The Kitchen Sets Winter 2016 Season

The Kitchen, founded in 1971, has continued to serve as an important catalyst for a broad community of groundbreaking artists working across disciplines. In today's landscape, where contemporary artists and arts institutions are collaborating in new ways, and generating new contexts for the continuing evolution of multi-disciplinary art, The Kitchen, as a nimble, smaller-scale organization, plays an especially vital role: it provides emerging and established artists a hot-house environment for the presentation and discussion of their work, supporting and seeking to foster a vibrant, living dialogue among artists from every field and area of culture.

The Kitchen's Winter 2016 season, January 6-April 2, exemplifies the institution's commitment to a broad range of artists, and to collaboration and discourse among them. The centerpiece of the Winter 2016 season, taking place in The Kitchen's theater and gallery spaces, is "From Minimalism into Algorithm," an exhibition that sets contemporary and historical painting, sculpture, performance, and musical composition in counterpoint, proposing a new through-line for art-making during the past half century. Participating artists include Tony Conrad, Charles Gaines, Maria Hassabi, Donald Judd, Jacob Kassay, Zoe Leonard, Mary Lucier, Vera Molnar, Seth Price, Paul Sietsema, and Laurie Spiegel, among many others. The exhibition unfolds in three phases, with subsequent openings on February 4 and March 3; music and performance programs by participating artists such as Steve Paxton and Robert Ashley, Glenn Branca, and Liz Santoro are described below.

The Winter 2016 season continues The Kitchen's commitment to visceral multi-disciplinary dance and performance works with several premieres including Big Dance Theater's Big Dance: Short Form (January 6-16), which finds the celebrated dance and theater ensemble returning to its dance for roots for a 25th anniversary celebration. Tongue PhD (February 12-13), a new eclectic solo by Ieva Miseviciute,consists of eight chapters, each investigating a different metaphoric lens of the tongue. In their Kitchen debut, Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard present For Claude Shannon (February 18-20), which uses grammatical dependencies between words to recover a linguistic structure that, in turn, generates inexhaustible possibilities for choreographic sequences. Theater artist Andrew Ondrejcak takes inspirations from Strindberg's A Dream Play and the work of 16th century Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel in ELIJAH GREEN (March 10-19), a performance that features a diverse cast of 12 along with choreography by John Jasperse. In Extra Shapes (March 25-29) choreographer DD Dorvillier, collaborating with composer Se?bastien Roux and lighting designer Thomas Dunn, proposes a new way of experiencing and thinking about abstraction in a live situation.

Seminal choreographer Steve Paxton, in his first collaboration with the late Robert Ashley (1930-2014), premieres QUICKSAND (January 28-February 6), an opera-novel for music, dance, and light, composed from a novel of the same name by Ashley. Quicksand features a narrative entirely sung by Ashley, movement by Paxton, a light environment by David Moodey, and an electronic orchestra by Tom Hamilton. Another avant-garde legend, composer and guitarist Glenn Branca, who first performed at The Kitchen in 1978, returns with The Third Ascension (February 23-24), a world premiere for guitar, bass, and drums, with Reg Bloor, Arad Evans, and Owen Weaver. This piece is the latest development of Branca's influential 1981 work The Ascension, in which he experiments with resonances generated by alternate tunings for multiple electric guitars.

Additional events include a rare film screening of Tatsumi Hijikata's original 1976 production of his Costume en Face (January 9) followed by a discussion of the impact of Hijikata's work on artists and choreographers today. Dirty Looks, a bi-coastal platform for queer experimental film, video and performance, returns to The Kitchen to screen A One Man Show (February 8), a singular concert video from 1982 by Grace Jones made in collaboration with photographer Jean-Paul Goude. Dawn of Midi, a Brooklyn-based acoustic ensemble made up of Aakaash Israni from India on double bass, Amino Belyamani from Morocco on piano and Qasim Naqvi from Pakistan on drums, will play a concert on February 10.

More information on The Kitchen's Winter 2016 programming is below. Tickets are available online at www.thekitchen.org; by phone at 212.255.5793 x11; and in person at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street), Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2:00-6:00 P.M.

THE KITCHEN WINTER 2016 PROGRAMMING

[DANCE/PERFORMANCE]
Big Dance Theater
Big Dance: Short Form
January 6-9, 13-16 at 8pm; $25
Big Dance Theater returns to its dance roots for its 25th anniversary celebration, theatrically re-imagining the conventions of a repertory program, presenting here the company's unique blend of dance-theater on an intimate scale, with a fifteen-minute birthday party at its center. Intermission will never be the same. Inspired by disciplines of the concise-novellas, folk tales, diary entries, pencil drawings, thumbnail sketches, and the single page of a notebook-Big Dance performs five distinct short works, each a New York premiere, that embrace the brief, granular, close range, anecdotal, and microscopic. Solos, duets, and group work feature the beloved, veteran Big Dance performers who, under the artistic leadership of Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, have honed a distinctive performance style that has influenced the downtown scene in NYC for decades.

[EXHIBITION]
"From Minimalism into Algorithm"
January 7-April 2
Taking place in The Kitchen theater and gallery spaces throughout the 2015-2016 season, "From Minimalism into Algorithm" sets contemporary and historical painting, sculpture, performance, and musical composition in counterpoint, proposing a new through-line for art-making during the past half century. Organized collaboratively by The Kitchen and participating artists, the exhibition takes up the legacy of Minimalist art and composition during the 1960s and '70s as a precedent for reconsidering work by a younger generation for whom serial repetition corresponds more directly with digital technology and, moreover, reconfiguring of our encounters with physical space through networked communication. Among artists are Tony Conrad, Charles Gaines, Maria Hassabi, Donald Judd, Jacob Kassay, Zoe Leonard, Mary Lucier, Vera Molnar, Seth Price, Paul Sietsema, Laurie Spiegel, and many others.

[FILM/VIDEO]
Ugly Duckling Presse
Costume en Face
January 9 at 5pm; Free
One piece in Big Dance Theater's new production Big Dance: Short Form is based on page 79 of Tatsumi Hijikata's Costume en Face. Please join us for a rare film screening of the director's original 1976 production of the work, followed by a discussion of the impact of Hijikata's work on artists and choreographers today. Among the discussants will be Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, artist Aki Sasamoto, Butoh scholar Bruce Baird, and Ugly Duckling Presse editor Yelena Gluzman.

[MUSIC/PERFORMANCE]
Steve Paxton and Robert Ashley
QUICKSAND
January 28-30, February 4-6 at 7pm; $20
An opera-novel that tells the story of a composer who works as a spy for the US government in a plot to overthrow the government of a South Asian country, QUICKSAND is composed from an eponymous novel by Ashley. Receiving its world premiere at The Kitchen, the work is divided into three acts of 16 scenes each, combining separate and "moveable" sequences of choreography by Paxton, electric orchestra composed by Tom Hamilton, and light environments by David Moodey to present a unified work without linear narrative structure. Organized by Tim Griffin with Katy Dammers as part of "From Minimalism into Algorithm."

[FILM/VIDEO]
Dirty Looks
A One Man Show
February 8 at 8pm; $10
Dirty Looks, a bi-coastal platform for queer experimental film, video and performance, returns to The Kitchen to screen A One Man Show, a singular concert video from 1982 by Grace Jones made in collaboration with photographer Jean-Paul Goude that translated their iconic and trailblazing album artwork for the new, home video format. Jones writes of the tape in her memoirs, "It was like the invention of a new genre, related to the musical, to opera, to circus, to cinema, to documentary, to the art gallery... It was about rejecting normal, often quite sentimental and conventionally crowd-pleasing ways of projecting myself as a black singer and female entertainer, because those ways had turned into clichés, which kept me pent up in a cage." Artist Rashaad Newsome will introduce this tape, which combines rock ribaldry with avant-garde theater, tearing asunder racial and gender stereotypes.

[MUSIC]
George Lewis: The Kitchen Improvises 1976-1983
February 9, at 8pm; $15
To celebrate the release of the archival CD The Kitchen Improvises: 1976-1983-which features performances from Earl Howard, Gerry Hemingway, Roscoe Mitchell, Gerald Oshita, Thomas Buckner, Oliver Lake, Meltable Snaps It, and others-composer George Lewis curates an evening of performances by Earl Howard, Oliver Lake, Michael Lytle, Miya Masaoka, Ikue Mori, and Andrea Parkins inspired by that flowering of hybridity on the downtown New York music scene. Organized by Lumi Tan.

[MUSIC]
Dawn of Midi
February 10 at 8pm; $15
Dawn of Midi is a Brooklyn-based acoustic ensemble made up of Aakaash Israni from India on double bass, Amino Belyamani from Morocco on piano and Qasim Naqvi from Pakistan on drums. With their critically-acclaimed 2015 album Dysnomia (Erased Tapes), the band abandoned improvisation in favor of highly precise composition, utilizing sophisticated rhythmic structures from North and West African folk traditions to weave a sonic tapestry of trance-inducing grooves-a singular sound Israni has deemed "both musically futuristic and sonically vintage." Organized by Lumi Tan.

[PERFORMANCE]
Ieva Miseviciute
Tongue PhD
February 12-13 at 8pm; $15
Miseviciute , Master in Political Science, Master in Cultural Analysis, will finally get her PhD, in one hour, right in front of you, granted by her tongue. Tongue PhD is a new eclectic solo consisting of eight chapters, each investigating a different metaphoric lens of the tongue-fusing elements of physical theater, academic reverie, dance, and Butoh, structured in the format of a PhD dissertation. Organized by Matthew Lyons.

[DANCE]
Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard
For Claude Shannon
February 18-20 at 8pm; $15
In search of another relay between text and movement, For Claude Shannon-named after the pioneering theorist of digital computer design-uses grammatical dependencies between words in a statement by Shannon to recover a linguistic structure that, in turn, generates inexhaustible possibilities for choreographic sequences. Twenty-four discreet movement "atoms" for arms and legs serve as a movement lexicon from which a fixed number of inputs is randomly chosen each time the piece is performed. For each performance, dancers must assemble and learn one particular choreographic outcome among the billions possible, relying on the intimacy they have acquired with the fixed linguistic structure of the text and with one another. Organized by Matthew Lyons as part of "From Minimalism into Algorithm."

[MUSIC]
The Glenn Branca Ensemble
The Third Ascension
February 23 at 7pm and 9pm, February 24 at 8pm; $25
Branca conducts a world premiere for guitar, bass, and drums, with Reg Bloor, Arad Evans, and Owen Weaver. This piece is the latest development of Branca's influential 1981 work The Ascension, in which he experiments with resonances generated by alternate tunings for multiple electric guitars. Organized by Tim Griffin with Katy Dammers as part of "From Minimalism into Algorithm."

[THEATER/PERFORMANCE]
Andrew Ondrejcak
ELIJAH GREEN
March 10-12, 17-19 at 8pm; $20
Ondrejcak adapts Strindberg's A Dream Play, presenting the scenario of a divine visitation into the contemporary tedium of the everyday individual. Despite unremarkable existences, the characters' stories layer and culminate in a portrait of the interconnectivity of all humans, with each individual at the center of the world and yet part of something larger they cannot comprehend.

[PERFORMANCE]
DD Dorvillier
Extra Shapes
March 25-26, 28-29 at 8pm, March 26 at 5pm; $15
Created by Dorvillier in collaboration with composer Se?bastien Roux and lighting designer Thomas Dunn, Extra Shapes occupies a rectangular space divided into three horizontal bands, featuring sound in the front, light in the middle, and dance in the back. Picture a slice of Neapolitan ice cream with its three separate bands-strawberry (sound), vanilla (light), chocolate (movement)-then rotate the plate to view each of its sides. In Extra Shapes, the idea is to present the three mediums simultaneously but separately, and to propose a new way of experiencing and thinking about abstraction in a live situation. Organized by Matthew Lyons as part of "From Minimalism into Algorithm."

About The Kitchen

The Kitchen is one of New York City's most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Our programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists' talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.

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