The Present Place
an improvisation for lasting action
8 PM AT JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH
FREE / PERFORMANCE
Contributions by: Justin Cabrillos, Anna Carapetyan, Ayano Elson, Marguerite Hemmings, Michael Mahalchick, Sarah Maxfield, BASHIR DAVIID NAIM, Marissa Perel, Randy Reyes, Lily Bo Shapiro, Anna Adams Stark.
Sound by: Julia Santoli
Followed by Opening Festival Toast
Opening the 2016 Movement Research Spring Festival, this performance at Judson Church shines light on the present moment. A group of festival artists including participants, teachers/healers, designers, administrators, technicians, Movement Research staff, and some mysterious guests gather to celebrate the present place of action. This eclectic group of individuals will improvise through guided scores in unexpected partnerships and groupings. Join us as a witness in a night of finding care in the moment, excitement in the unknowing, and ephemeral love in improvisation. Julia Santoli’s soundscape mediates the space, these dancing bodies, and the traces of past experience in the present. What a gift to watch each other create!
Justin Cabrillos is a choreographer, artist, and writer based in Brooklyn. He is a 2016 danceWEB scholar at ImPulsTanz and a recipient of a 2011 Greenhouse grant from the Chicago Dancemaker’s Forum. His work has been commissioned by the IN>TIME Series in Chicago, and his latest project, Holdings, has been commissioned by Danspace Project and is supported by a residency at Chez Bushwick. Cabrillos has shown work at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Roulette, and Movement Research at Judson Church. He has performed with Every house has a door and Jen Rosenblit.
Anna Carapetyan has collaborated and performed with many wonderful choreographers in her nearly 13 years in New York. For the past few years she has also been working as a doula, supporting new and growing families through preparations for birth, labor and delivery, and throughout the postpartum period. She is a volunteer full-spectrum doula with the Doula Project.
Ayano Elson is a choreographer and designer. She graduated from Connecticut College with majors in dance and art history. Since moving to New York, her work has been presented by AUNTS, Gibney Dance, New Museum, Roulette, and Triskelion Arts. She has performed in works by Evvie Allison, Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Liz Charky, and Steven Reker in places like Audio Visual Arts, BRIC, the Invisible Dog, the Kitchen, and Lincoln Center. (Ayano is always looking for more choreographers to dance with!)
As a dancer, Marguerite Hemmings specializes in street styles, social dances, hip hop, and dancehall, and has been training in modern and West African dance. Choreographically, Marguerite has received commissions and grants from Harlem Stage, Jerome Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, University Settlement, and the Dancing While Black Fellowship furthering her work as an artist/organizer. As for her current artistic work, she recently self-directed the Blacker the Berry Project, part of an overarching multimedia endeavor called ‘we free’ that explores the millennial generation’s take on liberation. The first installment of ‘we free’ was recently shown at Gibney Dance’s Double Plus Series.
Michael Mahalchick was bred in Pottsville, Pennsylvania and is now the toast of New York City. He is a multidisciplinary artist who finds many ways to train his chosen material into forms of his liking. In 2010 he received a “Bessie” for his work with luciana achugar and is currently working on something secret.
Sarah Maxfield creates performance and structures for viewing/discussing performance and its context. Maxfield’s work has been presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, P.S. 122, and the Museum of Arts and Design, etc.. Maxfield has written for The Brooklyn Rail, The Performance Club, Contact Quarterly, and the Movement Research Performance Journal. She was a Context Notes Writer for DTW’s final season. For nearly a decade, Maxfield curated THROW, a performance development series she created, presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater. As a Fellow at Abrons Arts Center, she launched Now and Then, a performance reading series. Currently, Maxfield is collecting an artist driven archive with Nonlinear Lineage, is a founding manager of ArtsPool, and improvising with her kiddo.
BASHIR DAVIID NAIM IS A MOVEMENT ARTIST BASED PRIMARILY IN LOS ANGELES. THEIR FAMILY FOUNDED A DANCE AND PERFORMANCE ART COMMUNITY IN THE BERKSHIRE MOUNTAINS. BASHIR WAS EARLY ACQUAINTED WITH ARTISTS LIKE DAVID AMRAM, THE KRONOS QUARTET, PINA BAUSCH. BASHIR NAIM HAS COLLABORATED WITH PEACHES, SIA, DEVENDRA BANHART, ROSE MCGOWAN, OUR LADY J, MILLIE BROWN, RYAN HEFFINGTON, ZACKARY DRUCKER AND SOFIA MORENO. THEY CAN BE SEEN OPPOSITE ANJELICA HUSTON AND JEFFREY TAMBOR ON JILL SOLOWAY’S “TRANSPARENT”, AND IN BENJY RUSSELL’S “BATTLEFIELD OF FLOWERS”.
Marissa Perel’s interdisciplinary work includes performance, installation, criticism and curatorial projects. She is interested in how identity serves to contextualize one’s artistic research and methods. Currently an Artist-In-Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Perel has presented her work at The Chocolate Factory Theater, Dixon Place, The Poetry Project, Danspace Project, DIVO Institute (Prague, CR), Medium Gallery (Bratislava, SK), and Konstfack (Stockholm, SE), where she was recently a visiting artist. She has taught workshops for Movement Research Spring Festival: Somewhere Out There (2008), CLASSCLASSCLASS (2009-2013), What Is Queer Performance? (2014), and Community of Practice (2015).
Randy Reyes graduated from Williams College with a self-designed B.A. in Dance & Performance Studies (including a year of study at Tanzfabrik) and was the recipient of the Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship in Dance Award. Most recently, he directed a collective of artists under his performance project Barrio Cartography and performed The Present Sense (Phase 1) – Agua Caliente, Agua Tibia, Agua Fria as part of his residency at Shuaspace, presented Never Arriving as part of Work Up 2.0 at Gibney Dance Center, is participating in the Hemispheric Institute’s EMERGENYC program, and is in process with Daria Faïn. Reyes moves between NJ, NYC, & the Bay Area and is mostly rehearsing in his living room.
Lily Bo Shapiro has been variously image making here, the birthplace, since 1990.
Anna Adams Stark is a performer, dance-maker, arts administrator and stage manager. Anna has performed works by Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Kendra Portier/BANDportier, Megan V. Sprenger/MVworks, Alexandra Beller, Laura Peterson Choreography, and Alex Springer & Xan Burley/the median movement, among others. Currently, Anna dances with Kim Brandt, Levi Gonzalez, Sarah A.O. Rosner/A.O. Movement Collective and Tara Aisha Willis. Anna’s own work has been shown at THROW, AUNTS, Dance New Amsterdam, the Tank, Triskelion Arts, and the University of Iowa. In 2014, she joined the staff at Movement Research.