New York Live Arts Presents Bill Shannon's TOUCH UPDATE

As part of its Live Feed program, New York Live Arts presents the New York City premiere of Bill Shannon's Touch Update, a new work exploring contemporary modes of digital versus interpersonal representation and physicality. Touch Update investigates social constructions and specific physical movement patterns that emanate from disabled bodies. Video wearables and installation art animate corporeal abstractions of dance, digital intimacy and human touch.

Touch Update "reverse engineers" Shannon's virtuosic technique for dancing on crutches, as he dissects and dismantles the multiple online identities we create in order to mask and manipulate our lived experience. Shannon's crutch choreography is performed by Cirque du Soleil artist Raphael Botelho Nepomuceno, along with collaborators and performers Ron Chunn Jr., Teena Marie Custer, Anna Thompson, Taylor Knight, Jacquea Mae, Cornelius Henke, and David Whitewolf. Performance dates are November 14 - 17, 2018, 7:30 PM. Tickets start at $15 and can be purchased at 212 924 0077 or online at newyorklivearts.

Join Bill Shannon in conversation with Jennifer Edwards in New York Live Arts' Stay Late Conversation on November 15 following the performance. On November 17, 5:00 - 6:30 PM, Bill Shannon will present The Condition Arriving, a lecture introducing his philosophy and disability politics. Tickets are $10 / $5 with performance ticket purchase and can be purchased at 212 924 0077 or online at newyorklivearts.

On November 17, 1:00 - 2:30 PM, Shannon will lead his Reverse Engineering Workshop teaching rhythm, holding patterns, and body positions invented over his life of dance and play on crutches. Workshop participants will improvise ways of recreating Shannon's "Dance on Crutches" in real time without using crutches. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at newyorklivearts.

Bill Shannon is an interdisciplinary artist and maker who explores body-centric work through video installation, sculpture, linguistics, sociology, choreography, dance, and politics. He is a 2018 United States Artist Fellow and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography and a Foundation for Contemporary Art Fellowship in Performance Art. He has worked as a choreographer and performer for Cirque du Soleil. Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight's company slowdanger was on Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" list for 2018.

Touch Update has been created in collaboration with dancers of slowdanger, Get Down Gang, and VJ / Mapper Projectile Objects. The project is supported in part, by the New England Foundation for The Arts' National Dance Production Fund, The Heinz Endowments' Small Arts Initiative, and the National Performance Network.

FUNDING
The Live Feed program is supported in part by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Partners for New Performance.

Support for New York Live Arts is provided by Con Edison, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, The Harnisch Foundation, Alice Lawrence Foundation, Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Metropolitan Capital Bancorp, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, New York Community Trust, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Scherman Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and Theatre Development Fund.

Public support for New York Live Arts is from Humanities New York, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
Located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City, New York Live Arts produces and presents dance, music, and theater performances in its 20,000 square-foot home, which includes a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square-foot studios. New York Live Arts offers an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development of performing artists. New York Live Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and is the company's sole producer, providing support and the environment to originate innovative and challenging new work for the Company and New York's creative community.