Behind The Scenes: Yoshiko Chuma's π= 3.14.. NOTHINg, or EVERYTHINg

The world premiere of Yoshiko Chuma's π= 3.14.. NOTHINg, or EVERYTHINg is this Thursday, June 4th. Take a look at rehearsal footage shot this week in The Ellen Stewart Theatre.

La MaMa presents
π= 3.14.. 
NOTHINg, or 
EVERYTHINg

by Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks
Conception and Design by Yoshiko Chuma

June 4 - 7, 2015
Thursday - Saturday @ 8pm; Sunday @ 4pm

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; 10@$10 Tickets Sold Out

For Tickets and Info: CLICK HERE

Who's Who in The School of Hard Knocks?!

THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS (SOHK), founded in 1984, is a collaborative effort of multidisciplinary artists working under the Artistic Direction of Yoshiko Chuma. Over the course of the company’s history, more than 2,000 people have performed under her direction in situations ranging from theatrical dance concerts to street performances, parades, and large-scale spectacles in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, especially the Middle East.

Yoshiko Chuma has once again gathered a highly acclaimed cast and crew of talented performers to take the stage at LaMaMa Moves! Dance Festival this week. Take a look at some of the amazing performers and artists you don't want to miss in the World Premiere of Yushiko Chuma's π= 3.14.. NOTHINg, or EVERYTHINg - With dry tech endless peripheral border - Fukushima - Kabul - Amman - Ramallah - Berlin this weekend:

Megumi Eda (performer): 

Photo by: Ricardo Tinelli

"dreamy, meditative"

~ The New York Times

"She again added depth to the pyrotechnical ballet otherwise on display, offsetting a fitful musical passage of horns and percussion with dancing that was powerful but nuanced."

~ The New Yorker

2004 Bessie Award Winner

Born in Nagano, Japan, Megumi Eda had her professional debut as a ballerina with the Matsuyama Ballet Company in Tokyo. At 16 she moved to Europe and spent the next 15 years working and touring constantly with the Hamburg Ballet, Dutch National Ballet and the Rambert Dance Company where she worked with John Neumeier, Mats Ek, Jiri Kylian, William Forsythe, Hans van Manen and many others. She is a founding member of Armitage Gone! Dance and has continued to collaborate with Karole Armitage for over a decade. Megumi has begun to incorporate sculpture, video and graphics into her freelance work, and is thrilled to be working closely with Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks.

Lance Gries (performer):

Photo by Bart Grietens

"Mr. Gries, a much admired former Trisha Brown dancer, is the connective tissue."

~ The New York Times

2011 Bessie Award Nominee, Best Production

From 1985-1992 he was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. His work with that company has been honored with a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award and a Princess Grace Foundation Award.  Since 1990, he has created and presented solo and group choreography in various venues in New York City such as The Kitchen, Danspace, Judson Church, La MaMa and The State Theater, as well as cities throughout Europe. Gries is a renowned teacher, having taught workshops and master classes throughout the world. In 1994 he was a "founding teacher" of PARTS in Brussels, Belgium and continues there as a visiting teacher.  Amongst other awards and grants, he is a 2014 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellow.

Saori Tsukada (performer):  

Photo from Watermill Center

"a startlingly precise dancer."

~ The New York Times

Best Actress Nominee; 2005 & 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival

Saori Tsukada is a New York based performance artist who works in various genre such as theater, puppet/mask, dance, film and voice-over. Her collaborators of past & current includes choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, Catherine Galasso, composer/theater artist John Moran, video artist Katja Loher, playwright/director Aya Ogawa, theater company Hoi Polloi, Witness Relocation. She has performed at venues like The Kitchen, Brooklyn Museum, DTW, PS 122, Japan Society in NY, and has toured London, Amsterdam, Glasgow, Düsseldorf, Warsaw, Skopje, Bucharest and Istanbul among others. She is currently developing a silent film performance work called Club Diamond, with filmmaker/theater artist Nikki Appino.

Nick Vaughan & Jake Margolin (live video painting): 

                                                                                                                                      Photo by The New York Times, Ayumi Sakamoto

"They are, for better or worse, moving forward."

~The New York Times

Nick Vaughan & Jake Margolin are interdisciplinary artists who’s solo shows include “A MARRIAGE: 2 (WEST-ER)” (Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn); “A MARRIAGE: 1 (SUBURBIA)” (HERE Arts Center, NYC, MCLA’s Gallery 51, North Adams, MA, Sleeping Weazle, Boston); and “Art/Slant Presents: Nick & Jake” (Chicago, IL).  Their collaborations with choreographers include creating the environments for Faye Driscoll’s “Thank You For Coming: ATTENDANCE” (Danspace, NYC); Yoshiko Chuma’s “Shredded” (Gallery 128, NYC); and Pavel Zustiak’s “S(even)” (New Hazlett Theater, Pittsburgh).  They are recipients of a 2015 NYFA Fellowship and recipients of grants from the MAPFund and mediaThe foundation, inc.  Nick & Jake are members of the devised theater company The TEAM with whom they have created five plays that have won numerous awards and toured throughout the world to venues such as The Shed at the National Theater, London; The Barbican Centre, London; The Public Theater, NYC; PS122, NYC; The Walker, Minneapolis; Culturegest, Lisbon; and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.  As a scenographer, Nick has designed over 70 shows for theater, opera and dance that have been seen throughout the US, Canada, the UK, Portugal, Romania, China, Japan, and Oman.  Nick & Jake currently live in Houston, Texas where they are researching and developing a series of work about pre-stonewall LGBT histories in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico.  These pieces will be shown at the Invisible Dog in 2016.


La MaMa presents

π= 3.14.. NOTHINg, or EVERYTHINg 

(World Premiere)

June 04 - June 07, 2015

Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 4pm

Ellen Stewart Theatre | 66 East 4th Street (2nd Floor)

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 are available for every performance - pre-sale only, not available day-of-show!

For tickets & info click HERE!

BroadwayWorld previews BOTOX ANGELS by Dood Paard

BroadwayWorld takes a look at the upcoming BOTOX ANGELS by Dood Paard, coming to The Ellen Stewart Theatre for five performances only: June 25 - 28, 2015.

"From Dood Paard ("Dead Horse") Theatre in Amsterdam comes "Botox Angels," a play about militant female sexuality which is abundant in sultry dialogue, jealousy and emotional violence. Three clownish lesbian characters, named Swift, Cocky and Deedee, negotiate shifting power relationships, juggle dildos and fake breasts, play dress-up games and cross swords about men, breast reductions, philosphy versus banality and emotion versus rationality. Written by Rob de Graaf, translated into English by Paul Evans, it is performed by Ellen Goemans, Janneke Remmers and Manja Topper, all from Holland. La MaMa presents the work's American premiere June 25 to 28, coinciding with Gay Pride Weekend."

Read the full article: HERE


La MaMa presents
BOTOX 
ANGELS
by Dood Paard
Performed by Ellen Goemans, Janneke Remmers & Manja Topper
Text by Rob de Graaf
Choreography by Roy Peters

June 25 - 28, 2015
Thursday - Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 3pm and 8pm; Sunday at 4pm

Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors; ten tickets priced at $10 are available for every performance - pre-sale only, not available day-of-show!

For Tickets and Info: Click Here

Praise for the 2015 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival (so far)

DUSK AHEAD 

by Junk Ensemble

"Three blindfolded dancers grope in near darkness as two others lead them in different directions to the sound of hand bells. Moments later, four performers execute a squiggly gestural sequence knitted together with shoulder shrugs, flowing arms and slow pliés punctuated by quick swipes of the ankle. At the back of the stage, another dancer, wearing a wolf’s head, saunters by.

'Dusk Ahead,' an evening-length work full of such eclectic moments and performed by Junk Ensemble on Saturday afternoon at the Ellen Stewart Theater, embraces the surreal side of twilight, which the French describe as, “L’heure entre chien et loup,” or the hour between dog and wolf. That in-between time, in which what once seemed safe suddenly wafts of danger, inspired Jessica and Megan Kennedy, the artistic directors behind this award-winning contemporary Irish dance company. It makes its United States debut as part of La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival."

- Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

- - - - -

HYPERACTIVE
by John Scott/Irish Modern Dance Theatre

"As a writer, I will never keep up with what John Scott's dancers do in HYPERACTIVE (2013), a presentation by Irish Modern Dance Theatre, currently at the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. This Irish import, billed as a "human dance installation," takes pretty much everything the bodies of Kevin Coquelard, Ryan O'Neill, Marcus Bellamy and Stuart Singer have to offer. Thank goodness what these men have to offer is a lot. My wife was surprised when I returned home so quickly from Scott's show, which is only fifty-minutes long. I told her, 'Had it gone any longer, they would have killed themselves.'"

- Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody


- - - - -
SHARED PROGRAM:

Gwen Welliver | Eric Geiger & Anya Cloud | Brandon Collwes

"For its 10th edition, La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival is presenting about a dozen choreographers over four weeks. A few of those — Gwen Welliver, Brandon Collwes and Eric Geiger and Anya Cloud — shared a bill over the weekend in the close quarters of La MaMa’s First Floor Theater.

Why group these artists together? Whatever the curatorial reason, their small-scale works, as seen on Saturday, seemed at home in the same space, each testing the body’s limits in idiosyncratic ways, each inviting curiosity about the people onstage."

- Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

- - - - -

ALTIPLANO

by Jane Comfort & Company

"Jane Comfort is a choreographer with a penchant for fusing text and movement — until now. “Altiplano,” which received its premiere on Thursday as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, signals a departure for this longtime modern choreographer, who in past dance-theater works has explored the myth of Persephone and notions of beauty with Barbie.

In “Altiplano,” or high plateau, she strips away language and uses La MaMa’s deep, narrow stage as a canvas for choreography that examines states of evolution, both of individuals and of communities. All the while, Ms. Comfort refers loosely to the environment: A spooky image of the moon appears on a curtain on the theater’s back wall, and in the work’s final moments, an onstage rainstorm soaks the floor just in front of the curtain."

- Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

- - - - -

"The two dancers [Edisa Weeks bearing Jon Kinzel] perform Provision Provision gravely and attentively, almost always watchful of each other—even, at times, wary. (A lot of what happens in the piece is improvised, and that relaxed intensity of focus is crucial to that process.) One activity doesn’t appear to lead to another. Each is just slotted in, the way lunch is slotted into a day. Kinzel plays a rhythm on a soda can stuck in his wide-open mouth; Weeks carefully rolls up a theraband and blows into it. When they’ve about finished, he pinches the end of her “flute,” while she blows, creating a little rhythmic tune."

- Deborah Jowitt, Dance Beat @ Arts Journal

Wanna perform in New Zealand?

Photo Source: The Big Idea

The Performance Arcade has announced an open call to artists from New Zealand and around the world for its 2016 program of works, which opens to the New Zealand public on Wellington Waterfront, March 2-6, 2016.

The festival welcomes proposals from diverse disciplines and cultural backgrounds, celebrating innovation, adventurousness, experimentation, and relevant new contributions to performance and live art.

The Performance Arcade is an acclaimed annual exhibition and programme of events located on Wellington Waterfront has become, with six successful presentations over the past five years. An arcade of shipping containers arranged in this public space creates a dynamic environment for installation, performance art, sonic art, interactive media, forums and live music. Opening onto the bustling life of the waterfront, the event engages the public in contemporary art and performance practices outside the familiar constraints of gallery or theatre spaces. Our full manifesto is available here.

The Performance Arcade is presented by The PlayGround NZ, were recently at La MaMa and part of the New Zealand Performance Festival NY.

You must submit your application by July 31, 2015 at 5pm (NZ time we would imagine!)

For applications and details on how to apply, please CLICK HERE.