PS122 Adds BodyCartography Project to COIL, Jan 14-17

As part of the eighth edition of the COIL festival and the fourth edition of the American Realness, Performance Space 122 (PS122) and tbspMGMT present the New York premiere of Super Nature, from Minneapolis-based BodyCartography Project and Bessie Award–winning composer and musician Zeena Parkins. Super Nature is a radical, ecological melodrama fraught with animal appetites born from the restless imaginations of the BodyCartography Project's Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad.

Performances of Super Nature will take place January 14–17 at 8:30pm at Abrons Arts Center. The running time is 75 minutes with no intermission. Abrons is located at 466 Grand Street at Pitt Street in Manhattan. Tickets, which are $20, are available online at ps122.org/coil and via phone at 212-352-3101.

In a quest for empathy, Super Nature engages the wild and civilized aspects of human nature with idiosyncratic movements drawn from bodily impulses and social interactions. Composer Zeena Parkins performs her live score within an elaborate scenic installation by visual artist Emmett Ramstad. Joining Parkins in performance are dancers Justin Jones, Timmy Wagner, Emily Johnson, Francesca Mattavelli, Otto Ramstad, Eneka Bordato Riano and Anna Shogren.

As co-directors of the BodyCartography Project Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad investigate the physicality of space in urban, domestic, wild and social landscapes through dance, performance, video and installation work. Their works range from intimate solos for the street or stage, to large community dance works in train stations, short experimental films in national parks, to complex works for site or stage amidst installations of video and sound. They have created over 125 performance works, ten short films and five installations and have been presented across the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, Russia and South America.

As co-directors of the BodyCartography Project, Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad have created numerous performance works, short films and installations which have been presented in theaters and site specific locations across the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, Russia and South America. Presenters include Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research, Dance on Camera Festival, NYC; Philadelphia Dance Project; Anti-Festival, Finland; Stromereien Festival, Zurich; Lyon Opera Ballet, Les Subsistances, Lyon; South East Dance, Cheshire Dance, UK; NZ International Film Festival; Cinedans, Amsterdam; Polish Public Television; Bryant Lake Bowl, Walker Art Center, Southern Theater, Minneapolis International Film Festival, and Minnesota Public Television. Their work has been supported by residencies at the Walker Art Center, Bell Museum of Natural History, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Headlands Center for the Arts, K3 in Hamburg and Les Subsistances, amongst others. As dance makers and certified teachers of Body-Mind Centering® they teach internationally at festivals such as Impulstanz International Dance Festival in Vienna. They are featured artists in the first book about site dance in the USA published by University of Florida Press entitled Site Dance, the Lure of Alternative Spaces. They are recipients of Sage, New Zealand Fringe Festival, Kerry Film Festival, ADF's International Screendance Festival and the Perlorous Trust Creativity Awards for previous works.

Bieringa and Ramstad curated the Walker's Choreographers' Evening in 2009, performed in Dan Graham's Walker hosted exhibition Beyond. They were participants of National Dance Project's Minnesota Regional Dance Development Initiative, SCUBA touring roster, and Momentum. They were McKnight Fellows and Sustainable Arts Fellows for Public Art St. Paul. Ramstad was a Bush Artist Fellowship in 2006. Bieringa is currently co-curator for Public Art St Pauls' science and art initiative City Art Collaboratory.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser and sound artist Zeena Parkins is well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp and has also extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. Parkins has received commissions to provide scores for film, video, chamber orchestras, theater and dance. She has long-term creative relationships with Neil Greenberg, John Jasperse, Jennifer Monson, Jennifer Lacey, DD Dorvillier, and Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh, and has also appeared with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, who commissioned a new work for Experiments in the Studio. She has appeared in festivals worldwide and on countless recordings. Some collaborators include: Kim Gordon, John Zorn, Bjork, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, Thurston Moore and filmmakers Cynthia Madansky, Mandy McIntosh and Daria Martin. Zeena has received three Bessies for her extraordinary work in music within the dance and performance field in the United States and abroad for over two decades.

The Abrons Arts Center brings innovative artistic excellence to Manhattan's Lower East Side through diverse, cutting-edge performances; exhibitions/artist residencies; classes and workshops for all ages, including pre-professional training for youth; and arts-in-education programming at public schools.

Performance Space 122 (PS122) provides incomparable experiences for audiences by presenting and commissioning artists whose work challenges boundaries of live performance. PS122 is dedicated to supporting the creative risks taken by artists from diverse genres, cultures and perspectives. We are an innovative local, national and international leader in contemporary performance.

Beginning in 2011, PS122 embarked on one of the most unusual and potentially radical shifts in its history, including a re-structuring of artist support, a business model overhaul, and the renovation of our building. As PS122's East Village home undergoes a much-needed interior renovation supported primarily by the City of New York, DCA and DDC, PS122's core activity continues to be providing audiences with contemporary live performance.

For over 3 decades, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the cultural community. Under the curatorial vision of Vallejo Gantner (Artistic Director 2005 – present) PS122 has developed a set of programs designed to re-establish the value of live performance, provide singular experiences for audiences that inspire critical thinking, and sustain the creative process for artists throughout their career. Largely in partnership with peer organizations, PS122 currently presents artists in all disciplines in spaces all over the city during an annual fall & spring season and COIL festival in January.

In addition to the commissioning and presenting of artists from NYC across the US, and around the globe, PS122 has increased our activity off the stage to provide audiences with a variety of access points and context for the work on stage. These activities include both talkbacks with the artists as well as in depth conversations that bring together luminaries from non-arts disciplines to discuss a variety of topics including everything from religion, to migration, to queer real estate and cultural diplomacy. PS122 encourages the asking of questions and debate of contemporary society's issues in both artistic practice and audience experience.