CONTROL GROUP PRODUCTIONS is a Colorado-based platform for contemporary performance research, creation, and distribution. Founded in 2008 by artistic director Patrick Mueller, Control Group has created over a dozen major works, from stage performances to site-specific, installation, and film projects. Through its Artist Services program Control Group has founded two Denver venues – The Packing House Center for the Arts (2008- 10) and work|space Denver (2011-15) – where it incubated new works, presented events by dozens of local and touring artists, hosted artists in residence, and provided other services to the local professional community. The company currently enjoys an on-going artist residency at Colorado Conservatory of Dance, with whom it co-administers much of its Artist Services programming.
Control Group has received project and commissioning support from The Biennial of the Americas, Denver Theatre District, the Denver Office of Arts & Venues, and BINDERY|space; and its work has been presented by RedLine Gallery, Naropa University, Dance Initiative Carbondale, American Dance Festival’s MFA program, Boulder Fringe Festival, and others. The company is supported by Colorado Creative Industries and the National Endowment for the Arts, Colorado’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, Broomfield Community Foundation, the Dugas Family Foundation, the Gilbert Family Trust, and other foundations, trusts, and individual donors.
ABOUT THE WORK Under the direction of artistic director Patrick Mueller, Control Group’s project-based model fronts collaboration and concept-driven planning and creation. Grounded in a dance-theatre/intermedia perspective, our projects address the expanded potentials for communication and experience within the form and field of contemporary live art.
Our research drives at the limits of human control and agency, the push points between person and situation. We tease out tensions embedded within self-contradictory positions and pursuits, pry open fractures running between faceted moments of perception and cognition, and calibrate collisions between concrete pragmatic realities and precarious utopian projects of confrontation and transcendence.
Each project seeks a unique formulation of materials, medium, and mode of engagement, allowing the process to define the nature and needs of the product. We often pursue an exploration over a series of products, unpacking facets of concept and using initial findings to recalibrate further investigation.
Our current research phase is gathered under the header dances made to be viewed in the dark. Beginning in 2015, we’ve engaged with darkness as a location and a content-rich cultural touchstone. Projects reverberate from sensory deprivation and simple nighttime rituals to PTSD and the gestation of subcultural movements. True to the title, much of each work occurs in full darkness or limited lighting/visibility, using movement, sound, and mobile design elements to bring the darkness to life and cultivate an immersive sensory-experiential envelope unique to – and uncommon within – the setting of live performance. The conceptual breadth of Control Group’s work is formidable, and well reflected in its multifarious applications, but finding an entry point is surprisingly smooth. There is no single answer, just as there is no single way to experience what it is to be a thinking, feeling, moving, creative, destructive human. As a viewer/participant, let go of the urge to define what is ‘going on’ and appreciate the multiplicity of active threads in the performed weaving. – Jane Werle, Presenting Denver
HIGHLIGHTS creation | performance | development 2016 Premiere (stage): ALONE WITH TODD Buntport Theater (Denver, CO) Boulder Creative Collective (Boulder, CO) Colorado Conservatory of Dance (Broomfield, CO)
2016 Commissioned Work (stage): Tiny Utopias for Open Dance Project, Houston (direction: Annie Arnoult) Midtown Arts & Theatre Center Houston
2016 Premiere (live/visual/digital installation):WHOLENESS Denver Performing Arts Complex Presented by Next Stage Now (Denver Office of Arts & Venues)
2016 Professional Development (immersive performance): Sweet & Lucky Collaboration & Performance: Patrick Mueller (Control Group A.D.) Created by Third Rail Projects (Brooklyn, NY) Presented by Off-Center at DCPA
2015 Commissioned Work (stage): DAMAGES for CoMotion Dance Company, Carbondale (direction: Deborah Colley) The Launchpad (Carbondale, CO) Thunder River Theater (Carbondale, CO)
2015 Premiere (stage): CREATION (re-creation) The Dairy Arts Center (Boulder, CO) The Launchpad (Carbondale, CO)
2014 Curated Exhibition (live/visual installation):(the world we’ve created) Featuring works by Control Group, Kim Olson/sweet edge dance, Mike Stone, Brian Freeland (New York), Amelia Charter (Chicago) The Studio Loft at Denver Performing Arts Complex Presented by Arts & Venues Denver and Denver Theatre District
2013 Premiere (multi-site performance / bus tour):FEAR & PROPHETS Public Sites & The Epic Party Bus (Denver, CO and surrounding areas) Co-presented by Biennial of the Americas
2012 Premiere (stage): Salon Romantik: Wanderers in the Sea of Fog work|space Denver (Denver, CO) Reynolds Industries Theater (Durham, NC) What are we, alone in this darkness? How do we find our way back to the world we can see…
In 2006 Army Specialist Todd Bilsborough returned home from combat deployment in Iraq to the darkest period of his life. ALONE WITH TODD unearths this experience – intense, unbearable isolation echoing deafeningly with the past’s sensory cacophony of preparation, anticipation, and battle. The third creation in Control Group’s series dances made to be viewed in the dark, this work hones in on the act of disappearance – the alarming loss of self as we step into the darkness and lose track of our world, and the sweet, soothing relief of sensory deprivation. With interlaced purposes of aesthetics, therapeutics, and social engagement, the project engages the well-documented correlation between sensory over-stimulation and the physical/mental/emotional trauma that so many soldiers carry home with them. “It’s like an all-sensory deafness – nothing comes through, normal life isn’t loud enough to register… Then when you can’t hear anything, anxiety sets in. It’s like walking around in the dark, and you’re sure there’s something right in front of you, and then suddenly you aren’t sure of anything, and it’s paralyzing…” –Todd Bilsborough, Interview with Patrick Mueller, Aug. 23, 2016 Through poetic evocation and fragments of narrative threading,ALONE WITH TODD follows Bilsborough (long- time company member and the work’s composer) through training and battle to the disorientation of return, and the moments that continue to reverberate from memory into each present moment.
Project Details | ALONE WITH TODD Links Video excerpts: https://vimeo.com/198794573 Staging Flexible (ideal: thrust or black box) Full work (password: “CONTROL”): https://vimeo.com/198806018 Run Time 60 minutes Website: controlgroupproductions.org/alone-with-todd/ Personnel Patrick Mueller (director / performer) Todd Bilsborough (composer) Press: “How Do You Do Normal, Again?” Oct. 24, 2016 Review, Ben Waugh (set designer/operator) Presenting Denver (dance blog) – http://bit.ly/2jsf9MG Sean Mallary (lighting designer) Press: “Telling a Veteran’s War Story, Through Dance” Nov. 4, 2016 Technical Needs Grid attachments for set pieces Interview, CO Public Radio – http://bit.ly/2jsf9MG Minimal lighting & sound Press (previous darkness project): “Dancing in the Dark” Apr. 19, Presenting Cost $1,200/performance or $3,000/week 2016 Review, Presenting Denver –http://bit.ly/2itqic1 This is not normal. Please don’t look away. This is a demonstration of what can be.
SETTING FIRES responds to a twilight zone of heightening social and political chaos and conflict. It seeks to light beacons of resistance and create spaces for transcendence, employing darkness as a liminal refuge, a gathering place to build strength to stand up and keep standing. This new project, the fifth in Control Group’s dances made to be viewed in the dark series, conjures darkness as a communal space of connection and power. The work will manifest in two halves, both collaboratively developed: a duet for Patrick Mueller and Kat Gurley (artistic director, Wild Heart Dance), and a 6-person ensemble of dance- and theatre-based performers. The duet will take viewers inside an en face experience of conflict and communion. The ensemble section will combine presentational and immersive/interactive tactics that dissolve the “they” and “we” stage/audience division, cohering all participants into an inclusive, unified movement toward action.
The event frames itself as a demonstration – both an act of resolute noncompliance and an embodied example of communal acts of transformation. It is simultaneously ensconced in its embattled present and engaged in utopian efforts of ephemeral transcendence. We examine subcultures and congregations long relegated to the darkness, from religious radicals to drag, trans, and vogue ball cultures. Through acts of resistance, reiterating the recognition that THIS IS NOT NORMAL, we seek invisible acts of communion, and the collaborative creation of momentary, miniature utopias.
Project Details | SETTING FIRES Personnel Direction/Performance Patrick Mueller, Shana Cordon, Premiere April 2017, Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, CO Kat Gurley Staging Flexible (ideal: black box) Performance: Jake Fry, Mandy Hackman, Julie Rada, Ben Waugh Run Time 75 minutes Lighting Design David Ortolano Technical Needs video projection Links (in development as work progresses) basic lighting & sound Website: controlgroupproductions.org/setting-fires/ Presenting Cost $2,500/performance or $6,000/week EDUCATION & ENGAGEMENT
Education and Community Engagement are core components of Control Group’s programming. These activities take audiences, students, and developing artists deeper into our artistic practices and subjects of engagement, forging stronger connections to the work and to the potentials of art to change our lives and worlds. We teach skill-building Workshops for all levels, ages, and abilities – dance technique, performance skills, and movement/alignment theory. The classes share our approaches to our art form and to our broader practices of living in our bodies. We also offer Artist Talks and lead Post-Show Discussions for all of our works. These presentations and conversations unpack the thematics and conceptual underpinnings of the work and our artistic process, which we refer to as an Ecological Making Model. We particularly love to create tailored programs for individual communities, responsive to the group’s particular interests and needs. In the past this has included made-to-order technique workshops, community-collaborative creative projects, and special interest discussions (movement-sound collaboration, live-interactive integrations in performance, etc.). We’ve also developed the following special workshops, available for various skill levels and time frames:
The Art of Falling Down: An experiential exploration of the physics and kinesiology of arriving to the ground and leaving it. Designed for movers of many abilities, we focus on function and mechanics, and then seek the expressive potentials created by gravity and our relationship with it.
Integrative Somatics: A therapeutic movement class designed to release chronic tension, reconnect coordination pathways, and cultivate alignment and awareness. By shifting how we envision and relate to our bodies, we find greater ease, efficiency, and capacity for motion.
The Ecology of Collaboration (for artists & non-artists): Ideas & tactics for working dynamically together, in the arts and elsewhere. Through stategic intention-setting, particularly attuned awarenesses, and creative navigation of situational parameters, we develop skills and tactics for taking on projects that move past predetermined results to unexpected, richly fulfilling outcomes.
Site Engagements: A community-driven creative exploration of a particular site. Working from a collaborative process we lay out a set of thought processes around engaging a location in terms of its physical/ architectural, environmental, and social contents. ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Patrick Mueller (Artistic Director / Performer) grew up in Colorado and studied dance and performance art at Pomona College (Claremont, CA). He spent a year as a Graduate Fellow at Ohio State University, and holds an MFA from Hollins University and American Dance Festival. Patrick worked as a performer and administrator with various companies in New York and Europe, including Ben J. Riepe Kompanie (DE), Mancopy Danse (DK), and Troika Rance Dance-Theatre (NY). He recently collaborated on and performed in the immersive spectacle Sweet & Lucky by Third Rail Projects (NY), presented for an extended 12-week run by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. As the Artistic Director of Control Group, Patrick has been the driving force behind the company’s creative work: serving as lead director on all projects, as well as performer and/or lighting designer for the majority the company’s body of work. As a curator of two Control Group-founded venues, he has presented several hundred events by leading innovators in the local dance and theatre scene, and has helped birth several other new companies. His choreographic vision and approaches have redefined the leading edge of innovation and quality in Denver’s burgeoning performance scene, and his commitment to collaboration has yielded partnerships with major civic initiatives and a broad array of extraordinary artists across many disciplines. He recently created the commissioned half-evening work Tiny Utopias for Houston’s Open Dance Project, under the direction of Annie Arnoult. Patrick has taught dance technique and theory at Naropa University; Red Rocks Community College, where he helped establish a major in Dance; the Joffrey Ballet School Summer Intensive; Colorado Conservatory of Dance; Excel Summer Program at Williams and Amherst Colleges; and at various other studios, schools, and festivals. He lives in Lakewood, CO with his wife Kristine and their hilarious, adorable 3-year-old son.
Todd Bilsborough (Composer / Company Member) was born in Denver. He served in the US Army from 2003 to 2009, including a deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and went on to study music at Naropa University after returning to civilian life. He has been playing and performing in various styles and on various instruments for over two decades. Todd has been featured both as a live musician and sound designer in dozens of theatrical and concert performances since 2010. His work has appeared in performances by square product theatre and Wild Heart Dance, and he has performed in several other works by Control Group Productions, including (the world we’ve created), CREATION (re-creation), CAVE / dances made to be viewed in the dark, and the WHOLENESS installation at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. He regularly performs on electric bass with the acclaimed avant-garde music ensemble Hamster Theatre, and his improvisational percussion work can be heard on Janet Feder’s album T H I S C L O S E.
Ben Waugh (Visual Design / Technical Direction) is a performance artist with an MFA from Naropa University. His work ranges from the pure enjoyment of human skill to the postmodern questioning of experience and performance. He has recently performed with Boulder’s The Band of Toughs in I Miss My MTV and As You Like It as well as the Frequent Flyer’s production Theatre of the Vampires. He recently founded The Great Perhaps Performance Collective, based in Boulder, co-directing the production of Beckett’s Play.
Kat Gurley is the artistic director of Wild Heart. She graduated with her BFA from the University of Colorado and has been performing, choreographing and teaching ever since. Kat is currently on faculty at Naropa University teaching contemporary dance technique and ensemble work. Kat feels passionate and compelled to perform deeply, choreograph from a place of uncompromising truth and teach with an open heart. When not dancing she can be found listening, reading and laughing at life’s abounding depth and ridiculousness. More information about Kat and her work can be found at wildheartdance.com. AWARDS & FUNDING Colorado Scientific & Cultural Facilities District Colorado Creative Industries The National Endowment for the Arts Western States Arts Federation The Biennial of the Americas Arts & Venues Denver Next Stage NOW Denver Theatre District Broomfield Community Foundation The Dugas Family Foundation The Gilbert Family Trust Open Dance Project, Houston TX (commissioned artist) Dance Initiative, Carbondale CO (commissioned artist) Colorado Conservatory of Dance (longterm artist residency) Hollins & American Dance Festival MFA Program (presented work) BINDERY|space (artistic residency) RedLine Gallery (presenting support) Naropa University (presenting support)
ADDITIONAL LINKS
CREATION (re-creation) 5-minute trailer https://vimeo.com/124049866 Performance Review CREATION (re-creation) Presenting Denver, Jan. 27, 2015: http://bit.ly/1a6J7fN Retrospective of works 2009-12: https://vimeo.com/67182683 Best of 2013, Westword Magazine http://bit.ly/1Fn0OR7 Interview 100 Colorado Creatives Westword Magazine, Oct. 2, 2013 http://bit.ly/1Oawrnn Preview Wanderers in the Sea of Fog Denver Post, Apr. 27, 2012 http://dpo.st/1JpxZYb “Like nothing else in Denver’s dance scene. The pendulum of possibility swings wildly from one instant to the next. It has its own distinct dream logic that is so powerful, you might never want to wake up.” –Deanne Gartner, Presenting Denver “The motion-based performances dreamed up by Patrick Mueller and Control Group Productions cross so many disciplinary lines that it’s hard to know what to call them, and perhaps it’s ridiculous to even try to pin it down.” –Susan Froyd, Westword Magazine
“I’d take that over a Penske Truck full of models any day.” –Mark Sink, visual artist
“Weirder than anything I ever seen a hobo do.” –Lt. Cayle England, Denver Police Department
Available for booking (2017-2018) ALONE WITH TODD Setting Fires
For booking and other inquiries, please contact artistic director Patrick Mueller at:
303-947-2827 [email protected] 1801 Brentwood St. Lakewood, CO 80214
Images by Heather Gray, RJ Hooker, Dave Mueller, Patrick Mueller, Taylor Semin