Beserra Dance Theater’s "The Jenkins Farm Project" Sept 4

 
WHAT: "The Jenkins Farm Project," conceived and choreographed by Annie Arnoult Beserra (granddaughter of Annie Lee Jenkins, whose family is explored in this project), is a multi-media dance theater installation that transforms the real stories of a North Carolina farming family into an interactive performance that questions the meaning of home, family, memory, and mental illness against the crumbling backdrop of a depression era homestead.
 
In this hour-long, non-traditional viewing experience, audiences move through the installed performance like an art gallery – listening, watching and touching isolated moments from the Jenkins farm in the same physical space as the performers.  A composite of home movies, interviews, historical images, and dancers shot on the actual North Carolina farm, the video component weaves in and out of the live choreography, text, and music.  Video images and voices of Glenn and Jeannette Jenkins, both of whom suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, provide conflicting narratives and a theatrical framework for the video collage that fills the fractured surfaces of the sculptural set.  The dynamic integration of dance and theater plays within, against, and around an original bluegrass-blues-hymn-folk-inspired score by Chicago composers Matt Reed and Colby Beserra.
                                   
WHERE:Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago, IL 60657; North Theatre
$8 valet parking; Belmont El stop (Red, Brown, Purple)
Handicapped accessible
 
WHEN:  Opens Thursday, September 4, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Four shows only (no previews) – in addition to the Thursday, September 4, 7:30 p.m. opening, shows are also on Friday, September 5, and Saturday, September 6 at 7:30 p.m., and closing performance on Sunday, September 7 at 2 p.m.
 
TICKETS: Call 773-327-5252, Theatre Building Chicago Box Office; Ticketmaster at www.ticketmaster.com; Hot Tix
$30 for all regular performances (half-price rush tickets available)
$15 for each ticket in groups of ten or more
$12 for students and seniors with ID    

 
STAFF: Annie Arnoult Beserra (Choreographer), Colby Beserra and Matt Reed (Composers), Jeremy Getz (Lighting Design), Christopher Ash (Set and Projection Design), Brian Schwab (Sound and Video Engineer) and Daniel Goode (Stage Manager).
 
DANCERS: Vera Blaine, Kathryn Enright, Alana Hardison, Todd Lahrman, and Ashley Thorndike.
 
BIO: Annie Arnoult Beserra recently returned to Chicago with an MFA in Dance from Ohio State University. She was a member of the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project and Striding Lion InterArts Workshop, where her choreography for "Billy the Mountain and Other Wartime Stories" received "Critic's Choice" in Chicago Reader, and a "Don't Miss" in Time Out Chicago.  In addition to producing her own work, Beserra has danced with Lucky Plush Productions, XSIGHT! Performance Group, Peter Carpenter, and others; choreographed "The Guys," "Speed the Plow," "Abingdon Square" and "Madforest" for Piven Theatre Workshop; "Some Explicit Polaroids" for Roadworks Productions at the Steppenwolf Garage; and "Daughter of Jacob," "Ill Met by Moonlight," "The Giver," and "Billy the Mountain…" for Striding Lion InterArts Workshop.  In New York, she has choreographed for Toad Productions and the New York International Fringe Festival.  She has served as an adjunct faculty member and guest artist at Northwestern University where she is currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama.  She is the granddaughter of Annie Lee Jenkins, the second of the eight Jenkins siblings.
 
MISSION:"The Jenkins Farm Project" is the inaugural production of Beserra Dance Theater. Beserra Dance Theater (BDT) is dedicated to exploring the potential of performance, in the specific form of dance theater, to provide a uniquely agile medium of research of the human condition, opening doors for the emergence of both an embodied investigation of particular socio-cultural experiences and an embodied perspective on the interpretations, conclusions, and questions that these investigations provoke. Following this show, BDT will begin work on "Dada Gert"  (working title) based on the life and performance of Weimar cabaret/performance artist Valeska Gert .