ODC to Present 9th Home Season of Hope Mohr Dance, 6/9-11

ODC Theater will present the ninth home season of Hope Mohr Dance, a company esteemed for its "rigorous conceptual approach to fundamental questions about the body in space and time" (Dance View Times). A company-in-residence at ODC, Hope Mohr Dance will perform a double bill featuring the world premiere of Manifesting, a dance theater work inspired by art manifestos, and the revival of Stay, Mohr's choreographic response to paintings of Francis Bacon. Hope Mohr Dance's ninth home season runs June 9 - 11, Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 - $45, and may be purchased online at odcdance.org/tickets.

"Manifesting breaks new ground for me," said Hope Mohr. "I've been making contemporary dance since 1994, and am now interested in working in a more theatrical context. To create Manifesting, a dance theater work inspired by artist manifestos, I am collaborating not only with an outstanding cast of both actors and dancers, but also with designer Gabe Maxson, formerly of the avant-garde Wooster Group, and Beth Wilmurt, who has written original songs for the production."

For inspiration, Mohr researched a range of artist manifestos, including writings by Yvonne Rainer, Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud, the Gutai group and the surrealists.

Stay, which premiered at ODC Theater last year, takes the emotionally raw paintings of Francis Bacon as its point of departure. "In Stay I'm not working to recreate Bacon's compositions," explained Mohr, "but instead the feelings I have in response to his paintings: viscerally affected, morally challenged. Bacon's hallucinatory images have pushed me to 'stay' longer with certain difficult ideas, opening the door to emotional content underneath formal concerns."

In Stay those formal concerns include a commitment -- one shared with Bacon -- to non-narrative representation. More pressingly for Mohr, the piece explores the relationship between abstraction and the emotions in an effort to find a way out of the alienation so endemic to Bacon's work. "I want to show that in the context of abstract art there can be emotional connection -- among dancers, and between performers and audience."

"In a season organized around questions of identity," said ODC Deputy Director Christy Bolingbroke, "I'm thrilled to bring back Stay, a breakthrough work for Hope reflecting a heightened level of clarity and artistry, while she takes her next artistic leap in a piece like Manifesting -- never complacent, always questioning and pushing herself."

Performers in Hope Mohr Dance's ninth home season include James Graham, Tara McArthur, Parker Murphy, Jane Selna, Wiley Naman Strasser, Jenny Stulberg and Kenny Toll. Additional collaborators include sound designer Theodore Hulsker, set, lighting and live video projection designer David Szlasa, and costume and mask designer Tiffany Amundson.

This presentation of Hope Mohr Dance is made possible with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and with creative support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photo by Andrew Weeks

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