Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup And David Shenk Present THE MOVING MEMORY PROJECT: FILL IN THE BLANK

Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup and David Shenk present the latest installment of the Moving Memory project: fill in the blank, a festival devoted to memory and forgetting on Friday, October 6 at 8pm at Broadway Presbyterian Church, 601 W. 114th Street New York, NYC. This free performance features original dance works by Stefanie Nelson & Maya Orchin, Rebecca Margolick, and Mignolo Dance; visual art installation by Justin Randolph Thompson and Bradly Dever Treadaway, and live music by The Straightjackets. For more information, visit www.sndancegroup.org.

Launched in 2019, The Moving Memory Project embodies its founders' vision of bringing together artists, caregivers, and seniors to create a community of care surrounding issues connected to memory loss and destigmatizing the diagnosis of dementia, with the goal of raising awareness, to increase funding, until a cure is found. "Works like this can help the world think and talk about Alzheimer's in important new ways" says co-producer David Shenk, whose writings on Alzheimer's and dementia garnered him international acclaim as an authority on the subject.

PROGRAM DETAILS

Stefanie Nelson and Maya Orchin

Dea, solo version performed by Maya Orchin

Composer: Borut Krzisnik

Recently premiered at the Festival Quartiers Danses in Montréal, Dea draws its inspiration from the play Nostra Dea (Our Goddess), written by Massimo Bontempelli. In the play, the protagonist, Dea has no memory. Multiple identities, traits, and appearances meet on this constantly renewed blank slate. Without any sense of self or past, Dea bridges the gap between human and puppet. Playing on and disrupting the original piece, Dea questions our sense of self and of others with evolving identities and renewed behaviors.

Rebecca Margolick

Bunker + Vault

This solo dance is about memory experienced through the body and generations, influenced by archival research on women who resided at the 92nd Y Residence and The Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls from 1899-1950. Rebecca's practice grew from this research, embodying and visualizing memories of these women, as well as her own, approaching time in a non-linear fashion, reflecting the parallels, struggles, and shared history through generations of working-class women. This relentless solo plays with rigor and rhythm as a grounding force in a chaotic mind. The work won the Jury Prize for "best indoor choreographic work" at the 2019 Festival Quartiers Danses in Montreal Canada and been presented in NYC and internationally. This is the second presentation of this work at tMMp.

Mignolo Dance

Excerpts from Paradox in Translation

Paradox in Translation embodies two poems, creating a vocabulary that exactly maps to the spoken/sung text. This is complemented by more disjointed translations, culminating in a dreamscape that explores the contradictions inherent in memory, love, and loss. Choreographed by Charly Santagado, with text by Matthew Menchaca and Charly Santagado and music by Emory Campbell and Steve Reich (Alex Smoke Remix), the piece is performed by Charly Santagado and Eriel Santagado. This is the second presentation of this work at tMMp.

fill in the blank is designed as a counter piece to Nelson and Orchin's DEA. It is part of an ongoing collaboration between Nelson, Justin Randolph Thompson and Bradly Dever Treadaway. Bringing together the floods and floodlines of memory, the work interrogates embodied archives and the ideas, individuals and legacies that occupy narrative voids.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Stefanie Nelson (Concept, Producer) founded and directs Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup, a contemporary performance group based in NYC; Dance Italia, a renowned international dance festival in its 13th edition, and Motore592, a new center for contemporary practices in Lucca, IT. She approaches her work intuitively, distilling deeply personal ideas into highly kinetic, expressive, and provocative works rooted in cross-media collaboration with artists working in music, video, and visual arts. Eva Yaa Asantewaa described her work as 'instinctual, untamed, and edgy'. Entering the dance field as a performer, notably as a soloist with Anna Sokolow's Player's Project, Nelson is an accomplished teacher as well having been invited to many studios and educational institutions worldwide. The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) identified her as an 'Emerging Leader' in the field of dance.. She's served as a Choreography panelist for NYFA's prestigious Artists' Fellowship awards, The Joyce Theater, and local NYC dance festivals. Nelson has collaborated with fashion designer Terrence Zhou/Bad Binch TONGTONG for his SS23 New York Fashion Week debut and his recent SS24 show. She also choreographed Plan-B, a feature film starring Diane Keaton. www.sndancegroup.org

David Shenk (Co-producer) is the award-winning and national bestselling author of six books, including The Genius in All of Us ("deeply interesting and important" - The New York Times), The Forgetting ("remarkable" - The Los Angeles Times), Data Smog ("indispensable" - The New York Times), and The Immortal Game ("superb" - The Wall Street Journal). He is a popular lecturer, a short-film director/producer, and a contributor to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Nature Biotechnology, Harper's, Spy, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, NPR, and BBC. PBS's "The Forgetting," inspired by Shenk's book, won an Emmy in 2004. In 2006, the book The Forgetting was featured in Sarah Polley's Oscar-nominated film "Away From Her." Shenk has advised the President's Council on Bioethics on dementia-related issues, served as a Senior Advisor to Cure Alzheimer's Fund, and is the Creator/Executive Producer of the "Living with Alzheimer's" film project. Shenk lives in Brooklyn. www.davidshenk.com

Rebecca Margolick is a Canadian-born choreographer and dancer based in New York. Her multidisciplinary group and solo works have been presented across the US and Canada as well as internationally in Costa Rica, France, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Israel. She was named one of Dance Magazine's Top 25 to Watch in 2021 and has received multiple awards for her solo work. Rebecca has received numerous fellowships (including the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation's New Directions Choreography Lab under the mentorship of Gus Solomons jr) and awarded many residencies from leading art centers such as the Banff Centre for the Arts, BC Movement Arts Society, Dance Deck Vancouver, La Galerie Chorégraphique (France), and the GPS Fund Movement Research Artist in Residence at Derida Dance Center (Bulgaria). Rebecca is currently a company member and a rehearsal director of Chuck Wilt's UNA Productions. She has worked with dancemakers Sidra Bell, Belinda McGuire, Jerome Bel, Kayla Farrish, Allen Kaeja, Patricia Norowol, Maya Orchin, Derrick Belcham, Emily Terndrup, Shay Kuebler, and Barak Marshall among others. Rebecca trained at Arts Umbrella in Vancouver and graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. www.rebeccamargolick.com

Maya Orchin is a choreographer and movement director based in New York. She has had her work presented internationally in Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, Russia, Israel and throughout the United States. She choreographed the immersive theater show 'Post Mortem' in Montreal, Canada and was just the movement director for 'North Star' which toured in Los Angeles and Edinburgh, Scotland. She has had artistic residencies at PAF (France) and S.P.A.M. (Italy). Maya was a choreographer and performer in the live podcast tour of 'Israel Story' that toured all over the U.S. and Israel. In New York her work has been shown at the 92nd St Y, Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, The New Dance Alliance Festival, The Williamsburg Art and Historical Society, The Dumbo Dance Festival, Art Helix, Theaterlab, and Arts on Site. As a performer she has worked with artists such as Luis Lara Malvacias, Okwui Okpokwasili, Bill T Jones, Christine Bonansea, Davis Freeman, Zoe Scofield, Madeline Hollander, Reut Shemesh, Lynn Neuman, Kate Digby, Jody Oberfelder and more. She was a solo performer in 'Room 29' on a European tour with musicians Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales. She has been an assistant choreographer with MOMAPS1, NIKE and Bad Binch TONGTON. DEA premiered at Festival Quartier Danses in Montreal on Sept. 14, 2023. www.mayaorchin.com

Charly Santagado is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and curator as well as co-founder and artistic director of Mignolo Dance. Originally from Florida and based in the NJ/NY area, she graduated with the highest honors from Rutgers University in 2017 with a major in philosophy and minors in dance, music, and creative writing. Charly has danced with several companies and choreographers including Heidi Latsky Dance, VALLETO Dance, ReFrame Dance Theatre, Katelyn Halpern and Dancers, Yu.S. Artistry, and Monteleone Dance Collective. She also regularly performs in her own work, presented at numerous venues, including Ailey Citigroup Theater, Peridance, Triskelion Arts, Suzanne Roberts Theater, and The Berrie Center. In recent years, she's been selected for coLAB Arts' new choreography commission, Dance Canvas's Choreographic Initiative, an Urbanity Dance NEXT Residency, Norte Maar's CounterPointe9, One Day Dance's third season, and a Kulturfactory Residency in Domicella, Italy. She has won screendance awards at several international film festivals, as well as Ramapo College's Leaning into the Unknown Competition, Spoke The Hub's Winter Follies (Director's Choice), Palm Springs International Dance Festival's film competition, KoDaFe in NYC, and International Online Dance Competition's Choreography Division. www.mignolo.art/dance

Justin Randolph Thompson is an artist, cultural facilitator and educator born in Peekskill, NY in '79. Based between Italy and the US since 1999, Thompson is Co-Founder and Director of Black History Month Florence, a multi-faceted exploration of Black histories and cultures in the context of Italy founded in 2016. Having realized, coordinated, curated, facilitated and promoted over 300 events and with 8 ongoing research platforms, the initiative has been reframed as a Black cultural center called The Recovery Plan. Thompson is a recipient of a 2022 Creative Capital Award, a 2020 Italian Council Research Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a Franklin Furnace Fund Award, a Visual Artist Grant from the Fundacion Marcelino Botin and an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park amongst others. His work and performances have been exhibited widely in institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and The American Academy in Rome and are part of numerous collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museo MADRE. His life and work seek to deepen the discussions around socio-cultural stratification and the arrogance of permanence by employing fleeting temporary communities as monuments and fostering projects that connect academic discourse, social activism and DIY networking strategies in annual and biennial gathering, sharing and gestures of collectivity. www.justinrandolphthompson.com

Bradly Dever Treadaway is a Brooklyn based artist, educator and curator utilizing lens-based image making, moving images, sound, sculpture, installation and performance to comment on the breakdown of intergenerational communication and broken familial links. Treadaway's work is part of the permanent collections at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Masur Museum of Art, the Ewing Gallery at the University of Tennessee, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Mobile Museum of Art. Treadaway has recently held residencies at Trestle Art Space and BRIC Media Arts in Brooklyn, Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and the Contemporary Arts Center at Woodside in NY. Awarded a City Artist Corps Grant to curate and produce Archival Interventions, a film screening at FiveMyles gallery in Crown Heights, Treadaway is a Fulbright Scholar to Italy and faculty member at The International Center of Photography in NYC where he has taught a range of courses including topics related to analog and digital photography, video, sound, installation and archival interventions as the as the founding media. Additionally, he has taught courses at Bard College, SUNY Purchase, The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), Barnard College and Louisiana State University. Treadaway is the founder and curator of "Archival Interventions", a series of exhibitions and screenings that focus on the archive in contemporary artwork, and he remains actively engaged in a 20-year collaboration with internationally acclaimed and exhibited artist Justin Randolph Thompson. www.bradlydevertreadaway.com

This event is made possible, in part, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts;by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the West Harlem Development Corporation.