New York Live Arts Presents 2015-16 'Fresh Tracks' Performance Showcase This Weekend

New York Live Arts recently announced the artists selected for the 2015-2016 Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program. The 2015-2016 Fresh Tracks artists are Melanie Greene, Sarah Lifson, Eli Tamondong, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes and Jonathan Gonzalez, and Georgia Wall and Itamar Segev. These artists will present their works in the Fresh Tracks performance showcase, this weekend, February 5 - 6, 2016, at 7:30pm.

This year's performance showcase will feature the following works: Melanie Greene's Performing Okay conjures a curious contradiction of meaning, quality, and intention as one word sits simultaneously within competing body and language narratives. It sparks questions surrounding repetition, physicality, and language.

Sarah Lifson's i eat pancakes for dinner is freedom, free will, and free verse. It concerns itself with consumption, and the active vs. passive infiltration of information into our cells.

Melding dance and spoken word, Eli Tamondong's Feast or Famine struggles with American masculinity and love through a queer Filipino boy's eyes. Tinikling, a traditional Philippine dance, and ballet collide over golf commentary and gay sex, coming-of-age in a world of fetishization and colonized bodies. Entangled by white love, how does this boy find value in all colors?

Mining collaborative as well as personal movement histories, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes and Jonathan Gonzalez's yet-to-be-titled work investigates the disparities and similarities that lie between our bodies culturally, socially, and artistically. Harmony and dissonance continually emerge in their identity markers as a queer identified white woman and a queer identified brown man. While experimenting with the physical aspects of disorientation, duration, momentum, and intimacy, the manifold aspects of their identities, creative visions, and creative histories also become physical realities at play.

In Pose for Prom Prayer, Georgia Wall and Itamar Segev are topless, wearing only baggy white cotton briefs which resemble diapers or modern day loincloths. They merge and disperse, searching and subverting trying, to burst open lust and prayer. Georgia loves to alter her body. Itamar can make her cry when he sings.

Each year, early career artists are selected for the Program by a panel of distinguished practitioners to receive comprehensive performance and residency support, including a commission fee. The program begins with a showcase performance in New York Live Arts' Theater followed by a 59-hour creative residency in the New York Live Arts studios for research and development of new work. Additionally, artists receive introductory level professional development workshops in marketing, fundraising and career development under the guidance of Artistic Advisor Ursula Eagly.

Performances take place at New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011, February 5-6, 2016 at 7:30PM.

New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry offering audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation and active engagement with the social, political and cultural currents of our times. At the center of this identity is Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director, a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer. We commission, produce and present performances in our 20,000 square foot home, which includes a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square foot studios that can be combined into one large studio. New York Live Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, provides an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development of artists. For more information, visit www.newyorklivearts.org.

New York Live Arts' Fresh Tracks Program is a season-long residency opportunity for artists exploring hybrid and movement-based art at the beginning stages of their careers in New York City. Created in 1965 by Dance Theater Workshop, Fresh Tracks continues as a signature program of New York Live Arts.

Designed as a springboard for intensive choreographic, administrative, and creative development, Fresh Tracks is a pioneer opportunity in the field, positioning early career artists within Live Arts' annual programming. Unfolding over the course of Live Arts' regular theater season, the Fresh Tracks Program provides five artists with a 59-hour studio residency, a professionally-produced shared evening bill in the New York Live Arts theater, an artist fee, one-on-one dialogue sessions with the program's Artistic Adviser, professional development workshops led by renowned professionals from the field, and exclusive access to Live Arts Marketing, Production and Programming staff support.

BIOGRAPHIES

Melanie Greene is a dance artist taking on the world through a curious lens. She is no stranger to swirling along the edges of the impossible and swimming among the sea of the minority. Her work weaves a tapestry of seduction, reflection, and obsession. She has presented work at Dixon Place, Movement Research's Open Performance, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Upstart Festival, and Gibney's Show Down. She has performed for sheros Sydnie L. Mosley and Paloma McGregor, participated in the 2014 EmergeNYC cohort at the Hemispheric Institute for art and activism at NYU, and danced with Arthur Aviles' Typical Theater. Greene is a 2015 recipient of the Gibney boo-koo Space Grant and is a contributing writer for The Dance Enthusiast.

Sarah Lifson is a Brooklyn based artist who maintains her own creative practice alongside life as a performer, educator, and totally amateur chef. Sarah has completed residencies through Chez Bushwick and COLAB Arts, and has shared her work at the Brooklyn Studios for Dance, CPR, the 92nd st Y, and Dixon Place. She has also had the earnest pleasure of working with Netta Yerushalmy, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey, Will Rawls, and Mina Nishimura.

Eli Tamondong is a Brooklyn-based artist creating through dance and/or poetry under the moniker Projectile Imagery. His dance work has been curated by Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Chez Bushwick, and Gibney Dance. Independently curated appearances include Muchmore's, Hylo Labs, Brooklyn Fireproof, and Cloud City. He has been a 2014 Chez Bushwick Artist-in-Residence, combining dance and spoken word in his latest work, Feast or Famine. Eli freelances administratively for the A.O. Movement Collective and anonymous bodies, and has also been a member of the Dance/NYC Junior Committee since 2014. Find more at projectileimagery.org

Georgia Wall (b. 1986, New York, NY) is a Brooklyn based artist making time based work. Wall's process of making is usually born from a question that causes her to feel an unsettling concern or desire. It is after probing at this concern that medium for investigation is decided. Wall's videos and performances have been shown in galleries, theaters and performance venues nationally in major cities including New York, Chicago and San Francisco. In New York, Wall has recently shown video and film work at Anthology Film Archives, Spectacle Theater and Flux Factory. In 2015 she completed her first experimental narrative movie How Blue The Sky Was, based on a Chantal Akerman film and the work of Roland Barthes. She has recently presented live work at US Blues, Dixon Place and Glasshouse. Wall has held solo exhibitions at Skylight Project, Document Space and ACRE. Wall has participated in a number of residencies both nationally and abroad and has been invited to be a resident artist in Summer of 2016 at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011.

Itamar Segev is a Brooklyn based actor, dancer and performance maker. Born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine and coming from a multi cultural background, Itamar studied Meisner Based acting at the William Esper studio in NY as well as different types of physical acting, improvisation and movement based somatic practices- all influencing his work. Segev has collaborated with such artists as - 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Lee Sunday Evens, Georgia Wall and Brandon Wolcott and has made solo work, acted on film and performed in such venues as The Park Avenue armory, The Public Theater, Glasshouse, the Bowery Poetry Club, JACK, and The Marcy Hotel.

EmmaGrace Skove-Epes and Jonathan Gonzalez are two dance artists whose collaborative work over the past two years has taken on many forms. As fellow MFA students at Sarah Lawrence College (2013-2015), they began and have since maintained a consistent practice of improvising together, generating set material that incorporates movement, text, and song, as well as co-facilitating workshops on varied entryways into the generative process and modes of watching performance and giving feedback. Their work has been shown at venues including AUNTS/Arts@Renaissance, the Bessie Schonberg Theater for Dance at Sarah Lawrence College, BAAD, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Center for Performance Research, Gowanus Arts Exchange, HERE Arts Center, Judson Memorial Church, Nothing Space, The Paradise Theater, The Performing Arts Conservatory of New Canaan, Theaterlab, Triskelion Arts, Uncanney Valley, Westbeth, and the 92nd street Y. Together, they have performed in the work of Dianne McIntyre, Jodi Melnick, and Mor Mendel. Individually, they have performed in the work of Patricia Hoffbauer, Martha Bowers, Peniel Guerrier, Noemie LaFrance, Jodi Melnick, Sondra Loring, Meredith Monk, Jessie Philips-Fein, Gwen Welliver, Maciej Kuzminski, Deborah Goffe, and Nadia Tykulsker, and have upcoming shows with Cynthia Oliver and Jon Kinzel. They have taught at Sarah Lawrence College, NYU Tisch, SECMOL/Students' Educational Cultural and Movement of Ladakh, and Trinity College.