Sitelines 09
LMCC's annual site-specific performance series
Celebrating its 6th anniversary, Sitelines 2009, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's annual site-specific dance performance series, brings to life a highly energized program of provocative dance, set to inspiring imagery and exquisite surroundings.
Sitelines is presented as part of the River To River® Festival.
MAY - JUNE 2009
ZviDance: White
May 31, June 6-7, 13: Performances at 3:30 & 4:30PM
Fort Jay, Governors Island
FREE
Premiere
Check out a slideshow from White.
LMCC’s Sitelines dance and performance series launches the summer and the annual opening weekend of Governors Island with ZviDance’s White. Zvi Gotheiner collaborates with six dancers and the renowned composer Scott Killian, using Fort Jay’s historical significance and eerie sense of abandonment to reflect on our attempts to feel secure by arming our borders. The dancers wrap areas of the site with long white gauze strips reminiscent of bandages, slowly creating a web-like sculpture intertwining throughout the space.
ZviDance, a company of six athletic and lyrical dancers, blends contemporary and traditional aesthetics with lush, full-bodied movement. Artistic Director Zvi Gotheiner builds upon his restless mission to communicate a vision of human experience that explores that relationship of individuals to each other and their environments.
About Zvi Gotheiner:
Born and raised in Israel, Zvi Gotheiner began his artistic career as a gifted violinist He began dancing at 17, and soon after formed his first performance group. He first came to New York in 1978 and went on to dance with the Joyce Trisler Dance Company, Feld Ballets/NY, and the Bat-Sheva Dance Company. He founded ZviDance in 1989.
photo: Julie Lemberger
Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances for a Variable Population: Fanfare
June 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26, 27: Performances at 12:30PM & 1:30PM
Whitehall Terminal for the Staten Island Ferry
FREE
Premiere
Check out a slideshow from Fanfare.
Naomi Goldberg Haas/Dances For A Variable Population presents Fanfare, a suite of dances performed by twelve dancers to acclaimed Minimalist composer Michael Nyman’s brass compositions. In the spirit of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” these pieces will be performed in the newly redesigned Whitehall Ferry Terminal which in the tradition of New York public spaces, captures the diversity and energy that are hallmarks of the company, composed of adults all ages, backgrounds, and body types.
About Naomi Goldberg Haas:
Naomi Goldberg Haas is the director/choreographer of Dances For A Variable Population based in lower Manhattan since 2005. Making concert dances with diverse communities and professional dancers, the company has been critically and popularly received at venues in New York City including The Public, Dance Theater Workshop, The Joyce Soho, the 92nd Street Y, the Gatehouse at Harlem Stage, Dance New Amsterdam and at outdoor festivals at Chase Plaza, Governors Island, Educational Arts Center in New Haven, and the Kennedy Arts Center in Washington, DC. She has choreographed for the NYSF/The Public, MTC and for Disney Animation. She teaches throughout Manhattan.
JULY 2009
photo: Michael Hart
Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sanchez Ruiz with Daniel Arsham: Untitled Corner
July 6, 10, 13,17: Performance at 12:30PM
July 8, 15: Performance at 7:00PM
One Chase Manhattan Plaza
FREE
Check out a slideshow from Untitled Corner.
Untitled Corner is a site-specific collaboration examining memory loss, pattern recognition, and perceptual faculties as they apply to the human body in public space. In collaboration with visual artist Daniel Arsham, Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sanchez Ruiz’s piece employs site-responsive architecture, objects, lighting, and other media to create the illusion of an expanded space. Original sound score by Alexis Georgopoulos/ARP.
Jonah Bokaer and Judith Sanchez Ruiz create performance situations that could not veritably exist in physical space: this will happen through the use of built spaces by Daniel Arsham, including a 3-dimensional cube, offering the ability to transport movement to different locations that appear to be just outside of the audience.
About Jonah Bokaer:
Jonah Bokaer is an award-winning choreographer and media artist. He has dedicated a short lifetime to expanding possibilities for live performance through choreography, digital media, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and social enterprise, in the United States and internationally. Past collaborators include Merce Cunningham, Robert Wilson, Anne Carson, Charles Atlas and Aaron Copp.
About Judith Sanchez Ruiz:
Born in Havana, Cuba, Judith Sanchez Ruiz began her dance studies at the age of 11 at the National School of Arts (ENA) 1983-1990. She has since danced for Danza Abierta Company in Cuba (1991-1996), the Mal Pelo Dance Company, Spain (1997-1999), and the Tricia Brown Dance Company (2006-present).
About Daniel Arsham:
Daniel Arsham is an internationally acclaimed artist/set designer/architect, represented in Paris and Miami by Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin and in Amsterdam by Ron Mandos Gallery. He has collaborated with Choreographer Merce Cunningham, Designer Hedi Slimane, and Architect Wonderwall. He currently lives in Miami and New York.
photo: bmacmedia
Nicholas Leichter Dance: A Space Funk Invasion
July 20-22, 27-29: Performance at 6:00PM
July 23, 30: Performance at 1:00PM
The Seaport, Historic Cobblestone District at Fulton and Front Streets
FREE
Premiere
Check out a slideshow from A Space Funk Invasion.
Nicholas Leichter Dance and Monstah Black bring the energy, sweat, swagger, history and future of funk music, culture, fashion, and dance to The Seaport’s historic cobblestone district. A Space Funk Invasion will be performed for bystanders and patrons of four outdoor bars that form the perimeter of the area, promising a free side of funk for the burgers and beer. Performed to music by Daft Punk, The Time, and Monstah Black.
Artistic Director Nicholas Leichter choreographs cultural narratives in which movement tells a story. Leichter’s approach draws from many sources, including traditional, contemporary, folk, and popular dance music forms, which he and his diverse company members fuse with style and substance into a dialogue across cultures.
About Nicholas Leichter:
Nicholas Leichter, choreographer, dancer, received a BA in dance from Connecticut College. Leichter’s work and company have received support and awards from TIAA-CREF, The Harkness, NYFA, Jerome, Greenwall, and Joyce Theater Foundations, Pentacle’s HelpDesk, Dance/USA, The NEA The 92nd Street Y New Works in Dance Fund, and Wesleyan University’s Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreograher Award.
AUGUST 2009
photo: Erica Lansner
gabrielle lansner & company: Turning Heads, Frocks in Flight
August 3-4, 6, 10-11,13: Performance at 12:30PM
August 5, 12: Performance at 6:30PM
South Cove in Battery Park City at the wooden jetty
FREE
Premiere
Check out a slideshow from Turning Heads, Frocks in Flight.
gabrielle lansner & company’s Turning Heads, Frocks in Flight is an exuberant dance inspired by “Dresses of Transformation,” a series of colorful and fanciful dresses by artist Caterina Bertolotto. Part dance and part dancing parade, Turning Heads will be a celebration of freedom and personal transformation performed by women of many cultural backgrounds to reflect the diversity of New York City. Created in collaboration with the company, the dance will reflect elements of each woman’s personal experience and will feature new music by composer Nancy Magarill. South Cove is an environmental landscape recess along the Hudson River waterfront.
gabrielle lansner & company create visceral and intellectually stirring works that invite diverse cultural audiences to deepen their own emotional life, using elements of dance, gesture, text, and music to turn fiction into vivid, psychologically charged pieces of movement theater.
About Gabrielle Lansner:
For over 25 years Gabrielle Lansner has had a successful career as a choreographer, dancer, and director. She is the artistic director of gabrielle lansner & company, a critically acclaimed dance/theater group that creates visceral and intellectually stirring works that invite diverse cultural audiences to deepen their emotional life.
Sitelines is generously supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is a leading voice for arts and culture downtown and throughout Manhattan, producing cultural events and promoting the arts through grants, services, advocacy, and cultural development programs. For more information, visit http://www.lmcc.net.
Produced in association with the River To River® Festival.
The River To River Festival, presented by American Express, is a collaboration of Lower Manhattan's major cultural event producers including the Alliance for Downtown New York, arts>World Financial Center, Battery Park City Authority, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Port Authority of NY & NJ, and The Seaport. These partners are firmly committed to using the arts as a tool for revitalization and to the development of new audiences for the arts.
