THROW at The Chocolate Factory and Galapagos Arts Space, WAXworks at University Settlement, and Dance Theater Workshop's 40th Birthday Celebration.

* * * * *
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
Title TBA
World Premiere
Music
Upstairs Theater
May 2009
Performance Times TBA
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a uniquely structured chamber music ensemble comprised of thirty dynamic and versatile young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. Through innovative programming, multimedia collaborations, commissions by young composers, and performances in nontraditional venues, ICE brings together new music and new audiences.

ICE was founded in 2001, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading new-music ensembles of its generation, winning first prize in the 2005 CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, and performing over sixty concerts a year in the US and abroad. Recent engagements include performances at the Mostly Mozart Festival of Lincoln Center, the Bang on a Can Marathon at the World Financial Center, the Composer Portraits Series the Miller Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, CAL Performances in Berkeley, CA, the Gardner Museum in Boston, and on tour in Latin America and Eastern Europe. The ensemble will release three CDs in 2007, on the Bridge Records, Focus Recordings and Naxos Records labels.

ICE has collaborated closely with many leading composers of our time. A champion of music by emerging composers, ICE has also given over 300 world premieres to date, and has performed the music of young composers from 25 different countries. In 2004, ICE launched the 21st Century Young Composers Project, a worldwide call-for-entries by composers under the age of 35, which has culminated in the world premieres of works by young composers in 25 different countries. ICE currently serves as Ensemble-in-Residence at both New York University and Columbia College Chicago, and regularly conducts outreach activities throughout the US and Mexico.