THE INKOMATI (DIS)CORD, LIVE ARTERY and More Set for New York Live Arts' 2013-14 Season

Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director, and Carla Peterson, Artistic Director, of New York Live Arts today announced the presenting season for 2013-2014. The season runs from September 25, 2013 through May 31, 2014 and includes more than 100 performances and events by more than 40 featured artists. Season highlights include ten world premieres, eight international productions, the Replay Series, Studio Series, Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program, visual art and humanities programming in the Ford Foundation Live Gallery, and more.

"Our season, taken as a whole, draws a revealing picture of what is among the most exciting, delightful and exhilarating expressions of our time." said Carla Peterson, Artistic Director. "We highlight emergent, topical, often provocative ideas framed in beautiful works by nine International Artists from South Africa, Mozambique, Morocco, Serbia, Israel, France and Switzerland. Alongside this richly global perspective are trailblazing voices: from masters like Trisha Brown, to acclaimed artists like John Jasperse, Cynthia Hopkins and luciana achugar, to younger artists who each show enormous promise, pluck, and fresh connection to our contemporary, multivalent terrain."

Kicking off the season will be the U.S. premiere of Boyzie Cekwana (South Africa) and Panaibra Canda's (Mozambique)The Inkomati (dis)cord, a work that "shreds preconceptions about African performance" (Independent South Africa), co-presented with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)'s Crossing the Line 2013 Festival. International Artists feature prominently throughout the season, including the U.S. premiere of Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater, co-presented with Performa for Performa 13, for a limited engagement from November 12 - 17, 2013. A collaborative work with 11 mentally disabled actors from Switzerland's Theater Hora, described by Roberta Smith in the New York Times as "transcendent art in a dance-performance piece," Disabled Theater opens up of a space where disability is not expelled from visual and discursive practices, nor hidden behind the screen of political correctness.

Other international productions include the New York City premiere of Moroccan Bouchra Ouizguen's Ha! (also co-presented as part of FIAF's Crossing the Line 2013 Festival); French dancer-choreographer Jeanne Morodoj's La Poème and Tel-Aviv-based choreographer Arkadi Zaides's A Response to Dig Deep (presented in partnership with Walls and Bridges). Works by Serbian artists Saša Asentic and Ana Vujanovic and French artists Alain Buffard and Maud Le Pladec will also have their U.S. premieres.

From April 7 - 13, 2014, the celebrated Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) will be in residence at New York Live Arts for a series of performances, classes and discussions that highLight Brown's investigations of complexity and subtle variations on unison and non-unison movement. Performances will include two works from Brown's "Unstable Molecular Structure" cycle: Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503 (1980) and the rarely-seen Son of Gone Fishin'(1981), with music by Robert Ashley. The program also includes early work Solo Olos (1976) andRogues (2011), with a score by Alvin Curran.

"We support and present artists who, as cultural innovators, are engaged in some of the most compelling, challenging and provocative ideas of contemporary times," said Bill T. Jones. "Through commissioning, presentation, publication and public dialogues, we strive to bring audiences and artists together in lively dialogue. For more than five decades, Trisha Brown's work has helped to both define and confront our notions of dance performance, and we are extremely pleased to welcome the Trisha Brown Dance Company to Live Arts for their spring residency next April."

In keeping with Live Arts' deep commitment to supporting the creation of new works, the season also includes a wide array of exciting new commissions presented through the Dance Theater Workshop Commissioning Fund, including world premieres by Molissa Fenley, Donna Uchizono, Cynthia Hopkins, Beth Gill, luciana achugar, John Jasperse, Elena Demyanenko & Dai Jian, Niv Acosta, Tess Dworman and Kimberly Bartosik.

"We are pleased to announce the 2013-2014 Season, which is reflective of the pluralistic organization we are becoming," said Jean Davidson, CEO & Executive Director of New York LiveArts. "We strive to produce and present artists, works and ideas that cannot be experienced elsewhere in NYC. We are so grateful to the foundations, government agencies and individual contributors who are sustaining this vision and helping bring this work to our audience."

The Replay Series offers audiences a look back at seminal works in the careers of established artists, as well as remounted runs of both in-demand shows and those that warrant greater visibility from previous seasons. This season's Replay Series artists and works include Fenley'sEnergizer, The Floor Dances and Witches' Float, Big Dance Theater's Ich, Kürbisgeist and Uchizono's State of Heads.

Also included in the 2013-2014 season is Live Artery, a multi-day event dedicated to connecting dance and movement-based artists, curators and presenters at Live Arts during the annual APAP|NYC Conference. Live Artery 2014 will feature work-in-process showings by Live Arts' second Resident Commissioned Artist Kyle Abraham, Founder and Artistic Director of Abraham.In.Motion, as well as other artists to be announced. The Studio Series work-in-process showings will feature artists Sam Kim, Jon Kinzel, Rashaun Mitchell, Cori Olinghouse, Jimena Paz, Saul Ulerio and Mariana Valencia. Additional programming highlights include the Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program, founded in 1965 by Dance Theater Workshop, which annually offers six early-career artists comprehensive performance and residency support; and Live Arts' education initiative, Shared Practice, which returns for a second year and features workshops with season artists that aim to provide a dynamic exchange of information in support of furthering the artistry of all involved.

The All Access Season Pass for the 2013-2014 season is currently on sale to the general public. Passes are available for the entire season or for the fall season only. Single tickets go on sale on to New York Live Arts Members, Associate Artists and Season Pass holders on July 15 and to the general public on July 22. Passes and tickets are available in person at the box office, by calling the box office at 212-924-0077 and online at newyorklivearts.org.

Season Passes start at $150 and may be reserved online, by phone or in person at the box office. Single tickets for fall and winter events go on sale to New York Live Arts Members, Associate Artists and Season Pass holders on July 15 and to the general public on July 22. Box Office hours: Monday - Friday 1 - 9pm and Saturday-Sunday 12 - 8pm. Phone: 212-924-0077. Online: www.newyorklivearts.org. New York Live Arts is located at 219 West 19th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues.

New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry offering audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation and active engagement with the social, political and cultural currents of our times. At the center of this identity is Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director, a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer.

We commission, produce and present performances in our 20,000 square foot home, which includes a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square foot studios that can be combined into one large studio. New York Live Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, provides an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people and supports the continuing professional development of artists. Our influence extends beyond NYC through our international cultural exchange program that currently places artists in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

NEW YORK LIVE ARTS 2013-2014 SEASON AND PROGRAMS

PRESENTING SEASON:
In chronological order:

Boyzie Cekwana and Panaibra Canda
The Inkomati (dis)cord
Co-presented with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)'s Crossing the Line 2013 Festival
(U.S. Premiere)
September 25, 26 at 7:30p
Tickets: $20

Making its U.S. premiere, The Inkomati (dis)cord is a work made collaboratively by South African artist Boyzie Cekwana and Mozambique artist Panaibra Canda. In 1984, the Mozambique of Samora Machel and the South African apartheid state signed the Nkomati accord, a non-aggression pact. The Inkomati (dis)cord is Cekwana and Canda's referral to this failed historical agreement, as well as the river that lent its name to it. In an attempt to break through artificial borders and traverse territories, using their own bodies, skins, identities and histories, the choreographers explore the internalized colonial boundaries that still alienate shared histories and aspirations.

Bouchra Ouizguen
Ha!
Co-presented with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)'s Crossing the Line 2013 Festival
(NYC Premiere)
September 27, 28 at 7:30p
Tickets: $20

Inspired by the quatrains of Persian poet and Sufi mystic Djalâl ad-Dîn Rûmî, Ha!, the latest creation by Bouchra Ouizguen, is an exploration of madness. Using the same working method which led to the success of Madame Plaza (presented at New York Live Arts in September 2012 as part of Voices of Strength), Ouizguen returned to Morocco, her homeland, gaining additional inspiration from the cultural terrain that has enriched the movement, singing and language in this new work.

Molissa Fenley
Energizer (1980);The Floor Dances (1989); Witches' Float (1993)

(Replay Series)
Found Object
(World Premiere)

October 2 - 5 at 7:30p

October 5 at 3:00p: Lecture with Molissa Fenely and solo performance of The Floor Dances

Tickets: $30

Molissa Fenley presents Energizer (1980), The Floor Dances (1989) and Witches' Float (1993) in two programs as part of the popular Replay Series. Energizer, a quartet featuring music by Mark Freedman and originally commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop in 1980, returns to the public eye in its entirety for the first time since 1982. Two of Fenley's sculptural dances are presented in alteration: in Program A, The Floor Dances (1989), a solo performed by Fenley herself, with sculpture by Richard Long and music by Henryk Gorecki; in Program B, Witches' Float (1993) a solo performed by guest artist Holley Farmer, with sculpture by Kiki Smith and music by Alvin Lucier. Both Program A and Program B culminate with the world premiere of Found Object, a new work commissioned by New York Live Arts.

Arkadi Zaides and Quatuor Leonis
A response to Dig Deep

Co-presented with Walls and Bridges Festival
(U.S. Premiere)

October 10, 7:30p
Tickets: $10 (suggested donation)

A response to Dig Deep is Arcadi Zaldes' dance interpretation of Julia Wolfe's composition, Dig Deep. Distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience, Zaides explores a somatic response to his personal experience of immigration, homelessness and a relentless desire to bridge different communities in Israel. The performance will be preceded by a series of short talks on body and music featuring writer and filmmaker Elena Mannes, artist DJ Spooky and music philosopher Peter Szendy.

Jeanne Morodoj
La Poème

Co-presented with Walls and Bridges Festival
(U.S. Premiere)

October 11 & 12, 7:30p

Tickets: $10 (suggested donation)

New York Live Arts continues its partnership with Villa Gillet's "Walls and Bridges," this year introducing Jeanne Morodoj's La Poème. A short piece joyfully surrounding the female body, La Poème is a multi-disciplinary work featuring movement and singing. Mordoj reconnects with her origins and addresses new modes of expression. Each program also includes talks with International Artists and thinkers dealing with gender identity and the representation of women, including Bruno Perreau, Elizabeth Povinelli and Beatriz Preciado, and hosted by Damien Bright (October 11) and a post-performance Q&A with the artist and Avital Ronell hosted by Quentin Girard (October 12).

Big Dance Theater
Ich, Kürbisgeist
(Replay Series)

October 31, November 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 at 7:30p

Late night showings on November 1, 2, 8, 9 at 10:00p

Tickets: $30

Big Dance Theater's (BDT) Ich, Kürbisgeist is set in a harsh quasi-medieval landscape facing destruction, populated by a community speaking a rigorous, specific and completely invented language. Every word is semi-recognizable: an amalgam of English, Swedish, German and Sid Ceasar. A collaboration between playwright Sibyl Kempson, director/performer Paul Lazar and choreographer Annie-B Parson, Ich, Kürbisgeist, originally co-commissioned by Performance Space 122 and The Chocolate Factory and premiered at The Chocolate Factory in 2012, installs itself on the stage at New York Live Arts and returns just in time for a spooky Halloween adventure.

Jérôme Bel and Theater Hora
Disabled Theater
Co-presented with Performa for Performa 13
(U.S. Premiere)
November 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 at 7:30p
November 17 at 3:00p
Tickets: $40

Choreographer Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater is a collaboration between Bel and 11 actors from Zurich's Theater Hora, Switzerland's best-known professional theater company comprised of actors with learning and mental disabilities. With Disabled Theater, Bel opens up a space where disability is not expelled from visual and discursive practices, nor hidden behind the screen of political correctness. Instead, he places it squarely at the center of a discourse that has a bearing on both the aesthetic and political dimensions. Sparking both debate and praise across Europe, the work was a sensation at Documenta 13. Roberta Smith of the New York Times dubbed it "transcendent art," adding that she "started shocked and disoriented and ended up completely caught up in it and grateful for what it revealed to me about what is often called 'our common humanity."

Donna Uchizono Company

Fire Underground

(World Premiere)

State of Heads

(Replay Series)

December 4, 5, 6, 7 at 7:30p

December 7 at 3:00p - Replay Series

Tickets: $30

Donna Uchizono Company (DUC) presents new and reworked evening-length works. Fire Underground, DUC's newest work, draws from Uchizono's harrowing experience of a complex international adoption process. Featuring a cast of five performers, the multi-layered work is designed as a series of "salon" style performances that illuminate the complex crises of our time and the interconnections that bind us as we witness the courage to be human. State of Heads, a work for three dancers that premiered at DTW in 1999 and was last seen on the New York LiveArts stage last April as part of Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks, features an original sound-score by "Bessie" award-winning artist James Lo and explores the concept of disjointedness and the passage of time.

Fresh Tracks

December 19, 20, 21 at 7:30p

Tickets: $10

Created in 1965 by Dance Theater Workshop and now continued as a signature program of NewYork Live Arts, the Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program selects six early career artists annually to receive comprehensive performance and residency support. The program begins with this showcase performance in New York Live Arts' theater. Following the performance, each artist receives a 50-hour creative residency in the New York Live Arts studios along with introductory level professional development workshops. Artists also participate in dialogue sessions facilitating open discussion about their creative process and one-on-one consultations with the Fresh Tracks Artistic Advisor.

Live Artery

January 9, 10, 11, 2014, times vary

Tickets: $10

A multi-day event at New York Live Arts connecting dance and body-based artists, curators and presenters, Live Artery fuels a vibrant international network in support of compelling artists and ideas. This season's series will feature a work-in-process showing by New York Live ArtsResident Commissioned Artist Kyle Abraham as well as showcases by other season artists.

Niv Acosta and Tess Dworman
i shot denzel; Untitled Work
(World Premiere)

January 30, 31, February 1 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

Former Fresh Tracks artist (2011) Niv Acosta and dancer-choreographer Tess Dworman present a shared evening. In i shot denzel, Acosta presents the sixth incarnation of a three-year series of "denzels". This newest solo work explores the performance of "blackness" within the context of contemporary or classical movement. Dworman, who appeared on the New York Live Artsstage most recently in Tere O'Connor's Secret Mary, will present her newest work. An improvised solo, this new work explores the fluid nature between shape and identity on the body.

Elena Demyanenko & Dai Jian
Blue Room
(World Premiere)

February 13, 14, 15 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

A multi-media duet exploring relationship, Blue Room is a collaboration between Chinese artist Dai Jian and Russian-born Elena Demyanenko, recent alumni of Trisha Brown Dance Company. This evening of individual and paired works will unfold as a dialogue through myriad possible intricate and detailed existences. Two independent mind-bodies with different backgrounds, behaviors, languages and cultures suture together, provoking a third presence unique to each performance.

Saša Asentic and Ana Vujanovic

On Trial Together
(U.S. Premiere)

February 20, 21, 22 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

Described as a hybrid performance between theater, choreography and a social experiment, Asentic and Vujanovic engage the audience through a social role play and live action game structure where audience members are, each one, actor, participant and catalyst for change. Research and creative development for On Trial Together was supported in part through New York Live Arts' The Suitcase Fund.

Kimberly Bartosik

You are my heat and glare

(U.S. Premiere)

February 26, 27, 28, March 1 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

"What are we made of but hunger and rage?" is a question provoked by Anne Carson's poetic essay "The Anthropology of Water" and explored by "Bessie" award-winner Kimberly Bartosik in You are my heat and glare. This evening length work unfolds in a series of viscerally provocative, mixed-genre duets for dancers, designers and voice artists, including a duet for light and body featuring Bartosik and her longtime collaborator RodeRick Murray, who joins her onstage. Dancers Joanna Kotze and Marc Mann and singers Gelsey Bell and Dave Ruder complete the cast.

Cynthia Hopkins
A Living Documentary
(World Premiere)

March 5, 6, 7, 8 at 7:30p

Tickets: $30

Cynthia Hopkins presents the world premiere of A Living Documentary, a comedic, no-nonsense reflection on the trials and tribulations of earning a living as a professional theater artist in the 21st century. Intertwining elements of musical comedy, autobiography, documentary and fiction,A Living Documentary intersperses live interviews with portrayals of semi-fictional comedic characters, all the while asking myriad questions about the realities of professional artistic life in New York City.

Beth Gill

New Work for the Desert

(World Premiere)

March 20, 21, 22 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

In her latest work, New Work for the Desert, dancer-choreographer and "Bessie" award winner Beth Gill teams up with performers Danielle Goldman, Jennifer Lafferty, Heather Lang, Marilyn Maywald, Kayvon Pourazar, Stuart Singer and lighting designer Thomas Dunn to build a space in which light is alive, space is vast and the body struggles through form, gesture and contact to recall and reclaim an expressive moment in dance.

luciana achugar

OTRO TEATRO

(NYC Premiere)
Co-commissioned by New York Live Arts and the Walker Arts Center

April 2, 3, 4, 5 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

Former Studio Series (2013), Fresh Tracks (2011-2012) and DTW commissioned artist (2008) luciana achugar presents the New York City premiere of OTRO TEATRO, co-commissioned by the Walker Arts Center. Concerned with ritual practices and her own cultural background (having grown up in Latin America), OTRO TEATRO is achugar's current search for another kind of theater, a ritual of becoming, an occasion for communion. Directly translating to both "another theater" and "other theater" in her native Spanish, OTRO TEATRO, featuring vocal coaching and original music composed by Michael Kiley and set design by longtime collaborator Michael Mahalchick, is a dark rite of passage from destruction to rebuilding, and a dance to give voice to the arcane spirit and desire of our uncivilized bodies.

Trisha Brown Dance Company

Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503; Son of Gone Fishin'; Solo Olos; Rogues

(New York Live Arts Residency)

April 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 at 7:30p

April 13 at 3:00p

Tickets: $40

The iconic Trisha Brown Dance Company is in residence for a series of performances, classes and discussions, highlighting Brown's investigations of complexity and subtle variations on unison and non-unison movement, its degrees and dynamics, its aberrations and reversals. Performance highlights include works from Brown's "Unstable Molecular Structure" cycle: Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503 (1980) and the rarely-seen Son of Gone Fishin' (1981), with music by Robert Ashley, Brown's first music collaboration. With an evanescent fog sculpture by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, Opal Loop features Brown's signature sinuous movement, fluidly timed and spaced. The program also includes Solo Olos (1976) and Rogues (2011), with a score by Alvin Curran.

Alain Buffard

Baron Samedi

(U.S. Premiere)

May 1, 2, 3 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

First performed in April 2012 at the Théâtre de Nîmes in France, Alain Buffard's Baron Samedi is named after a Haitian "Vaudou" spirit. A tutelary figure for the work, Baron Samedi invokes ghosts, extracts the perfect dancing body and is a symbol of visibility in life and invisibility in death. Featuring an international cast including Nadia Beugré, David Thomson and Will Rawls (among others), Buffard, continuing his longstanding connection with music as thematic source material, harnessing the music of Kurt Weill performed by live musicians to bring Baron Samedi to life.

Maud Le Pladec

Ominous Funk & Dystopia

(U.S. Premiere)

May 8, 9, 10 at 7:30p

Tickets: $20

A diptych of new works by up and coming French dancer-choreographer Maud Le Pladec, Ominous Funk & Dystopia and Democracy are the first two parts of a three-part series titled To Bang on a Can. The work explores the relationship between sound and gesture using atonality and breaks in form, and is performed to the live music of David Lang and Julia Wolfe, two founders of the music group "Bang on a Can". This work, along with Alain Buffard's, will be part of the month-long, multi-venue French-American Dance Festival taking place throughout the month of May 2014 in New York.

John Jasperse

From once between (working-title)

(World Premiere)

May 28, 29, 30, 31 at 7:30p

May 30, 31 at 9:00p (these may change once we get a better idea of the running time)

Tickets: $30

Celebrated New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award-winning choreographer John Jasperse presents his newest work, From once between (working-title). Last seen on the LiveArts stage in 2012 with Fort Blossom revisited, Jasperse, known for his "voracious curiosity" (Dance Magazine), returns with a work generated from the spaces between what are often seen to be disparate sensibilities.

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