Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup Presents A MY NAME IS...this December

TheaterLab | TLAB SHARES and Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup present the world premiere of A MY NAME IS..., an exploration of memory and forgetting inspired by the choreographer's personal encounter with a family member's dementia. The work will be presented at TheaterLab (357 West 36th Street, 3rd floor) as part of as part of their upcoming curated series "Eat Your Heart Out", from Thursday, December 7 thru Sunday, December 10, 2017. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased at https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/978797.

The title A MY NAME IS... refers to an ABC rhyming game which trains children to build their skills in coordinating physical and verbal tasks. The New York-based choreographer Stefanie Nelson employs a similar rhythmic progression as the main structural axis of her piece. Reminiscent of the way through which the language is acquired and then retrogrades through aging, she translates her experience with a family member's dementia into an intricately layered multidisciplinary piece. Increasingly organized phrases peak and subsequently dissolve into disorientation - a visual metaphor for memory loss. Nelson makes ample use of apple imagery as a loaded cultural reference evoking the loss of beauty and/or innocence, passage of time, gravity, and decay.

"I started this process with the question: how can I physically investigate the experience of literally losing oneself," explains Nelson. "I hope people will walk away with a desire to ask more questions and confront what it means to live while the past is slipping away."

Along with two principal dancers Christine Bonansea and Julia Discenza and additional performers Cameron McKinney and Emily Tellier, Nelson brings together a team of international collaborators. The work features stop-motion video by Elisa D'Amico (Italy), original music by composers Sahand Rahbar (Iran/Canada) and Jonah Kreitner (US), with set and light design by Solomon Weisbard (US). The special advisor for the project is David Shenk, a bestselling author of The Forgetting: Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic.

A MY NAME IS... is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; in part, with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; with additional support from Exorto Danza, the Comune di Agropoli, Parco Nazionale del Cilento, Albumi e Vallo di Diano, BCC Comuni Cilentani, Arte e Danza Arabesque and Dance Italia.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Stefanie Nelson (Concept, Choreography, Direction) is the Artistic Director of Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup, a New York City-based contemporary performance ensemble. Her work distills deeply personal ideas into highly kinetic, expressive, and provocative works that are rooted in cross-media collaboration with artists working in music, video, and visual arts. Described as "instinctual, untamed, and edgy," Nelson's dances have been presented at some of the foremost contemporary performance venues in the United States, including Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, LaMama Moves!, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and Jacob's Pillow, and internationally in Canada, Mexico, and Italy, among others. Nelson is an accomplished teacher as well as the founder and artistic director of DANCE ITALIA, an annual summer dance intensive held in the cities of Agropoli and Lucca, Italy. She recently served as a Choreography panelist for New York Foundation for the Arts Artists' Fellowships and curated a series How high is the ceiling in my glass castle? (and other perceived limitations) at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn. www.sndancegroup.org

Christine Bonansea (Performer) is a New York-based dancer and choreographer with over 15 years of international experience in conceiving, directing/choreographing, and performing movement-based works. She creates performances, installations, and films. She is the Artistic Director of Christine Bonansea Company, founded in 2010. Defined by expressive, virtuosic, improvisation-driven movement, her work inhabits an experimental, interdisciplinary, and collaborative environment in which other media - theater, video, visual art and design, spoken word, and music- play an important and integral part. She has had the pleasure to collaborate and perform with such artists as Catherine Galasso, Katie Duck, Sara Shelton Mann, Faustin Linyekula, Tino Sehgal, and Yoshiko Chuma. In New York City, Bonansea's work has been presented by Danspace Project, Dixon Place, and Movement Research at Judson Church. Her dances have also been developed in art residencies and commissioned by numerous venues and festivals in the U.S. and worldwide. www.christinebonansea.com

Julia Discenza (Performer) is a New York based artist. Originally from Connecticut, Julia holds a B.A. in Biology and Dance from Barnard College at Columbia University, where she studied with Colleen Thomas, Katie Glasner, Katiti King, Marjorie Folkman, Andrea Miller, and others. Julia has performed with Colleen Thomas Dance, Trainor Dance, NathanTrice | RITUALS, Soluq Dance Theater, MICHIYAYA, and H.T. Chen & Dancers. Julia also works as a freelance photographer and videographer, and she has directed and shot several dance films.

Cameron McKinney (Performer) is the Artistic Director of Kizuna Dance. He has also worked with 10 Hairy Legs, Dante Brown | Warehouse Dance, Christal Brown/INSPIRIT, Chafin Seymour/Seymour::dancecollective, and AnA Collaborations, among others. His choreographic work has been presented by prestigious festivals and institutions nationally and internationally, including the The Japan Society, Gibney Dance, Movement Research, Dixon Place, the Wassaic Project Summer Festival, and Triskelion Arts, among many others. He has also been commissioned twice by the Joffrey Ballet School, as well as by LIU Brooklyn, The Moving Beauty Series, the Steffi Nossen School of Dance, and SpectorDance Studio. He has taught in eight states and internationally in Japan, Mexico, and the UK. He is currently on faculty at Gibney Dance Center.
Emily Tellier is originally from North Vancouver, Canada, and now resides in Brooklyn as a freelance dance artist. She has performed in various festivals and shows including the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Ladies of Hip Hop Festival, and the Vancouver International Dance Festival, and has recently premiered works in both New York and Vancouver with 277 Dance Project, Heather Laura Gray, Thryn Saxon, and Joya Powell. She can also be seen in Ingrid Michaelson?s newest music video, Celebrate, choreographed by Stacey Tookey. In addition to working with Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup, Emily collaborates with Movement of the People Dance Company directed by Joya Powell.

David Shenk (Special Advisor) is the award-winning and national-bestselling author of six books, including The Genius in All of Us ("deeply interesting and important" - New York Times), The Forgetting ("remarkable" - Los Angeles Times), Data Smog ("indispensable" - New York Times), and The Immortal Game ("superb" - 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, Gourmet, Harper's, Spy, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The American Scholar, The Huffington Post, NPR, BBC and PBS. Shenk lives in Brooklyn. www.davidshenk.com

Jonah Kreitner (Composer) is a multi-instrumentalist/composer who currently plays violin for the James Moody Jazz orchestra. His original compositions have been presented internationally in Israel and Italy, and in NYC at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, City Center, the Ailey Citigroup Theater, among others. Commissions include the Nightingale Gallery and Bloomingdale School of Music. Kreitner was recently featured as a guest artist performing with Marc Broussard at City Winery and can be seen busking around the subway in NYC. Significant influences include Regina Sadowski, Massimiliano Soggiu, Ben Sutin, and Alex Wintz. A MY NAME IS... is his third collaboration with Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup.

Sahand Rahbar (Composer) is an Iranian-Canadian multi-instrumentalist/composer who comes from an extensive improvisational background. He started with classical piano as a child and later got his hands on guitar, bass and more recently drums, moving away from classical and into improv space. His music crosses various genres and mixes acoustic and digital components. Sahand has composed pieces for short movies, videogames and contemporary dance performances, and has been collaborating with Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup for the past six years.

Elisa D'Amico (Video) is a freelance dancer and multidisciplinary artist. She graduated from ArtEZ School of Arts and trained at De Stilte (both in the Netherlands), and Biennale Danza in Venice, Italy. With Milan Kampfer, Till Becker and the videomaker Francisco J. V. Martinez, she co-created the video project In-between. Recent dance collaborations include a number of projects with Italian choreographers. She is currently working with Francesco Dalmasso and Alessio Mazzaro on //Couchscore - a long-distance investigation of writing and transmitting scores, commissioned by Workspace Ricerca X / research and dramaturgy in Turin, Italy. D'Amico has been collaborating with Stefanie Nelson and Dance Italia since 2013.

Solomon Weisbard (Lighting Design) is a freelance lighting designer for all types of performance. Credits in dance, dance/theatre and avant-garde music include original full-length pieces with Alethea Adsitt, Jennifer Archibald, Joshua Beamish/MOVE, Maria Chavez, Ximena Garnica/Leimay, Lane Gifford, Invisible Anatomy, LoudHound Movement, Ofelia Loret de Mola, Stefanie Nelson, The Nerve Tank (as resident designer), Jen Shyu, WaxFactory, and four major works as associate set designer with Bill T Jones. Selected New York theatre: Duat (Soho Rep); Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb); This is the Color (Door 10/Baryshnikov Arts Center); Christina Anderson's Hollow Roots (Public Theatre - Under the Radar); Rite of Spring (Martha Graham Dance Co.); The Soldier's Tale (Carnegie Hall); The Film Society (Keen / Theatre Row); The Pavilion, Enemy of the People (Barrow Group); I Came to Look for You on Tuesday (LaMama). www.solweisbard.com

Photo by Maria Baranova