LABAlive Presents OTHER: ONE An Investigation of Other at the Theater

Part of LABA is the House of Study, an artist fellowship program for which around 10 culture-makers, a mix of visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians, actors and others, are brought together to study classic Jewish texts in a non-religious, open-minded setting. The fellows use the study to inspire work which is then featured in our LABAlive series, to provide a platform to share the work, expose the process and teach the text they were inspired by.

LABAlive presents OTHER: ONE, an evening of film, visual art, multi-media, theater and opera exploring the theme of OTHER on February 9, 2017 at 7:30pm at the 14th Street Y. This is the first of three LABAlive showcases in the 2017 series. The evening will feature three works in progress: A Yiddishe Wagner by Gil Sperling - Multi Media Opera, One More Way Files by Keren Moscovitch - Theatrical Adaptation, Law and Order Express by Michael Gac Levin - Visual Art, along with teachings by Ruby Namdar, Classical Jewish Text Scholar.

Through the LABAlive series, our LABA Fellows present excerpts of new works in progress centered on this year's theme, Other. Each year, we have an average of 250 people apply for the LABA Fellowship. We then choose 10 Fellows for the year long Fellowship, which includes study sessions, opportunities for presentation and space for experimentation.

LABA works have gone from LABAlives to BA's Next Wave Festival (Salt of the Earth by Zvi Sahar), The New Museum, Tate Modern and Ellis Island ("Watershed" by Anita Glesta), and NYLive Arts and Private collections - Ghiora Aharoni "Divine Domesticated." Ranging in artistic disciplines, the evening acts as a springboard for discovery, growth, and experimentation for our Fellows as they test the waters of creation.
A conversation with the artists will illuminate their creative processes behind the creation of the new works, and how the pieces developed through study sessions at LABA.

The event will begin at 7:30pm at The 14th Street Y at 344 E 14th Street, New York, NY, 10024. Tickets are $20. To purchase tickets go to www.14streety.org/labalive
About the LABA Fellows (these are the short bios- do we want the full ones here?)
Gil Sperling is a multimedia artist. He has created multimedia performances for the Target Margin Yiddish Lab and the Berlin new music festival, Video Design for shows at HERE Arts, The Chocolate Factory and the Cologne Opera, and video installations in New York, Dresden, Kyoto and Ein-Harod.

A Yiddishe Wagner is a music-theater project that offers a reimagining of classical music history in which Wagnerian or Wagner-like works were written in Yiddish, not in German. The idea for this work originated in my work on the operetta Shulamis by Abraham Goldfaden. In his writing, Goldfaden admitted "borrowing" from classical composers, including Wagner, in order to artistically elevate Yiddish music-theater. In my adaptation of the operetta, I incorporated recorded music from Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). The idea of fusing Wagner and Yiddish together began to excite me - two cultural elements that seem to repel each other like equal magnetic poles; or perhaps like matter and anti-matter, the reaction between them could unleash a burst of pure energy.

The outline of the project is the creation of a musical piece, sung in Yiddish, borrowing elements from Wagner's music while "Yiddishizing" the text, within the context of an alternative music-historical narrative (along the lines of "Did Wagner steal his music from an obscure Jewish composer?").Wagner strove to create a new German mythology, with Norse sagas and medieval Christian legends among his sources. In the process of creating my Yiddish-Wagnerian hybrid, I would like to examine Jewish texts, from the Bible to Hazal, as parallel mythological sources.
http://www.gilsperling.com/

Keren Moscovitch is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar exploring intimacy, sexuality and collaborative practices. Keren holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, where she serves on the faculty. Investigating the intersection of practice and theory, she is developing her PhD dissertation on radical intimacy and the poetics of abjection.
One More Way Files began as a documentary film traversing the intimate life of a retired couple living and working in a rural American suburb. The film explores my relationship to this couple and the subliminal spaces that encase our collaborative exchange. The work interrogates gender, traditional relationship structure, sexuality as performance and the ways that private somatic rituals facilitate the formation of pathways to the unconscious. During my time as a LABA fellow, I will expand the film to a full-scale theatrical production which will seek to make connections between ancient and contemporary narratives, and experiment with the hermeneutics of domestic speech.
http://kerenmoscovitch.com/

Michael Gac Levin is a Brooklyn-based artist working primarily in drawing and painting. In his work, he explores the way drawing filters experience and contributes to identity-formation. Originally from Los Angeles, he holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from Pratt Institute. http://www.mikelev.com/

My LABA project is a multi-part drawing and video installation entitled Law & Order: Express. This project looks at the relationship between drawing and control, both as an external force that the artist has to deal with, and as a force that the artist brings to bear on his/her own expression. Under the auspices of LABA, I will bring those questions before the community of the 14th Street Y, to take what has been a more personal process of self-exploration into social space.

More details about the Fellows, Projects and interviews can be found atwww.labajournal.com

About LABALABA is a laboratory for Jewish culture in which we use classic Jewish texts to inspire the creation of new art. Developed by the 14th Street Y in 2007, LABA programming includes a house of study, artist fellowship program and LABAlive, a series of performances, public events, and gallery shows for children and adults.
This year LABA's theme is BEAUTY. Through the study of the ancient Jewish canon, we explore the intersection of beauty and equality. Each artist will have an individual response to beauty, which is expressed through their artistic process and unique aesthetic.

About The 14th Street YThe 14th Street Y is a thriving and dynamic community center located in the heart of the East Village. Our members have access to over 50 fitness classes per week, lap and family swim times, childcare, pick-up games in our basketball gymnasium and a fitness center filled with a full range of cardio and weight equipment. Membership at the Y also gives you access to arts and culture programming,https://14streety.secure.force.com/ticket as well as early registration and discounts on all Y classes and programs like camps, preschool, and Two by Two.www.14streety.org.

Full Season Tickets and detailed information on shows available at:www.14streety.org/tickets.