Performance Space 122 Announces Summer Programming

Performance Space 122's 30th Anniversary Season has included contemporary performance hits such as Hotel Savoy, THEM, Rumble Ghost, The Escape Artist, The Green Surround and Radio Play as well as a monumental COIL Festival and Spring Gala. Capping off the celebration of 30 Years of 122, is an action packed June full of nostalgic experiences and futuristic performances from NYC and across the globe as only Performance Space 122 can provide.

In preparation for 18 months of site specific programming, that will include work by Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, the TEAM, Every House Has a Door, Carmelita Tropicana, Temporary Distortion, Michel Groisman, Davis Freeman, Palissimo and others, PS122 is proud to announce progress on several new capacity building initiatives including a new Creative Producer Program, and a Virtual Programming / Transmedia Project. Both will transform the way PS122 does business and contextualizes itself within the contemporary performance world and beyond.

With plans to continue the Global tours - to Berlin and London in 2012 - as well as the annual presentation of COIL, and plenty more exhilarating announcements to come, we hope that everyone will join us as our season comes to a close for a mini festival of UK performance (June 1 - 11), followed by an RetroFutureSpective Festival (June 11 - 25) "to begin and end the world as we know it."

June & July at a glance:

The UK Comes to the EV
"Each of these 3 companies represent different generations of English performance and all exemplify the very essence of live art." - Vallejo Gantner, PS122 Artistic Director

With support from the British Council, Performance Space 122 brings 3 companies across the pond for a taste of the UK's hottest contemporary performance experiences.
June 1 - 11, 2011 Tickets on sale now. ps122.org / 212-352-3101

The 30th Anniversary Season RetroFutureSpective Festival
To begin and end the world as we know it...

THEATRE, DANCE, MUSIC, X-MEDIA, LIVE ART
June 11 - 25, 2011

Performance Space 122's 30th Anniversary Season RetroFutureSpective Festival will include interactive events, as well as performances in both spaces at 150 1st Avenue including an All-Day Dance Class with contemporary dance legends, a look back at PS122 on film by Charles Dennis, Avant-Garde-Arama Wrecking Ball! and a multi-night old-school-benefit-style grand finale featuring luminary MC's and 10+ performances nightly from spectacular PS122 Artists. Beginning on June 17, the downstairs space will be transformed into the LES Lounge where personalities of the past, present, and future can come together to mingle, reminisce, perform and subterfuge.

Tickets on sale now. ps122.org / 212-352-3101

The Arts Collaboration Lab
Columbia School of the Arts and Performance Space 122 are joining forces to launch a pioneering intensive summer workshop and residency program for artists and arts students in which students of film, theatre, visual arts, writing and music, will work together to develop new cross-disciplinary projects.

"New York City, with its prohibitively high cost of living and limited space, can create barriers for artists to develop new work," said Vallejo Gantner, Artistic Director of PS122. " The Arts Collaboration Lab will provide much-needed time and space for the creation and exploration of new material."

Participating artists include David Levine, Davis Freeman, Emily Johnson, and Temporary Distortion. All four artists will be in residence at Columbia University in July 2011, developing projects that will later be shown at Performance Space 122, and mentoring students in the Arts Collaboration Lab's three-week summer program.

Expanded information about June / July events:

Action Hero - Watch Me Fall
June 1 - 2 at 8pm
$20, $15 Students seniors

We're going over a barrel, hitting the ramp at 90mph and clearing 10 double-decker buses, and we're not stopping until every last sonofabitch in the place is cheering us on.

Drawing on footage of Evel Knievel jumps, interviews with Niagara Falls daredevils, the speeches of American presidents and transcripts from Chuck Yeager's supersonic flights, Watch Me Fall questions the obsession with those who attempt the impossible, the futility of their attempts and their inevitable fall from grace. With language taken from Mexican wrestling matches, drag races, 100,000 seater stadiums, human cannonballs and daredevil stunts, it is both an epic and intimate piece that explores the relationship between audience and event, the nature of risk and the complicity of the audience in increasingly violent and questionable acts in the name of entertainment.

Curious - The Moment I Saw You I Knew I Could Love You
June 4 - 5 at 5, 6:15, 7:30, 8:45pm
$20, $15 Students seniors

This is how I dream it. This is how it feels. And I am not a sailor. I cannot steer a craft. I cannot tie a reef knot. I cannot swim. But still this is how it ends. I am out here with the lost mariners, the castaways, the ship wrecked and the sea swallowed.

Designed for life-raft sized groups of audience members, "The Moment I Saw You..." plunges at your gut feelings, your fight/flight and freeze reactions, your impulses, love and undefended moments.

Helen Cole - We See Fireworks
June 4 - 11

An installation and a performance archive of audience voices, We See Fireworks is a curated collection of memories of past performances or performative moments whispered softly into the darkness. They talk of religious ceremonies, accidents, lovers' meetings, loss, homesickness, adolescence, fairgrounds, car parks, fetish clubs and school halls. Articulated by strangers, these words are viral, searing into the consciousness, until the deepest memories become yours.

The installation is open Saturday, June 4 - Saturday, June 11 from 2 - 9pm.
The installation is closed on Monday, June 6. $10

If you would like to add your voice to this growing collection, opportunities for individual recordings are available June 4, 5, 7, 8 between 4:30 - 6:30pm & 7 - 9pm.

Your ticket is valid for the entire day, but please note that entry is based on a first come first served basis.

Produced by Inbetween Time Productions. Funded by Arts Council England. Commissioned by New Theatre Architects. Technical Consultation and production Alex Bradley.

Long Table on Live Art vs Performance Art. UK vs America. A Special or Essential Relationship.Discuss.
Saturday, June 4 at 2pm
FREE and open to the public

The Long Table is an experimental public forum originally developed by performance artist Lois Weaver. The Long Table experiments with participation and public engagement by re-appropriating a dinner table atmosphere as a public forum, and encouraging informal conversations on serious topics. It is literally a very long table set up with chairs, microphones and refreshments where anyone and everyone is welcome to come to the table, ask questions, make statements, leave comments, or simply sit, listen and watch.

Lois Weaver is a lecturer in Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University London. Her work included live art, solo performances, feminist and lesbian theatre, performance and human rights. She is founding member of splitbritches with Peggy Shaw. www.splitbritches.com.

The following are presented as part of the 30th Anniversary RetroFutureSpective Festival:

An Evening of performances by Tim Miller, Kamelle Mills, Brigham Mosley & Katie O
Saturday, June 11 at 7:30PM with a post-performance talk-back moderated by Tim Miller
$20, $15 students / seniors

Beginning in December 2010, Tim Miller has worked closely with Kamelle, Brigham and Katie and will present the conclusion of the 7 month mentorship in an evening of original work.

Made possible with support from the National Performance Network Community Fund.

Tim Miller - Irregular Forms of the Verb To Be
Performance Space 122 Co-Founder Tim Miller returns to PS122 and charts the way lives grow and change in most irregular ways with help from outside. As is so often the case, Lederhosen may be involved.

Kamelle Mills - To Bloom
Kamelle Mills takes a look at a set of characters surrounding an adolescent homosexual boy on the verge of discovering who he is.
Kamelle received his BFA in Theatre with an emphasis in Playwrighting at SMU. His first full length play, "Where Pride Rides", was workshopped in the festivals New Visions, New Voices in Dallas. Kamelle is committed to both Playwrighting and Acting.

Katie O - Wh*re!
An elegy about sexuality. A fantastical look at a real girl. The secrets and true stories of an adult industry, a lover, a survivor and an all around wh*re.
Katie O is a queer adult industry worker and performance artist originally from San Francisco. She has performed in Radio City Music Hall, subway cars, New York Theatre Experiment, out of third story windows, PS122, bathrooms, HiChristina! Gallery, basements, BDSM clubs and stairwells all over the fine state of New York. She likes Lady Gaga, cheese and being sentimental. Follow her on www.feticheantoinette.tumblr.com

Brigham Mosley - Oh Whatta Beautiful Mo[u]rnin'
Young, glittery Brigham must return to his dusty Oklahoma roots after the death of his grandfather. A funny, grief-filled examination of ancestry and hierarchy for the queer prodigal son. Dream ballets included.
Brigham Mosley is a young performer/playwright from southwest Oklahoma. His work has been produced in New York, Chicago, and Dallas. For more information and to contact Brigham go to www.brighammosley.com

All Day Dance Class
Sunday, June 12 beginning at 12pm
$10 per class, $25 for the day.

Dance the day away with contemporary dance artists Yvonne Meier, Yoshiko Chuma, Jack Ferver, and Sarah Michelson. 4 back-to-back classes culminate in an Open Movement celebration and a free screening of FAME caps the evening off. Plus Carla Peterson will be on hand for some one-on-one Gilda Radner style life-coaching.

ECHO: 30 Years of PS122 on Film
Tuesday, June 14 at 8PM
$20, $15 students / seniors

Charles Dennis presents a 3-channel mix of groundbreaking PS122 Filmic Performances including rare footage of Spalding Gray, Blue Man Group, Eric Bogosian and more!

Avant-Garde-Arama Wrecking Ball!
Friday, June 17 + Saturday, June 18 at 8PM
$25, $20 students / seniors

Performance Space 122's longest running series kicks it up a notch and presents a demolition derby of theatre, dance, music, and video installation.

Hosted by: Murray Hill & Uncle Jimmy
Confirmed performers include: Koosil-Ja, M Lamar, John Kelly, Edgar Oliver, Urban Bush Women, Tigger, Lisa Kron, Janet Clancy, Peggy Pettitt, Karen Therese and many more!
Line up TBA

Old School 122 Benefit
Wednesday, June 22 - Saturday, June 25 at 8PM
$30 nightly

A veritable who's who of NYC performance promises to be on parade for 4 action-packed nights in the style of the original PS122 Benefits.

Luminary MC's: Julie Atlas-Muz & David White (6/22), DANCENOISE w/ Richard Move & guests (6/23), Lane Czaplinski & Sarah Michelson (6/24), Carmelita Tropicana & surprise guests (6/25).

Confirmed performers include: John Zorn, Eric Bogosian, Elevator Repair Service, David Leslie, Big Art Group, Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, Charles Moulton, The Wooster Group, David Levine, Deb Margolin, Holly Hughes, Maria Hassabi, Temporary Distortion, Tamar Rogoff, Jennifer Miller, Jack Ferver, NTUSA, Neal Medlyn, Penny Arcade, Peter Rose, Philippe Quesne, New York City Players, the TEAM, Sally Silvers, Mabou Mines, Tom Murrin, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Melanie Joseph and more!
Line up TBA.

The LES Lounge will be coming alive around 6pm nightly in the downstairs space, providing a cozy atmosphere for personalities of the past, present, and future to come together to mingle, reminisce, perform and subterfuge. Praxis offers exclusive tours through PS122 history and the opportunity to purchase your very own limited edition portrait of one of several ghosts. Sarah Maxfield harvests memories after the shows and the party continues in the lounge until the wee hours of the morn.

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Performance Space 122 is one of New York's ultimate destinations for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and multi-media. PS122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists who explore innovative form and provocative content and who rigorously challenge the boundaries contemporary performance; PS122 is committed to a steadfast search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures, nations and beliefs.

Now in it's 30th Anniversary Season, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the East Village, as well as the wider cultural community in N.Y.C. and across the globe. In just the past 5 years, under the curatorial vision of Artistic Director Vallejo Gantner, PS122 has opened the curtain on more than 2,500 performances, welcomed more than 125,000 visitors, and supported the work of more than 2,100 artists, performers, choreographers, playwrights, directors and designers.

Performance Space 122 passionately advocates for U.S. artists in New York and across globe. Our organization and the artists we present are reclaiming their relevance to wider social discourse by engaging artists, audiences and other community leaders in cultural, economic, and environmental debates about what it means to live in contemporary society. www.ps122.org
On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PerformanceSpace122
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Performance-Space-122/109911652392000
On Twitter: @PS122

Tickets are now on sale and available at www.ps122.org,
by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101, and the Performance Space 122 Box Office.
Tickets from $20 and $15 (students/seniors) / Friends with Benefits enjoy 5 tickets to onsite performances beginning at the $75 giving level.
Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street.
Program and Prices subject to change.