The Kitchen's DANCE AND PROCESS Series Continues This Week

The Kitchen presents the next installment of the institution's longest ongoing series, Dance and Process. The program of new works features artists Karen Bernard, Benjamin Van Buren, Niall Jones, and Ander Mikalson. These performances are the culmination of a ten-week group process of sharing work and feedback. Dance and Process is facilitated by Moriah Evans, Yve Laris Cohen, and Sarah Michelson.

Performances of Dance and Process will take place May 6 & 7 at 6pm at The Kitchen, which is located at 512 West 19th Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $15 ($12 students, seniors) and available online at thekitchen.org or by phone at 212.255.5793 x11.

Benjamin Van Buren is an artist currently living and working in New York City. His performance works have been presented in such diverse places as the New Theater Institute (Riga, Latvia), The Incheon international Contemporary Dance Festival (Incheon, South Korea), and the Edinburgh Fringe, (Edinburgh, Scotland), amongst others. As a performer Ben has appeared in the work of Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ann Liv Young, Eric Jackson Bradley, Cecilia Rubino, and Liz Glynn, amongst others. Ben holds a BA from The New School, and a Graduate Certificate from P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios).

Karen Bernard is a choreographer and interdisciplinary solo performance artist based in New York City. She began studying dance at age three with her father, Steven Bernard, a company member with 20th century pioneer, Charles Weidman. She grew up in a household which incorporated her father's dance school, with students crossing through the family space, so performance art has been deeply engrained throughout her life. As an artist and the Founder and Director of New Dance Alliance (NDA), she performs, teaches, lectures and serves on advisory panels across the U.S., Canada and Europe. This cross-pollination strengthens an ongoing social dialogue among international artists, one that exemplifies her lifelong commitment to performance. That commitment is fully brought to life in NDA's justly-renowned Performance Mix Festival. Between 1986 and 1998, Bernard presented a series of solos in collaboration with DIA Center for Arts and went on to be presented at The Kitchen and Performance Space 122 (It Could Have Been Different) and Danspace at St. Mark's Church and Dance Theater Workshop (Blue). These solos mark the passages of her life experiences as daughter, wife, mother and artist - "spellbinding performer with unusual themes." Jennifer Dunning, New York Times. In 2004, incorporating old video footage, conversational text, and popular music, Bernard received critical acclaim for Removed Exposure, which premiered at Dixon Place and went on to the Festival of New Dance in St. John's, Newfoundland; Women in Transition, a festival in Vienna; then was remounted at Here Arts Center. A handmade book of the same name, Removed Exposure, was co-created with Canadian bookmaker Gray Fraser. In 2006, Totally In Love premiered at The Kitchen - "lusty," said Deborah Jowitt in the Village Voice and in 2008 Surfing The Shadow premiered at Joyce SoHo. From 2008-2012 she created Ouette developed through The Field and residencies at Bogliasco, Earthdance, Silo, White Oak and Wassard Elea and work-in-progress showings at Dixon Place in New York. Highlighted performances of Ouette included the Rhubarb Festival in Toronto, Joyce SoHo in New York and the Festival of New Dance in St. John's Newfoundland. Her most recent work, Suspending and Other Tricks, was made possible through funds from USAProjects and Electronics Media Arts - and residencies at Bogliasco, Earthdance, Firkin Crane's Blank Canvas and Tractor, D'Clinic. The premiere of Suspending and Other Tricks along with four excerpts of works created in the 90's with original costumes by Liz Prince was produced by Triskelion in 2014. She was awarded a Movement Research Artist in Residence and received a BAX 10 award for her invaluable service to artists in the founding and development of the Performance Mix Festival. Bernard is a co-founder of E|MERGE Interdisciplinary Collaborative Residency at Earthdance.

Niall Jones is a dance artist and educator working in New York City and Philadelphia. Niall's research slips between performance and visual art practices engaging disorientation, pleasure, and materiality as multiple frameworks for considering the structures of time and impermanence. Niall's work has been presented by New York Live Arts, The Invisible Dog Art Center (New York), Gibney Dance Center (New York), Roulette (New York), Movement Research (New York), Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (Illinois), Danspace Project (New York), Abrons Art Center (New York), Dance Theater Workshop (New York), Dixon Place (New York), Chez Bushwick (New York), Center for Performance Research (New York). Niall was a Studio Series Artist in Residence at Dance Theater Workshop during the 2010-2011 season and a 2014-2015 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Residency recipient. Niall teaches at the University of the Arts where he also works as the Creative Producer for the School of Dance.

Carey Denniston and Ander Mikalson began collaborating in 2015 with North Shore, performed at MOIETY in Brooklyn, NY. They will be showing a new performance at Storm King Art Center in June 2016. They live and work in New York City. Denniston received her MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College and a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She has exhibited in New York and Los Angeles, and is represented by KANSAS (New York, NY). She has attended artist residencies including Shandaken Project at Storm King (New Windsor, NY), Coast Time (Lincoln City, OR), and École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (Arles, France). Mikalson received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her performances have been shown at The Art, Design & Architecture Museum (Santa Barbara, CA), Churner & Churner (New York, NY), Queens Museum (Queens, NY), Temple Contemporary (Philadelphia, PA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, ME), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA), and Tensta Konsthall (Stockholm, Sweden). She is currently an artist in residence at the Queens Museum and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Center.