BAX to Host 2013 Artist-In-Residence Year End Performances, April-May 2013

BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange has announced the 2013 Artist-In-Residence Year End Performances. Featuring BAX's Artists-In-Residence (AIR), these performances culminate a shared journey through the creative process. Audience members enjoy the rare opportunity to follow a work and engage its creators from the Early Stages through to full productions. This journey began with the Open Studio Series in November, continued with the Works-in Progress Series in January, and culminates in these Spring performances.

Since 1991, BAX's Artist In Residence program has served as a core for the organization's work with artists. The AIR program provides participating artists with one to two years of uninterrupted artistic, technical, and administrative support, as well as the rehearsal space and guidance necessary to take chances, refine their craft and expand their horizons.

April 12th-14th, 2013
Friday-Saturday @ 8:00pm | Sunday @ 6:00pm
Mariangela Lopez/Accidental Movement's
El regreso
Tickets: $15 General | $8 Low-Income | https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/918500

April 19th-21st, 2013
Friday-Saturday @ 8:00pm | Sunday @ 6:00pm
Jess Barbagallo and Karen Davis'
Without Me I'm Something
Tickets: $15 General | $8 Low-Income | https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/918501

April 26th-28th, 2013
Friday-Saturday @ 8:00pm | Sunday @ 6:00pm
Max Steele's
ENCOURAGER
Tickets: $15 General | $8 Low-Income | https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/918502

May 3rd-5th, 2013
Friday-Saturday @ 8:00pm | Sunday @ 6:00pm
Love | Fortè, A Collective's
Memory Withholdings
Tickets: $15 General | $8 Low-Income | https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/918503

May 10th-12th, 2013
Friday-Saturday @ 8:00pm | Sunday @ 6:00pm
Jillian Peña's
Polly Pocket
Tickets: $15 General | $8 Low-Income | https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/918504

All tickets will be available one month before each performance.

Also, BAX will welcome you to a workshop showing of RoseAnne Spradlin's studies for disappearance on Friday, April 5th, 2013 @ 8:00pm. Suggested Donation: $5 at the door.

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES

El regreso
In this piece I am reverting the relationship between the group wonderful performers I have been working with for the past years and me. They will guide me in a physical and emotional journey to find a place that otherwise I can't access; to find the beginning of all.
-Mariangela Lopez

Mariangela Lopez is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer from Caracas, Venezuela. Her pieces have been presented in Venezuela, Mexico, France, Boston, Sydney, and in multiple venues in New York City.

In 2007, Mariangela project Outmigration, a dinner-theater piece was chosen by the New York Times for the "Urban Eye, The Best of New York Today-Weekend". In 2010, Accidental #5 was invited to be part of the Danspace Project Platform Body Madness curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor. Most recently, Mariangela choreographed the "psycho-opera" Stop the Virgens by Yeah Yeah Yeahs' vocalist Karen O, presented by the Creators Project and Saint Ann's Warehouse in October 2011 and at the Vivid Festival in Australia at the Sydney Opera House in May 2012.
Mariangela was a 2009-10 Movement Research Artist in Residence and is currently a Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Artist In Residence (2011-13).

Without Me I'm Something
I will use this residency to develop a project called Without Me I'm Something, a tribute special devoted to the work of comedienne Karen Davis. Functioning as a shadow producer, I will arrange a series of events (and possibly an intervention) to look back on the last two years of Davis's career as a comic in the NYC area. The goal of this project is to reflect on a minor artist's contributions to a myriad of arts scenes and spaces while providing an entertaining evening for anyone just stopping by BAX! For those unfamiliar with Karen, she has performed at Dixon Place, Pete's Candy Store, Barbes, LaMaMa ETC, Uncanny Valley, Lolita Bar, Sugarland and the lobby of The Gershwin Hotel. Openers have included puppeteer Jenny Fresh and poets Joe Ranono and May Lion. Karen has her very own Youtube channel, was profiled in the most recent publication of Emergency Index by Ugly Duckling Presse and can be found on Facebook.
My particular investment in this project is to support overlooked comedic artists who I believe to be feminist and transgressive, if thus unidentified and unsung. I am attracted to the outsider community Karen brings with her (laypeople and inappropriately described "hobbyists") and hope this homespun sentiment can serve as a beacon for others looking to be creatively expressive in a a competitive arts economy. If Karen ever reads this, she will kill me.
-Jess Barbagallo

Jess Barbagallo works in many artistic mediums. Barbagallo has performed with and for Big Dance Theater, Builders Association, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf (and its Dyke Division), Half Straddle, Red Terror Squad, Andrea Geyer, Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan, Katy Pyle, Casey Llewellyn, Josh Conkel/The Management, Andre Callot, and Amanda Davidson. Barbagallo was a member of the 2009/10 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, a 2011/12 Queer Arts Mentorship Fellow and a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow. Their work has appeared at LaMama ETC, The Poetry Project, The Invisible Dog Art Center, The New Ohio Theatre, and Dixon Place. Barbagallo has championed the work of erotic poet Joe Ranono, the musings of a number of young artists in an organized evening entitled WHY I MAKE LIVE ART and most currently, the comedy of Karen Davis. BFA: New York University. MFA: Brooklyn College.

According to the Interweb, Karen Davis is an American animal rights advocate, and president of United Poultry Concerns, a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to address the treatment of domestic fowl - including chickens, turkeys and ducks - in factory farming. She also maintains a sanctuary. But when Karen's not fighting for foul, she's making folks laugh all along a limited survey of the east coast. Contact her at karendavislaughs@gmail.com for future bookings. She's available for private and public functions, reasonable rate

ENCOURAGER
ENCOURAGER is a new solo performance by Max Steele. Fictive secular spiritual guru Billy Cheer leads a Courage Workshop, leading the audience through new emotional strategies, drawing from the vernaculars of self-help books, queer and punk subcultures and radical politics, working towards personal liberation through self-destruction.

Max Steele is a performer and writer living in Brooklyn. He has presented work at the New Museum, Rapture Cafe, Deitch Projects, PPOW Gallery, Envoy Enterprises, Dixon Place, and the Queens Museum of Art. He writes the psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher, and his writing has been featured in Dossier Journal, Spank, Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art, East Village Boys, Birdsong, and Noisey. As an actor, Steele has performed in the NYC debut of Tennessee Williams' Now the Cats with the Jeweled Claws (at La MAMA), Dan Fishback's You Will Experience Silence, the LOGO TV sitcom Jeffery and Cole Casserole, and his stint as a go-go dancer for New York's only queer punk party QxBxRx earned him the moniker "go-go boy of the damned".

Memory Withholdings
Our project, to be developed in our residency with BAX, is Memory Withholdings. We're working to develop a performance project that identifies hidden traces of accumulated memories, residing in the bones and muscle tissues of African and African descendant communities, who have undergone generations of suppression. The affected migration of these communities across the North American continent has left a trail. There are places where we, as African descendants, have become rooted through culture: cities and towns that hold our collective past, provide living histories and offer birthing grounds for the future. Through movement LOVE|FORTÈ will explore the residue of oppression, mechanics of survival, and the weight of memory held and emanated in the body. The study will eventually take us across the United States and beyond. Working in rural and urban communities, like Brooklyn, NY, we will spend time engulfed in the study of African cultural retentions and inheritances, specific to the residents of Brooklyn. We'll work in partnership with local community organizations, also working in African Cultural Retentions, such as Cumbé Dance| Center for African and Diaspora Dance in Downtown Brooklyn, NY . We will create and share the movement works as they evolve. We will hold open conversations with our audiences, via Critical Response and Kitchen [K]onversation methods, with the hopes of gaining a deeper, honest sense of what we're reflecting and unearthing. We will facilitate a process to activate memory, while unpacking layers of connection and identity through tailored classes and workshops, such as First Fruits Modern Experience (exploring the tensions and connections between West African dance forms and Modern Contemporary Dance) and The Cypher (a task centered Improv Jam using the profound Africanist properties of the Circle to unveil the artists voice).

The work, similar to traditional dance forms, will be constantly evolving, affected by the cultural life of the community. Transforming itself to remain relevant in time, space, and socio-political structures. Memory Withholdings, will function like a quilt designed by the patches of our experiences and research. This project is unlike any work we've created, both as a unit, and individually. It's a fledgling project, that's developed with a multiplicity of voices, centered in socio-political inquiry that challenges inequity and affirms culture as a humanizing principle. By aligning ourselves and working with local community (organizers, artists, cultural ambassadors) we hope to create a space for conversation, awareness, and understanding through an evolving performance work. We also intend to directly contribute to community organizing efforts seeking to harness and affirm the power and value of cultural sustainability.

- LOVE|FORTÈ A COLLECTIVE

Nia Love is an established choreographer who has created over 20 works of which have been performed and produced nationally and internationally. Ms. Love is the winner of (2001-2003) United States Fulbright Fellowship for lecturer and researcher in Dance Ethnology and lived in Ghana for several years. She trained and performed in Cuba with Alicia Alonzo's Ballet Nacional De Cuba, Japan with Min Tanaka in butoh, and with King Osei Tutu of Ghana, Kumase in traditional Court Dances. Ms. Love has served as Associate Director of Bringing in Da Spirit , a seven time award winning Documentary film from Wales to Burkina Faso. She has also served as Artist consultant to Dancing Like Home, a documentary on dance and culture from Casamance, Senegal, West Africa. Ms. Love has served as an Artist-in-Residence at Dance Theater Works (DTW), teaching artist at Dance New Amsterdam (DNA) and completed her third term as Director of the dance program at PS/MS 95 in the Bronx.

Marjani Fortè was a touring and teaching member of Urban Bush Women Dance Compant of 5 years, and is now an independent choreographer and co-founder of LOVE|FORTÈ A COLLECTIVE. Fortè has taught master classes and workshops across the U.S. and beyond- including Germany, England, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela. She has presented choreographic works for Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, New Orleans McKenna Museum, DNA Raw Material, and DanceNOW at Joe's Pub. Fortè premiered EGO at Dance Theatre Workshop as a 2010 Fresh Tracks Resident Artist while concluding a choreographic residency and lecture series at Loyola Marymount University. Fortè was recently named a Movement Research Artist-In-Residence 2011/13, premiered Here... for Danspace PLATFORMS: Parallels in March 2012, and EGO for HarlemStage's E-Moves in April 2012. She is currently faculty at Dance New Amsterdam (DNA) 2012. Her work stems from being born in and having engaged with culturally rich, vibrant, historic, and politically charged communities.

The creative marriage of Nia Love and Marjani Fortè, LOVE|FORTÈ A COLLECTIVE is a research/process, performance, and teaching geared collective, with a commitment to social and politically conscious art making that connects the human experience through generations. We have developed work and a teaching methodology that reflects our identity as artists of successive generations, reflecting an Africanist approach to learning and evolution. We're interested in re-defining the Performance Experience, through a commitment to the PROCESS of art making via choreographic and Improvisational-based Performance, and an equal valuing of Research and Embodied Memory as profound sources in the creative process. LOVE|FORTÈ embraces a spectrum of performance venues and spaces i.e. theatre, installation/gallery, and site-specific spaces. Current and recent activities include site-specific investigation as a part of our pluralistic training for young artists in dance (Dance Without Walls), WOW Café, DanceNOW at Joe's Pub performance, Judson Church, and No Longer Empty Exhibit/Site-Specific.

Polly Pocket
Jillian Peña is a dance and video artist primarily concerned with confusion and desire between self and other. Her work is in dialogue with psychoanalysis, queer theory, pop media, and spirituality. She has been presented internationally, including at The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, Akademie der Kunste Berlin, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and the International Festival of Contemporary Art Slovenia. Jillian was a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar during which she was awarded an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a fellowship recipient, and a Practice-based MPhil in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She was a 2009 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2009 DanceWeb Fellow at Impulstanz in Vienna, a 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Archauz in Århus, Denmark, and a 2011 Artist-in-Residence at the National Dance Center of Bucharest, Romania.

studies for disappearance, a workshop showing
For her BAX showing in April '13, choreographer RoseAnne Spradlin will ask audiences to track transmuting patterns of information as they gather and disperse like a threatening storm. Perceptual and proprioceptive impressions are taken from various sources: motifs from George Balanchine's first American ballet, Serenade, from Chinese silent film, from the experience of being in water, from numerology, feng shui, and initiations of movement from ligaments of the ankles and wrists. Seven women will work with Spradlin to create these new studies; performers include: Evvie Allison, Asli Bulbul, Siobhan Burke, Lily Gold, Juri Onuki, Rebecca Warner and Rebecca Wender.

RoseAnne Spradlin has been making dance works in New York City for more than twenty-five years. Her work probes a new philosophy of the body and promotes immediacy and emotional resonance in the performers who work with her. An interest in raw materials, functionality and repetition informs Spradlin's visual constructions and movement vocabularies. She has been influenced by a minimalist esthetic, yet marries her minimalist tendencies to an extravagant view of the body and the body's image. Spradlin's work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a Bessie Award for Choreography in 2003, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography in 2007, the three-year Lambent Fellowship in Performing Arts in 2006-08, the Artist Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and an Artist Grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Exploration Fund in 2009.

Founded in 1991, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange is a is a multi-faceted community performing arts center located in Park Slope, Brooklyn offering an annual presenting season, artist services, and educational programs for youth and adults. BAX receives support from city, state and national public and private foundations. Our programs have been featured in several Brooklyn, NYC, and national publications, celebrating our continued support of artists of all ages.

For more information about BAX and its programs, call 718-832-0018, email press@bax.org or visit www.bax.org.