Chris Cochrane Collaborates With Ishmael Houston-Jones and Dennis Cooper For THEM

Chris Cochrane will perform songs from the '80s and beyond with his new trio, Chris Cochrane and the Natalie Merchant featuring Hanna Fox and Mike DuClos. They will be joined by special guests Zeena Parkins, Jim Pugliese, Eszter Balint, Eddie Gormley, and Richard Dworkin

Sparked by an invitation to form the experimental rock band No Safety, Chris Cochrane began to write songs and music for dance in the mid-1980s. Cochrane's music, both improvised and composed, has been described as "musical art brut, with its seams showing and its rough spots out in the open" (New York Times). For SOUND CHECK '86 Chris Cochrane is a guitarist who has been composing and playing music in NYC for 28 years. Cochrane has played with Eszter Balint, Zeena Parkins, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, and many others. He has composed music for John Jasperse, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jennifer Monson, Circus Amok, and others.

Sound Check '86 is part of Them and Now

Over the course of an extended rehearsal process at the New Museum, director/choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones revisits the seminal work THEM, an intensely visceral interdisciplinary collaboration with Dennis Cooper (text) and Chris Cochrane (music), originally presented at Performance Space 122 in 1986. The rehearsals at the New Museum culminate in a series of programs collectively titled THEM AND NOW, exploring the artistic impulses that propelled the creation of this "aggressive and vital" (Village Voice) performance work and its reconstruction twenty-five years later. Immediately following the New Museum residency, THEM will have its 2010 premiere at Performance Space 122 October 21-30, 2010.

October 21-30, 2010
at Performance Space 122
http://www.ps122.org/

Chris Cochrane (music) in collaboration with Ishmael Houston-Jones (dance) and Dennis Copper (text) reconstruct THEM , an incendiary work addressed some of the many ways men could be with men. After a successful run of the work-in-progress at PS122 in 1985 the creators of THEM felt that the urgency of the AIDS epidemic demanded a presence in this piece about men with men. In the 1986 premier of the full-length version for six male dancers at PS122 Cooper read his own provocative words, and Cochrane played cacophonous electric guitar live; frequently violent and exhausting dance sequences, culminated in a horrific duet between Houston-Jones and an animal carcass on a dusty mattress. The production almost got PS122 shut down.

Through a reconstruction residency at The New Museum, the three creators have recast THEM with a new generation of male performers. Rehearsals of THEM at the New Museum culminate in a series of programs collectively titled THEM AND NOW, exploring the artistic impulses that propelled the creation of this "aggressive and vital" (Village Voice) performance work and its reconstruction 25 years later.

As part of PS122's 30th Anniversary Season, this ground-breaking piece is back and investigating its continuing relevance to dance and to social discourse in 2010.

2010 Cast: Joey Cannizzaro, Felix Cruz, Jeremy Pheiffer, Niall Noel, Jacob Slominski, Arturo Vidich, Enrico D. Wey
Lighting designer: Joe Levasseur

About Chris Cochrane has performed regularly in bands and improvised with hundreds of players. In addition to his rare solo recordings and work with a number of bands, including the legendary, groundbreaking unit No Safety, which he co-founded with harpist Zeena Parkins and Curlew he has played live and/or recorded with an array of musicians (John Zorn, Fred Frith, Mike Patton, Marc Ribot, Eszter Balint, Kato Hideki, Ikue Mori, Roy Campbell, JD Foster...) visual artists, and choreographers. He is currently working with writer, Dennis Cooper and Choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones to re-work a theater/dance piece entitled "Them" from the mid 80's

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.