PS122's COIL 2016 to Kick Off in January
By: Tyler Peterson Oct. 28, 2015
Performance Space 122's annual performance festival, COIL, returns for its eleventh edition with fifteen individual events, making it the largest COIL to date. The festival demonstrates the constant vitality of live performance in New York City and features work created locally, across the U.S., and around the world. Known for its groundbreaking contemporary performance, this year's COIL festival spans interdisciplinary art, working with new technologies and forms. Through installations, live and virtual practices, PS122 is committed to redefining how, where and when performance is experienced.
Known for her "algorithmic theater" explorations, director Annie Dorsen combines human artists and computer algorithms in Yesterday Tomorrow (Jan 13-16) to form a concert of song, beginning with the Beatles' "Yesterday" and breaking down the music to gradually reconstruct it into "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie.
Five Visceral Dance Works:
Inspired by the architectural concept of the panopticon, a structure in which everything is seen at all times, Jillian Peña's Panopticon(Jan 9-17) is a duet that is simultaneously a solo and a work for 100 dancers using mirrors and video to create a kaleidoscopic arena of bodies. niv Acosta's DISCOTROPIC (Jan 6-10) situates itself between the pragmatic and the fantastical while exploring the relationship between science fiction, disco, queer politics, astrophysics, and the black American experience. Built on a reflexive interaction between sound and movement by Norway-based Findlay//Sandsmark + Pettersen, o' death (Jan 12-16) comes alive amidst towering styrofoam sculptures and mechanical trees, giving sound a physical presence in movements, objects and lights. In this one-time-only dance event organized by Austrian choreographer and artist Michael Klïen, Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. (Jan 16) brings together a multi-generational group of performers from the Martha Graham Dance Company's past, present, and future will excavate their relationship to Graham and the underlying movement forces that bind them together. Recent Bessie Award Winner David Neumann's I Understand Everything Better (Jan 10-15) is a deeply personal reflection on the consciousness of dying and interrupted narratives within the context of a cataclysmic storm that combines personal narratives, traditional Japanese Noh theater and Neumann's virtuosic movement and humor. Through formative teenage years spent learning to imitate pop icons like Madonna and singing the greatest hits from the 1980s, Adishatz / Adieu (Jan 15-17) is a self-portrait of French performer and ventriloquist Jonathan Capdevielle; a collection of songs that wander between real life and fantasy.One Huge Australian Cultural Exchange
For COIL 2016, New York will get a taste of Australia's exceptional independent arts scene through a program of works featuring Melbourne artists Helen Herbertson, Ranters Theatre and Brisbane's Polytoxic, co-curated by Performance Space 122 and the City of Melbourne's Arts House with generous support from the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Consulate-General in New York. Performed for an audience of only 12, Melbourne-based Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham's Morphia Series (Jan 12-16) is an intimate series of visual haikus inspired by Morpheus, son of Hypnos and the god of dreams, creating an exquisite intimate performance of light, sound and movement that hovers in a phantasmal dream world. Ranters Theatre's SONG (Jan 5-8) is an immersive sound installation reinventing the song cycle form by combining the sounds of weather, the scent of earth and the colors of day's end, transforming the space into a multi-sensory constructed "nature".Based on a series of real, intimate and diverse conversations with strangers, Ranters Theatre sticks around New York for a second week of performances with Intimacy (Jan 11-16). This solo performance gives a candid and sometimes disquieting portrait of everyday life where personal anxieties are never far from the surface.
PS122's annual Red + White Party (Jan 10) is invaded from down under with Brisbane-based neo-tiki physical theatre company, Polytoxic, with their live-art karaoke party topper known 'round the world, The BackUP Service. A raucous night out, an excuse to play dress-up and an opportunity to soak up the limelight.
Press Contacts: John Wyszniewski and Emily Reilly at Blake Zidell & Associates: 718.643.9052, john@blakezidell.com or emily@blakezidell.com.
PERFORMANCE SPACE 122'S 2016 COIL FESTIVAL
PS122 Commissions
DISCOTROPIC
niv Acosta (USA)
Dance, Music, Sculpture | World Premiere
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
Presented by Performance Space 122 in partnership with Westbeth Artists Community
Westbeth Artists Community, 55 Bethune Street in Manhattan "queering 'brown involvement in performance' in a way that speaks honestly and articulately from the here and now" - Culturebot DISCOTROPIC situates itself between the pragmatic and the fantastical while exploring the relationship between science fiction, disco, astrophysics, and the black American experience. DISCOTROPIC rewrites dominant science fiction narratives through engagement with queer politics and Afrofuturism, claiming a fantastical site of new possibility. niv Acosta's intersectional identities as transgender, queer, and black-Dominican have continuously inspired his community based work. DISCOTROPIC is an episodic work in which earlier episodes have premiered as a part of New Museum's Triennial 'Surround Audience' 2015, as well as in Museum of Contemporary African Diasooran Art's (MoCADA) Brooklyn Soul Festival 'Black August' 2015. bewilderment and other queer lions
Samita Sinha (USA)
Music, Performance | World Premiere
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
Co-presented by Performance Space 122 and The Invisible Dog Art Center January 6-10
The Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen Street in Brooklyn "Rather than mash-up, she minimalized, delicately teasing her voice and the elements of the raga form through a vast range of musical territories." - Portland Monthly Composer and vocal artist Samita Sinha brings in bandmates Sunny Jain and Grey Mcmurray to create her newest work, bewilderment and other queer lions. Joining with longtime collaborator and acclaimed visual artist Dani Leventhal as well as Obie Award-winning director Ain Gordon, Sinha fluidly synthesizes raw and refined, acoustic and electronic sound to create an intimate, immersive experience into the mythic future, housed in the haunting space of the Invisible Dog. Sinha combines tradition with experiment to create bold new forms in music and performance. Her vocal art combines visceral energy with a deep grounding in North Indian classical music and embodied practices, several languages both existing and invented, electronic sounds and found objects. Her work has been seen at venues across the US including The Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, PICA, Virginia Tech, and REDCAT, among others. GO FORTH
Kaneza Schaal (USA)
Theater, Photo Installation | World Premiere
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
Presented by Performance Space 122 in partnership with Westbeth Artists Community January 7-12
Westbeth Artists Community, 55 Bethune Street in Manhattan Drawing inspiration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, GO FORTH is a performance and photo installation that considers how we create space in our lives for the presence of the absent. Burial is proposed not as erasure but as offering restitution and performing rites. Schaal approaches the 3,000-year-old funerary text as an ancient performance score: excavating the spells and incantations to create a series of burial vignettes, fragments of translation, memory and imagination. Presented in the labyrinthine basement of Westbeth's Artists Community in Chelsea, an essential artery of New York City's artistic community, remnants of past legends, such as Merce Cunningham's studios and the flood of Hurricane Sandy, line the walls. Photographic funerary murals usher the audience into the mythological landscape of the performance. Spurred by Schaal's experience of ritualized grieving with her family in Rwanda and considering the harrowing intimacy between black people and death around the world, GO FORTH paves way for its audience to reflect on their individual and collective mourning processes. Schaal came up in the downtown experimental theater community, first working with The Wooster Group, then with other companies and artists including Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, Jay Scheib, Jim Findlay, New York City Opera, as well as appearances on National Public Radio.
Panopticon
Jillian Peña (USA)
Dance, Multimedia | World Premiere
Co-commissioned by Performance Space 122 and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Co-presented by Performance Space 122 and American Realness
Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, 466 Grand Street in Manhattan "Young, unquestionably hip and fearless, choreographer and video artist Jillian Peña creates work that is once laughably raw and scarily sophisticated."- Time Out Chicago Panopticon is a duet that is simultaneously a solo and a work for 100 dancers. Through reflections and multiplications using mirrors and video, a kaleidoscopic arena of bodies is created: simultaneously seen as individuals and objects. Inspired by the architectural concept of the panopticon, a structure in which everything is seen at all times, this performance aims to achieve omniscient visibility. "My work is primarily concerned with the confusion and desire between self and other, and focuses on the most complicated relationship we all have: that of the self to the self," says Peña. She has presented work at Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, American Dance Institute Maryland, Sophiensaele Berlin, ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna, International Festival of Contemporary Art Slovenia, Modern Art Oxford, and was recently awarded the Prix Jardin d'Europe (the European prize for emerging choreography). Yesterday Tomorrow
Annie Dorsen (USA)
Music, Theater | U.S. Premiere
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
Co-presented by La MaMa and Performance Space 122 January 13-16
La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 East 4th Street in Manhattan Human artists and computer algorithms collaborate to form a concert of song, machine, gesture, light and space. Beginning with the Beatles' "Yesterday", algorithms break down the music and gradually reconstruct it into "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie. Three remarkable singers perform the live-generated score. At each performance, the spatial and musical path from the past into the future is different. Our journey's beginning and end are certain - the route we take between them is unknown. Yesterday Tomorrow is the third in a trilogy of performances Dorsen describes as "algorithmic theater," including Hello Hi There (2010) and A Piece of Work (2013.) Together, these works reinvent theater as a digital art.
PS122 U.S. / New York Premieres and Presentations The Holler Sessions
Frank Boyd (USA)
Theater | New York Premiere
Presented by Performance Space 122 in partnership with the Paradise Factory January 6-17
Paradise Factory, 64 East 4th Street in Manhattan "Frank Boyd's one-man theater piece is a vital exhortation on the significance of jazz...it should be required viewing for all musicians, music lovers, pop-culture fiends, artists, art fans and American people over the age of 7." - City Arts, (Seattle) Staged as a live radio show, The Holler Sessions centers around one man's burning obsession for jazz. An explosive Kansas City DJ broadcasts his articulate, profane and impassioned testimony in a music-filled interactive experience. Maniacal rants, razor-sharp insights, and mildly scatological humor are interspersed with extraordinary music and lots of space for listening. The Holler Sessions serves as a jazz primer for the uninitiated, a powerful reminder for jazz fans and an irreverent love letter to the best thing America has ever created, and then forgotten.
Created in collaboration with the TEAM.
I Understand Everything BetterDavid Neumann (USA)
Dance, Theater
Co-presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater and Performance Space 122 January 10-15
The Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens "Under the influence of Japanese Noh theater, with a brilliantly layered script; precise, ritualized choreography that can appear serene, poignant, or comical; crashing rock music; and vibrant multi-media images, the expert players of the Advanced/ Beginner Group morph into the many storytellers we need to organize this profound chaos." - The Dance Enthusiast I Understand Everything Better is a deeply personal reflection on the consciousness of dying and interrupted narratives within the context of a cataclysmic storm. Combining personal narratives, traditional Japanese Noh theater and Neumann's virtuosic movement and humor, collaborators Tei Blow and Sibyl Kempson unite with Neumann to reveal the shimmer of attention to realms unseen, the concurrence of unrelated events and the body as evidence of a will having to let go.David Neumann creates multidisciplinary dances from scratch, bringing to gesture, word and proximity a delighted embrace of our contradictory lives. Neumann has been presented across the city at PS122, The Whitney and The Kitchen, among many others. Neumann performed in the works of Susan Marshall, Big Dance Theatre, club legend Willi Ninja, directors Hal Hartley, Jonathan Demme, Laurie Anderson, Lee Breuer; more recently he choreographed An Octoroon at Soho Rep, and directed The Object Lesson at BAM. Confirmation
Chris Thorpe (UK) and Rachel Chavkin (USA)
Theater | U.S. Premiere
Co-presented by Performance Space 122 and The Invisible Dog Art Center January 13-17
The Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen Street in Brooklyn "a fiercely intelligent and relentlessly curious piece that strives for the truth." - Herald Scotland Centering on the political rifts currently cleaving society, Confirmation attempts to have an honorable dialogue, real and imagined, with extremist thinking. Developed through a series of conversations between Thorpe and a British activist from the extreme right, Confirmation tackles frustrations within political discourse and the phenomenon of "Confirmation Bias". Confirmation is the first in a trilogy of pieces being made by UK-based writer and performer Chris Thorpe (Unlimited, Mala Vadora, Third Angel) and US-based director Rachel Chavkin (The TEAM). o' death
Findlay//Sandsmark + Pettersen (Norway/US)
Dance, Theater, Installation | U.S. Premiere
Presented by Performance Space 122 in partnership with Ideal Glass Gallery January 12-16
Ideal Glass Gallery, 22 East 2nd Street in Manhattan o' death is a multidisciplinary performance installation that impossibly and playfully attempts to prove that death does not exist and everything we have ever loved is not enough. Built on a reflexive interaction between sound and movement, the performance comes alive amidst towering styrofoam sculptures and mechanical trees, giving sound a physical presence in movements, objects and lights. The piece is inspired by 1920s blues singer and brimstone pastor JM Gates' songs such as "O' Death, Where is Thy Sting?" Findlay//Sandsmark is a Norwegian performance company working across the disciplines of dance, theater, live music, and video art. At its core, F//S is choreographer Marit Sandsmark, director and video artist Iver Findlay and composer Pål Asle Pettersen, who made their US premiere with their large-scale work now and nowhere else in 2010 at PS122. Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A.
Michael Klïen (Austria)
Dance, Installation | New York Premiere
Co-presented by New Museum, Martha Graham Dance Company and Performance Space 122 January 16
Martha Graham Studio Theater at Westbeth, 55 Bethune Street in Manhattan In this one-time-only dance event, a multi-generational group of performers from the Martha Graham Dance Company's past, present, and future will excavate their relationship to Graham and the underlying movement forces that bind them together. Organized by Austrian choreographer and artist Michael Klïen, Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. detours the institutionalized social structures of the Graham Company to uncover new paths of organization and potential between its participants. The work utilizes strategies of social choreography developed in collaboration with dramaturg Steve Valk, who has organized a complimentary discursive component that will unfold simultaneously within the event. Audiences are invited to explore the work for any duration, and are welcome to come and go freely, returning at leisure. Adishatz/Adieu
Jonathan Capdevielle (France)
Dance, Music, Performance | U.S. Premiere
Co-presented by Performance Space 122 and American Realness January 15-17
Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, 466 Grand Street in Manhattan Through formative teenage years spent learning to imitate pop icons like Madonna and singing the greatest hits from the 1980s, Adishatz / Adieu is a self-portrait of performer and ventriloquist Jonathan Capdevielle; a collection of songs that wander between real life and fantasy. Moving between music and conversation, memories of childhood are conjured up alongside a past that continues to inform his shifting identity. On a journey to capture the personas of others, Capdevielle strives to discover the most truthful version of himself. Sung a cappella, Adishatz / Adieu aims to study of the vulnerability of adolescence. Capdevielle has had a string of successes over the years as an actor and performer throughout France and having collaborated with international choreographer/director Gisèle Vienne whose piece Jerk premiered in New York in 2010 at PS122. Capdevielle's own work plays with the French literary concept of autofiction, paradoxically autobiographical fiction, through imitation and pop culture references.
PS122 + Australia Cultural Exchange
Australia and New York have a lot in common: the practices and artists we support, the audiences we engage with and the types of context we create. For this COIL 2016, New York will get a taste of Australia's exceptional independent arts scene through a program of works featuring Melbourne artists Helen Herbertson, Ranters Theatre and Brisbane's Polytoxic, co-curated by Performance Space 122 and the City of Melbourne's Arts House with generous support from the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Consulate-General in New York. Through Australia Council for the Arts' commitment to supporting this cultural exchange for a total of four years, PS122 will be presenting an extensive roster of Australian artists focused around the COIL Festival, a platform for international touring. As we begin year two of this international collaboration, we hope to open up a conversation that speaks to an ever-more globalized audience about communities formed around ideas and artistic possibility rather than geography or identity. SongRanters Theatre (Australia)
Sound, Visual and Performance Installation | U.S. Premiere
Co-presented by Performance Space 122 and New Ohio Theatre January 5-8
New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher Street in Manhattan A truly international collaboration between Australian based Ranters Theatre, acclaimed Brazilian visual artist Laura Lima, and UK musician James Tyson, SONG is an exploration of place, wanderings and the nature of purposeful existence. This immersive sound installation reinvents the song cycle form by combining the sounds of weather, the scent of earth and the colors of day's end, transforming the space into a multi-sensory constructed "nature". Ranters Theatre is a performance group based in Melbourne, Australia. Formed in 1994, they make original work that responds to the social and psychological contexts of everyday life. They've toured extensively across the globe to Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and the Netherlands, to name a few. Ranters previous work, Holiday, premiered to audience acclaim at PS122 as part of the COIL 2011 Festival. Morphia Series
Helen Herbertson & Ben Cobham (Australia)
Dance | New York Premiere
Co-presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center and Performance Space 122 January 12-16
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space (450 West 37th Street in Manhattan) At the intersection of light, darkness and spatial depth lies Melbourne-based Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham's Morphia Series. An intimate series of visual haikus, performed for an audience of 12 only. Inspired by Morpheus, son of Hypnos and the god of dreams, this exquisite intimate performance of light, sound and movement hovers in a phantasmal dream world. A seminal figure in Australian dance, Herbertson was honored with the Kenneth Myer Medallion for Distinguished Contribution to the Performing Arts in 2007. As a performer, choreographer and creative collaborator, Helen has been crafting performance for more than four decades, regularly presenting in Australian and international festivals (Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, Singapore, Portland, Tokyo, New York, Zurich). Her own choreographic interests lie in the dynamic flow between people and place, the interaction of body and landscape or situation, interior life with light, form and place. Ben Cobham's lighting and design work has been a striking and influential contributor to the dance and theater scene in Melbourne for over twenty years, with regular Green Room nominations and awards. Ben's experience encompasses design and light for theatrical and commercial environments with extensive touring experience with many of Australia's arts companies. Ben's work with Australia's design company, Bluebottle, has been honored with the 2001 and 2007 Green Room John Truscott Award for Excellence in Design and is a 2011 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow. Intimacy
Ranters Theatre (Australia)
Theater | U.S. Premiere
Co-presented by the Performance Space 122 and New Ohio Theatre January 11-16
New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher Street in Manhattan Based on a series of real, intimate and diverse conversations with strangers, Intimacy gives a candid and sometimes disquieting portrait of everyday life where personal anxieties are never far from the surface. How much of ourselves are we prepared to show? Why is it sometimes easier to be honest with a total stranger than with someone we know? Is this really honesty or just another performance? Ranters Theatre is a performance group based in Melbourne, Australia. Formed in 1994, they make original work that responds to the social and psychological contexts of everyday life. They've toured extensively across the globe to Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and the Netherlands, to name a few. Ranters previous work, Holiday, premiered to audience acclaim at PS122 as part of the COIL 2011 Festival. Red + White Party 2016
Polytoxic (Australia)
Hosted by Gawker Media, Australia Council for the Arts, and the Australian Consulate-General in New York
Music, Performance, Party January 10
Gawker Media Headquarters, 2 West 17th Street, 2nd Floor, in Manhattan PS122 invites audiences to the all-new, revamped Red + White Party. Inclusive to all audiences and artists alike, this year's party focuses not on a high-end ticket price but more on the nitty-gritty of what makes January in NYC a special place: karaoke. Teaming up with the Australia Council and the Australian Consulate-General in New York, this year features Brisbane-based neo-tiki physical theatre company Polytoxic with their live-art karaoke party topper known 'round the world. The BackUP Service gives you a raucous night out, an excuse to play dress-up and an opportunity to soak up the limelight. Offering a total karaoke experience, you get a choice of some of the best pop hits from the past and present courtesy of Deejay J.D. Franzke with a gang of backup dancers fit for the pros
About Performance Space 122
Performance Space 122 (PS122) provides incomparable experiences for audiences by presenting and commissioning artists whose work challenges boundaries of live performance. PS122 is dedicated to supporting the creative risks taken by artists from diverse genres, cultures and perspectives. We are an innovative local, national and international leader in contemporary performance.Beginning in 2011, PS122 embarked on one of the most unusual and potentially radical shifts in its history, including a re-structuring of artist support, a business model overhaul, and the renovation of our building. As PS122's East Village home undergoes a much-needed interior renovation supported primarily by the City of New York, DCA and DDC, PS122's core activity continues to be providing audiences with contemporary live performance.
For over 3 decades, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the cultural community. Under the curatorial vision of Vallejo Gantner (Artistic Director 2005 - present) PS122 has developed a set of programs designed to re-establish the value of live performance, provide singular experiences for audiences that inspire critical thinking, and sustain the creative process for artists throughout their career. Largely in partnership with peer organizations, PS122 currently presents artists in all disciplines in spaces all over the city during an annual fall & spring season and COIL festival in January.
In addition to the commissioning and presenting of artists from NYC across the US, and around the globe, PS122 has increased our activity off the stage to provide audiences with a variety of access points and context for the work on stage. These activities include both talkbacks with the artists as well as in depth conversations that bring together luminaries from non-arts disciplines to discuss a variety of topics including everything from religion, to migration, to queer real estate and cultural diplomacy. PS122 encourages the asking of questions and debate of contemporary society's issues in both artistic practice and audience experience.
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