Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, In Conjunction With Community Board 7, Presents Spot For Dance: A Micro Movement Festival And Community Zone

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, in conjunction with Community Board 7 presents Spot for Dance: A Micro Movement Festival and Community Zone as a part of PARK(ing) Day on Friday, September 21, 2018 from 1-7pm (open hours) and 3-6pm (performance/workshops) on the West Side of Broadway between 100th & 101st Streets.The event is free and for more information visit: http://timelapsedance.com/events/spot4dance/.

PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists, and activists collaborate to temporarily transform curbside parking spots into public space. This year Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, in conjunction with Community Board 7, will take over four curbside parking spaces on Broadway between 100th and 101st Streets. Two spaces will be a stage for "Spot for Dance: A Micro Movement Festival"; one space will be a parklet -- an architecturally designed miniature park with seating; and one space will be a Community Zone where neighbors and passersby can learn about what's happening on the Upper West Side--and have some fun!

"Spot for Dance" will feature performances by Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance and the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, as well as workshops for adults of all ages and abilities taught by Dances for a Variable Population.

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance will present a site-adaptation of "Wind Rose" for the company's six women. This new work visualizes local and global winds patterns which are being dramatically altered along with climate change. The work continues choreographer Jody Sperling's collaboration with environmental composer Matthew Burtner. During the process, Sperling created a sequence of movements, each with a specific sound and rhythm. Burtner composed these movements into a fugue structure. The result is an integration of sound, movement, and air-flow, with the dancers creating swelling gusts and subsiding breezes in complex rhythmic patterns. The dancers push the boundaries of Sperling's Loie Fuller-influenced apparatus using it to whip and slap the air and in so doing they sculpt the wind so the audience can feel the dance unfold. (Dancers: Frances Barker, Alex Bittner, Morgan Bontz, Carly Cerasuolo, Sperling & Nyemah Stuart)

"Spot for Dance" also presents excerpts from three works by the great 20th-century choreographer Anna Sokolow (1910-2000). The long-lost Moods (1975), set to music by Gyorgyi Ligeti, is a journey through inner states from serene to violent, from exuberant to crushed, from struggle to acceptance. The Unanswered Question (1971), is a poetic tribute to human yearning set to the music of Charles Ives, a composer whose dark and stringent sensibility was comparable to Sokolow's. In Session for Six (1958), set to the music of Argentinian composer William Catanzaro, the stage comes alive with handshakes, the Twist, Walk The Dog, and the Microwave, and is Sokolow's tribute to the spirit of youth. (Quote: "One remembers, watching the performance, Sokolow's belief that audiences and performers must 'feel' dancing that is 'impelled by truth.'")

Naomi Goldberg Hass/Dancesfor a Variable Population offers two half-hour workshops for adults of all ages and all abilities celebrating strong and creative movement.

Community Board 7 volunteers will provide a Community Zone throughout the afternoon with chalk and bubbles and games for children, along with interactive art and urban design installations. Updates on CB7 meetings and projects will be available, along with information from local elected officials.

PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform curbside parking into public space. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world. The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat. For more information and a brief history of Park(ing) Day please see here: https://parkingday.org/about-parking-day/

As NYC real estate prices continue to soar, space for performing arts is increasingly unaffordable and scarce. "Spot for Dance" takes advantage of an under-resourced public space, curbside parking, transforming street space into a stage for free public programming. Drawing attention to unconscious allocation of space resources towards car storage--which subsidizes the use of CO2 emitting vehicles--PARK(ing) Day helps the public imagine a more sustainable, resilient, and vibrant future.

SPOT FOR DANCE SCHEDULE

3-3:15pm - Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance

3:15-3:30pm - Anna Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble

3:30-4pm - Dances for a Variable Population Workshop #1

4:15pm - Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance

4:30-4:45pm - Anna Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble

4:45-5:15pm - Dances for a Variable Population Workshop #1

5:30-5:45pm - Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance

5:45-6pm - Anna Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble

A dancer-choreographer from NYC, Jody Sperling is the Founder/Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance. She has created 40+ works including many furthering the legacy of modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller (1862-1928). Considered the preeminent Fuller stylist, Sperling expanded the genre into the 21st century, deploying it in the context of contemporary performance forms. She was nominated for a 2017 World Choreography Award for her work on the French feature film "The Dancer" (premiere 2016 Cannes Film Festival) inspired by Fuller's life. Years of working in Fuller's idiom, which involves kinesphere-expanding costumes, has influenced Sperling's awareness of the body's relationship with the larger environment. In 2014, she participated in a polar science mission to the Arctic as the first, and to date only, choreographer-in-residence aboard a US Coast Guard icebreaker. During the expedition, she danced on Arctic sea ice and made the short dance film "Ice Floe," winner of a Creative Climate Award. Following that experience, Sperling developed the program Bringing the Arctic Home, a dance-theater work transporting the icescape to the stage and incorporating climate literacy outreach. Current projects focus on using visual-kinetic narratives to connect choreography and climate science.

Time Lapse Dance (TLD), a 501(c)3 non-profit dance company, was founded by dancer-choreographer Jody Sperling in 2000. The company's mission is to forge dynamic connections between dance and movements in culture, history, science, the visual arts, and music. TLD believes dance can be a powerful force moving us towards a more embodied, sustainable, and interconnected future. The company's collaborative work aims to investigate the relationship of the moving body to the world we inhabit through live performance, educational programs, activism, and film/media production.

Matthew Burtner (Composer/Time Lapse Dance) (www.matthewburtner.com) is an Alaskan-born composer and sound artist who creates music from materials and data of climate change, particularly related to the Arctic. Burtner spent his childhood in the far north of Alaska and this profoundly shaped his musical language. He is the leading expert on the eco-acoustics of snow and ice, and has worked extensively with systems of climatology applied to music. First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International competition, and an NEA Art Works and IDEA Award winner, Burtner's music has received honors and prizes from Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany) and The Russolo (Italy) international competitions. His concert music has been performed in festivals and venues throughout the world, and commissioned by ensembles such as NOISE (USA), Integrales (Germany), Peak FreQuency (USA), MiN (Norway), Musikene (Spain), Spiza (Greece), CrossSound (Alaska), and others. He teaches composition and computer music at the University of Virginia, and directs the environmental arts non-profit organization, EcoSono (www.ecosono.org).

Founded in 2005 by Naomi Goldberg Haas, Dances for a Variable Population (DVP) promotes strong and creative movement among adults of all ages and abilities. DVP's programming includes: a multigenerational performance company that engages community members as participants and audiences; Movement Speaks and Dances for Seniors, free, community-based programs for older adults in four boroughs of NYC; performance and choreographic opportunities for older professional dance artists. DVP's site-related performances have been presented in some of New York City's most iconic public spaces, including The New York Botanical Garden, Times Square, Washington Square Park, and the High Line. Artistic Director Goldberg Haas has worked in concert dance, theatre, opera and film; performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet; and was recently awarded LMCC's President's Award for the Performing Arts and serves of the Age Friendly Media, Arts and Culture Working Group as appointed by the Mayor. dvpnyc.org

Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) was born in Hartford, Connecticut and began her training at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Martha Graham and Louis Horst. In the 1930's she was a member of the Graham Dance Company and assisted Mr. Horst in his dance composition classes. During this period, in addition to her association with the WPA dance unit, she formed her own company and began choreographing and performing solo concerts and ensemble works Ms. Sokolow's interest in humanity led her to create works of dramatic contemporary imagery showing both the lyric and stark aspects of the human experience. Her vast range of repertory includes drama, comedy, and lyricism with her commentaries on humanity and social justice threaded into each of her works. In a 1965 Dance Magazine article she wrote that there were no "final solutions to today's problems," but that she "could simply provoke an audience into awareness." Ms. Sokolow's works are performed by the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, and are in the repertories of numerous other companies around the world. Anna Sokolow passed away in her home in New York City on March 29, 2000 at the age of 90.

Samantha Geracht (Artistic Director of Anna Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble) After performing with Anna Sokolow's Players' Project for eleven years, and as a founding member of Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble since 2004, Ms. Geracht was appointed artistic director of Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble in January of 2017. Ms. Geracht has toured and taught Sokolow internationally, and reconstructs Sokolow repertory on professional companies and in college and university dance programs. She has reconstructed Sokolow work at a variety of dance programs including The Boston Conservatory, Franklin and Marshall, Barnard College, Morris County Community College, Centre de Danse Nationale de Paris, Kanopy Dance company, Ellen Robbins Dance as well as worked with various soloists including Jennifer Conely, Kim Jones, and Sandra Kauffman.Ms. Geracht has also performed the Humphrey/Weidman repertory with Deborah Carr Theatre Dance Ensemble, and with Gail Corbin since 1993. She regularly works with Rae Ballard's Thoughts in Motion, and she has also performed with Jim May, as a guest artist with David Parker and The Bang Group as well as in her own choreography. In 2016 she choreographed Shadowbox Theatre's The Earth and Me, a climate change puppet/dance opera for school aged children.

"Spot for Dance" is made possible 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 the New York State Legislature and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

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