Performances for 2010 Culturemart Begin January 11

The OBIE-winning HERE Arts Center's annual CULTUREMART festival, set for January 11th through January 31st, 2010, will feature 12 works that blur the lines between dance, theatre, music, new media, puppetry and visual art. Reflecting a core philosophy that it is not possible for any one art form alone to convey the flood of images, data and sound bytes that inundate the senses in today's world of information and communication overload, CULTUREMART's cross-disciplinary presentations embrace and illuminate our modern experience by integrating many forms of media and content into exciting new works.

CULTUREMART: HERE is an annual festival where resident artists blur the boundaries between dance, theatre, music, new media, puppetry and visual art, melding these forms to support their adventurous visions. This year's program features 12 workshop performances spanning pop-opera, butoh, multi-channel video, pure-movement and everything in-between.

CULTUREMART is a vital testing ground, an environment where you can sample live art in progress, provide feedback and play a crucial role in the development of new work.

Sonnambula/Michael Bodel
January 12-13
Bellini's pastoral opera, La Sonnambula is peeled back to reveal the experience of young Amina on The Day Before her wedding, surrounded by her village but lost in her own mind. A sleepwalker, Amina exists in the space between sleeping and wakimg, vibrant and lifeless. Visceral choreography of two dancers converges with puppetry on multiple scales. Amina's world decomposes. Soprano Mme. Giuditta Pasta, is brought to life, moments before she steps onto the stage of La Scala, 1831.

Wooden/Laura Peterson
January 12-13
A dance with rigorous geometry and intense physicality, Wooden explored endurance and the decay of structure. The dancers twist through endless configurations without repetition until both the set and their performance are changed and broken. Gaps are left, creating new imprints in the space and the audience's memory. Inspired by natural architecture, Wooden is created and performed by Laura Peterson Choreography with a live installed set of sculpted and tangled trees and metal.

The Venus Riff/Johari Mayfield
January 12-13
The Venus Hottentot struts in a cage as a sideshow freak and scientific specimen in 19th century England. Fast forward to the present day where a young woman solicits men in elevators. The Venus Riff blends irony and social critique in a twisted commentary on the fall and resurrection of womankind. Dance, music, and burlesque intermingle in a theatrical exploration that shines an informed light on scientific and religious urgings to pin women down as types, as species, and as good or evil. Directed by Jose Zayas.

"...and the buttocks of the Hottentot [are] a somewhat comic sign of the primitive, grotesque nature of the black female." --Charles Darwin

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food...she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and also gave unto her husband." Genesis 3:6

What the Hell was That?
January 13-26
Talkbacks on three different topics will take place following the 8:30pm shows on January 13th, 23rd, and 26th. Tickets to the talks are free and will include:
01/13 : Choreography
01/23 : Musical composition
01/26 : Puppetry

Floating Point Waves/Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya
January 15-17
An installation of strings and water, real-time video projection, and live electronic music converge to create a stunning, seamless landscape in which a single Butoh artist moves. Every motion of the dance is reflected in the surface of water, creating waves, which in turn, affect the light and projected image. Floating Point Waves explores the unstable and interconnected nature of our world. The adult human body is approximately 60 percent water. By heightening this perception and emphasizing the significance of its weight in our body, the dance emerges as an interplay between the body and gravity. Projected video functions as visual music. The world transforms until our only standing point is instability and we are but an interconnected floating point.

Lucid Possession/Toni Dove
January 19-20
Lucid Possession is a schizoid duet between a woman with a head like a radio receiver and her own avatar. The uncanny manifestation of a virtual multiple personality plagued by ghosts from the past, this automated video pop-up book forges an entirely new form: let's call it cinematic bunraku. Live performers animate video bringing characters to life through motion, voice, and robotics. On-stage, Toni Dove and composer and violinist Mari Kimura control the physical and virtual movements of video and robotic entities. Performer, Hai-Ting Chinn sings and speaks through the Avatar, alongside songs and musical interludes by Elliott Sharp and Mari Kimura. Software designer R.Luke DuBois and roboticist Leif Krinkle control additional layers of light, sound and movement.

Miranda/Kamala Sankaram
January 22-24
Pop-opera meets Reality TV. Miranda is a multi-media chamber opera where the audience becomes detective, judge, and jury for an unsolved murder. An innovative mix of original music inspired by hip-hop, tango, Baroque counterpoint, and Hindustani classical ragas, Miranda is set during the live taping of a hit Court TV show. Miranda explores the way that we spin our own stories about ourselves and others, and the devastation that can result when we discover those stories aren't true.

Mosheh/Yoav Gal
January 23-24
"And that you may tell in the ears of thy son, and of your son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that you may know that I am the LORD."

Mosheh is a videOpera re-enacting the seminal Biblical saga of Moses through highly stylized, original music, movement, and video projections. A choir of four 'mother figures' who nurtured and protected Moses in his evolution recounts the text of the ten plagues that God had wrought upon Egypt. "The Plagues" are the concluding episode of Mosheh and will be presented in concert form.

Epyllion/Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith & Emma Jaster, Aeolian Theater
January 26-27
Carnal and spiritual collide and entwine through the dawning of the first day and the moonshine of the first night. Inspired by the fantastical imagery of Magical Realist painter Remedios Varo and the poetry of Rumi, Aeolian Theatre presents a new creation myth told through puppetry, dance, ritual and song. Born of a collective wrestling to find the story that belongs to all of us, we offer a world that seeps in through the senses, flooding our hearts, inviting performers and audience alike to peel back some of the many layers around our hopes, sorrows, fears, and secret delights to reawaken the purity of our primitive selves.

Don Cristobal, Billy-Club Man/Erin Orr & Rima Fand
January 26-27
For centuries, the puppet Don Cristóbal has charmed audiences with his drunken, lusty, billy-club wielding antics. But does he secretly struggle with his role as the Billy-Club Man and long for love and escape? Through experimental puppetry, clowning and live music, Don Cristóbal, Billy-Club Man explores the violent appetites of Cristóbal's on-stage persona and follows him off-stage to reveal his poetic possibilities. Inspired by the puppet plays of Federico Garcia Lorca, the piece features shadow, hand and large figurative puppetry by Erin Orr and evocative original music by Rima Fand.

At Long Last: Phase 1/Lake Simons & Chad Lynch
January 28-30
A new solo performance piece by Lake Simons and Chad Lynch that combines clown, puppetry, and dance. Simons unravels this silent tale by communing with the inanimate objects that surround her on stage. With imaginative child-like perception and innocence Simons brings these objects and puppets to life. Simons and Lynch channel the stylistic qualities of silent film stars and pantomimic gestures of the prima ballerina from days of yore. Both ridiculous and poetic. At Long Last: Phrase one, is part of a larger piece being developed by the duo and will include a Phrase 2 and Phrase 3.

Small Leashed Monkey/Deke Weaver
January 28-30
A Peace-Corps-volunteer-turned-office-worker-drone transforms into a social superhero: a brilliant conversationalist, an exquisite chef, a passionate lover, a shrewd and compassionate corporate titan. He is unstoppable. And then, one night, during a spectacular dinner party filled with heartfelt tributes, deeply moving songs and transcendent dancing, the worm begins to turn. With a hint of Spalding Gray and a dash of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Weaver's grapplings with shadow and light are simultaneously disturbing and hilarious.

Border Towns/Nick Brooke & Jen Rohn
January 29-30
Border Towns explores how recordings have reenineered the psychological landscape of the US, stitching together hundreds of recordings collected along the borders. Seven performers lipsync, sing, and move precisely with a dense map of strong fragments, ambient sounds, and border broadcasts. Along the way, musical Americana gets reconstructed into a surreal theatrical collage reflecting on recording, location, and culture.

Tickets for the performances are $15 and may be purchsed through the HERE website at www.HERE.org. With a limited number of performances, festival tickets sell fast.

Since 1993, HERE has been one of New York's most prolific producing organizations, and today, it stands at the forefront of the city's presenters of daring new hybrid art. HERE supports multidisciplinary work that does not fit into a conventional programming agenda. Our aesthetic represents the independent, the innovative, and the experimental: HERE has developed such acclaimed works as Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues; Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique; Hazelle Goodman's On Edge; Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers; and original musical and dance works created and directed by HERE Co-Founder and Artistic Director Kristin Marting.

The New York Times has called HERE "one of the most unusual arts spaces in New York and possibly the model for the cutting-edge arts spaces of tomorrow." Indeed, HERE has become successful at creating a new kind of arts enterprise-the collaborative multiarts center. In 13 years, they've supported over 11,100 artists and attracted over 850,000 arts patrons. They aim to integrate art into daily life and engage their community's needs and interests on as many different levels as possible in order to ensure their regular presence in their lives.

For more information, visit www.HERE.org.

 

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