Gerald Casel's SPLINTERS IN OUR ANKLES to Premiere at ODC Theater This Winter

In association with ODC Theater, GERALDCASELDANCE is pleased to announce the world premiere of SPLINTERS IN OUR ANKLES, a movement essay exploring the colonial origins of one of the most popular folk dances of the Philippines.

SPLINTERS runs Friday, December 18 through Sunday, December 20 at ODC Theater in San Francisco. Show times are 8:00 pm on Friday, 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm on Saturday, and 7:00 pm on Sunday. Tickets are $20 to $35, and may be purchased online at odcdance.org/tickets.

Sometimes called the Philippine national dance, the Tinikling takes its name from a native bird, the tikling, known for its grace and agility in, among other things, dodging bamboo traps set by rice farmers. The dance is performed with two or more individuals rhythmically beating bamboo poles while others step over, through and around the moving poles to avoid being hit. "The dancers are said to imitate the movement of the tikling evading their captors," explains Artistic Director Gerald Casel.

Casel, a first-generation Filipino-American, grew up in California before moving to New York to study dance at the Juilliard School. He has danced in the companies of Michael Clark, Sungsoo Ahn, Stanley Love, Zvi Gotheiner, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Lar Lubovitch and Stephen Petronio. Now an assistant professor of Dance in the Theater Arts Department at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Casel says his current work is motivated by a desire to understand his personal history.

"The Tinikling is taught to children in schools around the world. It's performed in theaters and at weddings. It's presented as a joyous, festive dance," says Casel. "But during my research in the Philippines I discovered that it was created during the time of slavery in the 16th century, and the Spanish colonizers used it as a punishment."

"The Spanish soldiers forced the indigenous farmers to stand between two bamboo poles, striking their ankles," he adds. The title SPLINTERS IN OUR ANKLES refers to the violence perpetrated against Filipinos by the Spanish colonists.

Splinters does not itself reproduce the steps of the Tinikling. The work is a contemporary response to what Casel calls "collective cultural amnesia," calling attention to the enduring legacy of imperialism. "On the one hand, the Tinikling conceals an act of state-sponsored violence, but on the other it can be seen to represent a kind of 'performed resistance' to power inasmuch as the dancers, the slaves, perfect a way to elude the instrument of torture. It's a fascinating point of entry into the construction of traditional Filipino identity."

Splinters includes an original score performed live by composer Tim Russell. An ensemble of eight dancers includes Arletta Anderson, Kristen Bell, Christina Briggs-Winslow, Rebecca Chaleff, Janet Collard, Peiling Kao, Kevin Lopez and Parker Murphy. Additional collaborators include Jack Beuttler (lighting and media design), Kate Edmunds (set design) and Patrick Denney (dramaturgy).

For more information about GERALDCASELDANCE visit geraldcasel.com.

SPLINTERS IN OUR ANKLES is made possible with generous support from the Fleishhacker Opportunity Fund at ODC, Lighting Artists in Dance and The Hellman Fellowship.

Since 1998, GERALDCASELDANCE has presented original works including six evening-length dances. The company has been presented at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, Joyce SoHo, The Yard, Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out, Danceworks Milwaukee, ODC Theater, Motion Pacific, the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, and throughout Scotland following a company residency at Dancebase Edinburgh.

'Bessie' award winning dancer, choreographer and teacher, Gerald Casel was born in the Philippines and raised in California where he began dancing in public school. He received a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School in 1991 and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2007 assisted by a fellowship from the Advanced Opportunity Program.

He has danced in the companies of Michael Clark, Sungsoo Ahn, Stanley Love, Zvi Gotheiner, Russell Dumas, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Lar Lubovitch and Stephen Petronio where he was a company member from 1991-1998 and 2001-2005. He served as Stephen Petronio Company's Assistant Director and Director of Education. Casel has created choreography for The Barnard Project, New York University's Second Avenue Dance Company, Da Da Dance Projects and The X Factor Dance Company of Scotland.

Casel is assistant professor of Dance at the University of California-Santa Cruz where he is a 2015 Hellman Fellow. He has regularly taught in New York at Dance New Amsterdam and Movement Research as well as a guest at ImPulsTanz, the School for Modern Dance in Denmark and Sasha Waltz and Guests in Berlin. He has been on faculty at American Dance Festival, Sarah Lawrence College, Marymount Manhattan College, Barnard College, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Cal State Long Beach, and at NYU Tisch School of the Arts where he received the David Payne-Carter Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2010-2011 he was a Professor of Contemporary Dance at Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden (Germany), and also taught Contemporary Dance at the San Francisco Ballet Summer Program. He has been Artist-in-Residence or Visiting Artist at Movement Research, Dance New Amsterdam, The Yard and at the University of Minnesota. He is currently a Resident Artist at ODC Theater.

Casel has received grants from the Asian American Arts Alliance, New Work Award at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Arts Council Santa Cruz County, CHIME at 10 in the Bay Area and CA$H. He served on the New York State Council on the Arts' Dance Panel 2007-2010 and regularly adjudicates for the American College Dance Association.

Pictured: SPLINTERS IN OUR ANKLES performed as a work in progress at Judson Church in New York, Jan. 2015. Photo by David Gonsier.

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