BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange Announces AIR Works in Progress Showcase

For BAX's 20th Birthday Season, alumni, faculty, current and former resident artists provide a striking curatorial dynamism. They have pulled from their experiences and interests at and beyond BAX. As a group they represent BAX's past, present and future.

Since 1991, our Artist In Residency program has served as a core for our work with artists. We believe that no single residency is the same and therefore tailor an individualized plan that incorporates each artists' experiences, goals and questions. Many AIR remain connected to the institution long after their residencies end - curating, teaching, and producing new work.

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.

See BAX's 2010-2011 Artists in Residence showcase works in progress as they prepare for the AIR FESTIVAL in April 2011. Stay after the performance for a moderated discussion.

THURSDAY - January 20 @ 8:00 PM
Dan Fishback and Mina Nishimura

FRIDAY - January 21 @ 8:00 PM
Levi Gonzalez and Catharine Dill

SATURDAY - January 22 @ 8:00 PM
Mina Nishimura and Levi Gonzalez

SUNDAY - January 23 @ 6:00 PM
Dan Fishback and Catharine Dill

Tickets
In advance (online): $12 General | $7 Low-Income
At the Door (30 minutes before showtime): $15 General | $8 Low-Income

IT'S OUR 20TH BIRTHDAY SEASON!
To celebrate we will be serving cupcakes* and champagne after the show!

* SWEET CHEECKS BROOKLYN is our 20th Brithday Season cupcake sponsor.

About the Artists:

Catharine Dill/Exploding Moment -- Catharine Dill's directing credits include: "Date: Time" (Collective: Unconscious), "What I Like About 'Breasts'" (The Williamsburg Art & Historical Center), "Can I Help You?" (The Bushwick Starr), and four performance installations with the arts ensemble Red Dive, which she co-founded. Honors include a Bessie Award, an AREA Award, grants from Art Matters, the Greenwall Foundation, the Heathcote Foundation, and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation, The Foundry Theatre Emerging Artists' Award, an Independent Artist's Challenge Program Award from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and The Field, and residencies at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Yaddo, and The MacDowell Colony.

YE'RE HERE, CUZIN! is a reverse-"Grapes of Wrath" road trip, navigating the cultural chasm between a suburban California enclave and an isolated Arkansas hill town. Narrated by a passionately accurate (or possibly delusional) Mrs. Byrd, YE'RE HERE, CUZIN! inhabits an immersive video and sound environment channeling the perceptions of two kids in the backseat as their parents embark on a deluded journey to the Ozarks in search of the simple life. Narrator and family confront each other over their shared, troubled history, revealing both the limitations of familial love and its stranglehold on perspective.

Dan Fishback -- Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. His most recent play, You Will Experience Silence (Stephen Brackett, dir.) debuted to critical acclaim in April 2009 at Dixon Place, where Fishback was an Artist-in-Residence. Fishback has performed and developed previous work at Performance Space 122, Joe's Pub, Galapagos Art Space and various of other venues in New York and abroad. He is currently developing two new theater pieces: The Material World, a pop musical about socialist Jews in the 1920s, and thirtynothing, a solo performance about growing up in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic.
Also a performing songwriter, Fishback began his music career in the East Village's anti-folk scene. As a solo artist, Fishback has released several recordings, and will drop his new full length studio album, Mammal, in 2011.
Fishback received the Franklin Furnace Fund grant for performance art in 2010 and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists in 2007. He is an Artist-in-Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and has enjoyed previous residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Fishback visits colleges all over the country to lead workshops on solo performance, and to speak on queer and Jewish issues.

In his new multi-media solo performance, thirtynothing, Dan Fishback juxtaposes tales from the early years of the AIDS epidemic with tales from his own childhood in the 1980s and early 90s. Searching for role models and father figures amongst gay artists who died in those years, Fishback interacts with images of their work, dramatizing the generation gap between older and younger gay men. Marking both the 30th anniversary of AIDS and Fishback's 30th birthday, thirtynothing memorializes the fallen while posing critical questions to all who survive.

Levi Gonzalez -- Levi Gonzalez is a choreographer and performer living in Brooklyn. His work and his collaborations with luciana achugar have been presented by various NYC venues, including Movement Research, Dixon Place, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, and Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church. He has performed extensively with Donna Uchizono Company and John Jasperse Company, as well as ChameckiLerner, Jeremy Nelson, Dennis O'Connor and Michael Laub's Remote Control Productions. He was a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence from 2003-2004 and served on their Board of Directors. He recieved a 2006 Fellowship in Choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is a co-editor of Critical Correspondence, an online publication of Movement Research. He currently serves as the artistic advisor for DTW's Fresh Tracks Residency Program. Levi has been awarded numerous residencies and space grants for the development of his work, including Springdance, BAX Artist in Residency, and a residency in Archauz, Denmark. Levi teaches technique and composition at Movement Research and with Dean Moss at various venues.

In his solo, "For You, The Audience" (Working Title) Levi Gonzalez attempts to bring the practice of making into the moment of live performance. By exploring the idiosyncracies of his own movement and physicality, he builds a structure that exposes his own interests and desires in performance. The work examines the intimacy of the relationship between performer and audience, and how we navigate this shared experience.

Mina Nishimura -- Mina Nishimura was born in Tokyo, Japan and moved to NYC where she received a certificate under scholarship at Merce Cunningham Studios in 2005. She was introduced to butoh, improcisational dance and choreography through Kota Yamazaki and has been dancing with Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug since 2002. In New York, she has performed in the works of wonderful artists such as Neil Greenberg, DD Dorllivier, David Gordon, RoseAnne Spradlin, Daria Fain/Phoneme Choir, Yoshiko Chuma/The School of Hard Knocks, Leah Morrison, and Satoshi Haga. She also played one of leading roles in Harry Partch's opera, Delusion of Fury directed by John Jesurun. In 2003-2004, she held three residencies in Senegal and assisted a creation of FAGAALA choreographed by Germaine Acogny and Kota Yamazaki, which received the Bessie Award in 2007. Her works have presented by Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen/Dance and Process, Danspace Project, Movement Research, The Harlem Stage, Joyce Soho, Cunningham Studio, LIT and Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo). She was invited to dunaPart (Budapest) for research and exchange on DTW's Suitcase Fund Program in 2008, and to danceWeb program at Impuls Tanz (Vienna) in 2009. She has been teaching at Bennington College and at Whenever Wherever Festival, Tokyo.

sk?nk examines and plays around a concept of sadness and sympathy.
Rather than exploring depressing state of being sad, this piece focuses on how sadness carries away people from their familiar space and time,
and makes us to see things differently.
Mysterious objects and suggestive symbols painted on the wall will navigate this exploration to unexpected place where a fleeting fantasy appears and disappears.
Distinctively nuanced and rhythmic movements will evoke a different sense of time and relationship, and create a serene landscape.