Russian Artists Create Site-Specific Performance for Joyce SoHo 6/29

Russian Artists Create Site-Specific Performance for Joyce SoHo on Wednesday, June 29th, 2010 at 7:30pm

For The Time Being: An Interdisciplinary Performance
Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (bet. Houston and Prince), NYC
Free. Seating is limited.
RSVP online at http://www.cecartslink.org

Three Russian dance and theater artists will come to New York in June to stage a brand-new interdisciplinary performance at Joyce SoHo. Kseniya Petrenko, Kirill Vytoptov and Aleksei Zherebtsov are creating For The Time Being specifically for the occasion, and performing the work on one night only-June 29th-before returning to Russia. Their visit and performance are organized by CEC ArtsLink, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support international exchange in the arts and introduce American audiences to works by innovative artists from abroad.

For The Time Being will incorporate a variety of media in a performance that invites the audience to explore and experience the concept of time. "How do you capture time?" Petrenko, the show's artistic director, writes. "It runs through our fingers, leaving behind memories, photographs, home videos... Combining music, dance, poetry and film, we are composing a message to ourselves in the future, knowing that it will become past, but that it is present for the time being." The artists have also extended an open invitation to Russian and US photographers and videographers to collaborate by submitting their own artistic interpretations of the theme, some of which will be included in the show.

Such unconventional interdisciplinary work isn't novel to the Russian trio. Petrenko, Vytoptov and Zherebtsov all work with LIQUID Theatre, an experimental site-specific theater collective with branches in Moscow and Chelyabinsk. The artists will arrive in New York on June 26th, having never set foot in Joyce SoHo before, with just three days to rehearse together on-site. However, all three are seasoned in pulling off such feats and can draw on the experience of their previous New York performances, which successfully took place under similar conditions.

Petrenko and Zherebtsov first came to the US on a residency through CEC ArtsLink in 2009. They took part in the Choreographers Lab at Jacob's Pillow and created a site-specific performance at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. They later received an ArtsLink grant as members of LIQUID Theatre to return to Storefront in 2010 with a new performance, Instead of a Letter. Vytoptov was on residency at Jacob's Pillow in 2010, and together with three other Russian collaborators created and performed HEAT at Dance New Amsterdam. "Heat looked fresh, and one knew why its programme note finally proclaimed that heat can "melt the coldness in our hearts," - wrote critic Jack Anderson of the performance in the London Dancing Times.

The artists' US visit and performance are made possible through partnership and funding from the Renova Group of Companies.

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