tJAIVIDl1i Brooklyn Academy of Music 1996 Next Wave Festival

Jim Dine, The Heart of BAM, 1996, Woodcut, 26-1/4" x 19-3/8" Artists in Action

BAM 1996 Next Wave Festival and 135th Anniversary Season are sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc. The Brooklyn Snug Harbor Cultural The Brooklyn Museum Academy of Music Center Robert S. Rubin Bruce C. Ratner Ralph J. Lamberti Chairman, Chairman of the Board Chairman, Boa rd of Trustees Board of Directors

Harvey Lichtenstein David E. Kleiser Roy R. Eddey President & President & CEO Acting President Executive Producer

present Artists in Action BAM Visual Arts Initiative

Flatland: A Romance MINE Black Fathers and of Many Dimensions Rona Pondick Sons: A US Perspective Jene Highstein and Robert Feintuch Albert Chong and Hanne Tierney with Sara Rudner with Johnny Coleman, The Hittite Empire and Quincy Troupe

Snug Harbor Cultural The Brooklyn Museum BAM Majestic Theater Center November 7-9, 1996 November 13-16, November 21-23, at 8pm 1996 at 8pm 1996 at 8pm November 9 & 10 at 3pm photos, Brigitte Lacombe

Special support for Artists In Action has been provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and The Arch W. Shaw Foundation. During their years working with artists, Brooklyn Academy of Music President and Executive Producer Harvey Lichtenstein and Producing Director Joseph VlYlelillo noticed that visual artists and performing artists do not conceptualize performance space in the same way. This difference is the inspiration behind Artists in Action. Last year, in its first season, this program showcased works by Vito Acconci, lIya Kabakov and the team of Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. Though each artist chose their own collaborators and produced works of varying tone and scope, all three productions demon­ strated that when you ask a visual artist to conceive and direct a staged work, certain long-held assumptions fall to the wayside, and a new set of challenges appear. A surprising anxiety for the makers of the mesmerizingly beautiful piece was the passage of time within the performance. Utilizing the projection of the single blink of a human eye, Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel's Interim: after the end and before the beginning dealt with the perception of time in daily life. "Before Chandralekha [their collaborator] came we were all worked up about 'What's going to happen?'" says Jones of her and Ginzel's project with the Indian choreographer at the Queens Museum of Art. "I mean, forty minutes is a hell of a long time!" The concern for Vito Acconci and The Mekons (who have experience in performance) was more a matter of "what kind of time would happen in that space." A sort of deconstructionist art-rock opera performed at the Dia Center for the Arts, Theater Project for a Rock Band utilized one of the great "instruments" of contemporary performance art-Acconci's voice-to weave its sardonic storytelling magic through The Mekons smart-rock riffs. Ilya Kabakov found that working to the rhythms of a viewer who sits in steady attention is a far different task than forging an object or installation where the viewer will come and go as he or she pleases. "When I am working on an installation, the most important thing is to condense an atmosphere" says Kabakov, "...the challenge here was to preserve the atmos­ phere and transfer it into the show so that it wouldn't disappear and would actually hold the show together." The result of his collaboration with choreographer David Dorfman and composer Vladimir Tarasov, The Flies: A Musical Phantasmagoria, was not really a performance at all, said Kabakov, but more "an experience of an artwork in a theater." This year's artists, each with their own finely developed aesthetic antennae-AlbertChong (photographer and installation artist), Jene Highstein (monumental sculptor) and Rona Pondick (installation artist)-have been working on their respective collaborations for the past nine months, encoun­ tering and resolVing their own sets of challenges. Yet, since the power of Artists in Action is not just the abstract work but its production in a specific performance space as well, even these artists themselves don't really know what they have made, until of course, it is presented. And so to view these collaborations is more than just the experience of another BAM event, it is witnessing the very moment of innovation itself.

-Thyrza Nichols Goodeve The Brooklyn The Brooklyn Academy of Music, America's oldest performing arts center, Academy of Music was founded in 1859. After its first presentation in 1861, BAM quickly became the center of Brooklyn's cultural life. Since its inception, BAM has been committed to presenting the finest in traditional and contemporary performing arts, presenting many national and international artists, often in their New York and national debuts, in the fields of dance, music, theater, music-theater, and opera. Today, under the direction of President and Executive Producer Harvey Lichtenstein, BAM's commitment is two-fold: to artists of international stature and an artistic vision that encompasses the newest forms in the performing arts; and to the Brooklyn community, with programming for the borough's diverse population.

The Brooklyn Museum The second largest art museum in New York State, The Brooklyn Museum has an encyclopedic collection of approximately 1.5 million objects, which range from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art, that repre­ sent almost every culture. The Museum is located on Eastern Parkway at Washington Avenue in a 450,000 square foot Beaux-Arts building designed by McKim, Mead and White that is a New York City landmark and on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.

Snug Harbor Cultural Snug Harbor Cultural Center is a major visual and performing arts center Center located at an historic nineteenth century site once known as Sailors Snug Harbor, a retirement home for "aged, decrepit and worn-out sailors" on the North Shore of Staten Island. The Cultural Center's assets include 28 -buildings and 83 acres of parklands set within the New York City limits. The site includes eight performance spaces, four art galleries, fifty artist studios, three dance studios, three assembly halls, five residential cottages and acres of open space. Snug Harbor is home to nineteen resident organizations, including the Staten Island Children's Museum, the Staten Island Botanical Garden, and varied smaller organizations. Along with its core of interdisciplinary programs, Snug Harbor provides year-round discipline-based programs in the performing and visual arts as well as related education and humanities activities.

Pa rtici pati ng Institutions Conceived &directed by Jene Highstein, born in 1942, received his education at the University of Jene Highstein Maryland, the University of Chicago, and the Royal Academy in London. & Hanne Tierney In New York City in the early 1970s, the sculptor developed his work in association with Minimalist artists like Robert Grosvenor and Richard Nonas. Dramatized by Steel pipes which span rooms and massive mounds of concrete form the Hanne Tierney basis of Highstein's vocabulary of essential shapes and forms. He has refined and developed these simple, evocative forms in a variety of media, from Performed by black and white drawing to sculpture in cast iron, wood, glass and fabric. Hanne Tierney Highstein's sculptures have appeared in solo exhibitions at the Ace Gallery with Jene Highstein in Los Angeles, the Michael Klein Gallery in New York City, and the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY (1993); the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Sculpture & elements by Francisco and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC (1991); the Fabric Jene Highstein Workshop in Philadelphia, and Brown University in Providence, RI, and at & Hanne Tierney Wave Hill, Bronx, (1989), as well as other exhibition sites in the US and abroad. His work has also been exhibited in group exhibitions at MaMA and Video by at The Drawing Center in New York City, Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Jene Highstein Island City, and the Portland Art Museum (1993), among others. His work is represented in numerous museum collections including The Lighting design by Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum Trevor Brown of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. He has also created major public works for outdoor sites including Music composed the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO and Rutgers University. & performed by Jane Wang Over the past fifteen years, performance artist Hanne Tierney has developed her own "theater without actors." Taking the avant-garde's concept of abstrac­ Narrated by tion to its logical conclusion, Tierney isolates movement and gesture as the Frederick Ted Castle essential elements contributed by human actors. By using materials such as fabric, rope and pipe to articulate gesture, she attempts to focus the Sculpture fabricated by attention of the audience on the gesture rather than on the incident that it Gene Flores describes, allowing the gesture to become a universal expression. Tierney presented her version of Chekhov's The Seagull in New York at the Set &elements Sculpture Center Gallery (1995) and The Flynn Gallery (1993). She performed constructed by Stein's A Play Called Not and Now at the Henson Foundation International Pablo Narvaez Festival of Puppet Theatre at the Public Theater (1994) and in Lodz, Poland (1990) and Maeterlinck's The Intruder at the Guggenheim Museum. Her Incidental Construction Assistance: Pieces was presented at Lincoln Center (1992) and PSI Museum (1991); Wayne Ba rtlett her Variations on a Theme was performed at the Whitney Museum (1986).

Sound Operator: Jane Wang plays acoustic bass, cello, piano and sings. She has performed Linda Bjork with several ensembles, including All Nationalities of Women Sextet and The Satako Fujii Big Band. She can be heard on The Lydian People's Front's newly Installation Assistant: released CD, Laundry for the Nineties, and with the Ryo Hashizume Group. Eileen Green Frederick Ted Castle writes both for pubications and oral performance. As Production Manager: a performer, he has worked with Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Trevor Brown Company and The Poetry Project at St. Marks, among others. He is published regularly as an art critic; his first book, Anticipation, is soon to be re-issued. Recording Studio: Harmonic Ranch Lighting designer Trevor Brown collaborated with Hanne Tierney on A Play Called Not and Now and The Seagull. He also worked as the lighting coordi­ nator for The International Festival of Puppet Theatre in 1994 and 1996. Conceived & directed by Rona Pondick was born in 1952 in Brooklyn. Known for her provocative Rona Pondick sculptures and installations that are simultaneously hilarious and horrific, she first gained recognition at the 1991 Whitney Biennial. Pondick combines Co-conceived & dissonant fragments of bodies such as teeth and ears with pieces of furniture Co-directed by and articles of clothing to make connections between the infantile and the Robert Feintuch adult worlds. The juxtaposition of elements in her sculptures is highly sug­ gestive, evoking visceral preverbal feelings and impulses. Her sculptures Set & Costumes by and site-specific installations have been shown extensively worldwide. Rona Pondick Pondick graduated from Queens College and received an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work is included in public collections at the Choreography by Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the High Museum Sara Rudner of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Pondick has received a Mid-Atlantic Arts Dancers: Grant (1991), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Eri n Cornell (1992) and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1996). Marjorie Folkman In her installations, Pondick moves the viewer through emotionally charged Alan Good spaces. The passage through Beds, an installation at the Sculpture Center in Jodi Melnick New York City (1988), was described as /lakin to a journey into the bowels of Sara Rudner Melville's archetypical whale;/I Scrap at Beaver College in Pennsylvania (1991) was grounded in the fundamental psychic concerns of everyday life; Pink Lighting Design by and Brown at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (1992) evoked an amalgam Jennifer Tipton of contradictory thoughts and perceptions. She has had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (1989) and the Cincinnati Art Master Electrician/ Museum (1995). Since the late 1980s her work has been seen extensive­ Lighting Operator: ly in international group exhibitions at museums including the Carnegie John Tees, III Museum of Art, the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Bonner Kunstverein, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Musical concepts by Amsterdam, South Bank Centre in London, the Museum of Contemporary Rona Pondick Art in Los Angeles, and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Robert Feintuch Morris. Rona Pondick is represented by the Sidney Janis Gallery in New Willram Matthews York City, where she will be doing an installation titled Tree Head Room.

Original music by Co-conceiver and co-director Robert Feintuch graduated from Cooper Union William Matthews and received an MFA from the Yale University School of Art. Since 1985 Feintuch has worked predominantly in black and white, isolating singular Musicians: psychological images including ears, arms, buckets, clocks and suits of Lisa Bielawa-vocalist armor. His paintings have been shown widely in the United States and in Martin Goldray-piano Europe. Feintuch has had solo exhibitions at the Daniel Newburg Gallery & synthesizer in New York, the Ruth Bloom Gallery in Santa Monica, and Studio La Citla, in Italy, among others, and in 1993 his work was included in an exhibition Sound design by in the Venice Biennale. David Ferdinand In 1996 Feintuch received a Residency Fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in Bellagio, Italy, and he has also been awarded Piano provided by Mellon and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. He is represented Yamaha Artists Services by CRG Gallery in New York, where an exhibition of his paintings titled The Middle Ages will be on view from November through December. MINE Costume Fabrication by is Feintuch's first official collaboration with his wife, Rona Pondick. Rona Pondick Robert Feintuch Choreographer Sara Rudner began her modern dance career after graduat­ & Ara bella Lewis / ing from Barnard College in 1964. She studied with Mia Siavenska, Don Arabella, Inc. Farnsworth, Richard Thomas, Barbara Fallis and Maggie Black as well as Set Construction: Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown. Rudner appeared as a performer Rona Pond ick with the Paul Sanasardo Dance Company, The American Dance Company Almond Zigmund at Lincoln Center, The Joffrey Ballet and The Pilobolus Dance Theater. Larson Construction Corp. Her participation in the development and performance of Twyla Tharp's J. Biggs & Co. Modern Dance Repertory extended from 1965 through 1985. Greenwich Design Co. Rudner has collaborated with dancer/choreographers Patricia Hoffbauer, Noblet Serigraphie Inc. Risa Jaroslow, Wendy Perron and Wendy Rogers; with painters Ben Schonzeit, & Johnson Atelier Deborah Freedman and Robert Kushner; with musician/composers Joan LaBarbara, Michael Saul and David Behrman; with sound artist Christopher Production Manager: Janney; and with lighting designers James Ingalls, Bill Yehle, Paul Kaine Matthew Silver and Jennifer Tipton, with whom she and dancer/choreographer Dana Reitz collaborated on Necessary Weather, which was presented in Avignon, Production Liasons: London and New York City in 1994. Elaine Cohen Rudner received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation & Jennifer Barron Fellowship in Choreography and was awarded several choreographic fellow­ ships by the National Endowment for the Arts. She has received company Special thanks to: support for the Sara Rudner Performance Ensemble from the New York State David & Carroll Janis Council on the Arts and the NEA. Ms. Rudner received a Bessie in 1984 for Fred Worden Fine Art outstanding achievement in dance. She teaches in her New York City Studio. Carriage House Paper Almond Zigmund Composer William Matthews received his degree in music from the Oberlin Smooth-On College Conservatory and advanced degrees from both the University of Fred Larson Iowa and Yale School of Music. He has composed more than 60 composi­ Jean-Yves Noblet tions for various media including solo instrumental, vocal, chamber, Morris Shuman orchestral, electronic, choral and theatrical works. Some of his recent Hiram Garcia compositions include Wazo £toot, for sampled birdsounds and percussion John Lash (1995), Water Music/Island Music, for instruments and computer-generated Wendy Wasdahl tape (1995), Quartet for Flute and Strings, commissioned for the Catgut John Erdman Acoustical Society (1994), and Breathing Light, for flute and computer­ Mi Young Sohn generated tape (1990). His most recent theatrical projectwas in collaboration with director/performance artist William Pope L on a show called Bingo. Portions of Mr. Recordings of his work are available on CRI, Crystal and SCI labels. Matthews' music were Matthews is a Professor of Music at Bates College. based on Spike Jones' You Only Hurt The One Jennifer Tipton (Lighting Designer) is well known for her work in theater, You Love, ©1967 dance and opera. She has been awarded two Bessies and an Olivier for BMG/ASCAP and None lighting dance; her work in the field includes pieces choreographed by But The Lonely Heart, Mikhail Baryshntkov, Jiri Kylian, Dana Reitz, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, ©1967 BMG/BMI Twyla Tharp and Dan Wagoner, among many others. Her work in the theater has garnered her a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Kudo, a Drama-Logue Award, Mr. Matthews' partici­ two American Theater Wing Awards, an Obie, two Drama Desk Awards and pation is made possible two Tonys. Her work in opera includes Robert Wilson's production of Parsifal through the assistance at the Houston Grand Opera and Peter Sellars' production of Tannhauser for of Meet the Composer, the Chicago Lyric Opera. In 1991 she directed a production of The Tempest funding for which was at the Guthrie. She has been an artistic associate with the American provided with support Repertory Theater in Cambridge and the Goodman Theater in Chicago. She from the Mary Flagler received the Creative Arts Award Medal in Dance from Brandeis University Cary Charitable Trust & in 1982, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986-87), the 1989 Common Wealth the New York City Award in Dramatic Arts, the 1991 Dance Magazine Award, the National Department of Cultural Endowment for the Arts Theater Program Distinguished Artist Award. Affairs. Ms. Tipton also teaches lighting at the Yale School of Drama. Conceived &directed by Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1958, Albert Chong is the last of nine children Albert Chong of merchant parents of African and Chinese descent. Chong left Jamaica with Johnny Coleman in 1977 to permanently reside in the United States. He received a fine art Keith Antar Mason degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and a MFA degree Quincy Troupe from the University of California in San Diego. Chong is currently on the faculty of the Department of Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. Photography &Video design by Albert Chong's photographs of spiritual objects assembled to evoke magic Albert Chong rites and rituals are included in collections both public and private. The artist has completed three major series of photographs: the I-Trait Series, Set & sound design by The Still Life's, and Thrones for the Ancestors. The artist's current project, Johnny Coleman which explores Jamaican culture via the genre of photographic portraiture, is tentatively called Yard: A Jamaican Portrait. In addition to his photographic Poetry: work, Chong has created numerous mixed media sculptural installations, Quincy Troupe bookworks, and other fabricated objects. Solo exhibitions of work by Albert Chong have taken place at the Cleveland Staging: Museum of Art and the InterAmerican Art Gallery at Miami Dade Community Keith Antar Mason College (1995), at the Ansel Adams Center for Photography in San Francisco, Performed by CA (1994), and The Bronx Museum of Art (1993), His work has also The Hittite Empire been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including The Center for Rne Kensha ka AI i Art in Miami, FL, the National African Museum Project at the Smithsonian Jeffrey Bailey Museum in Washington, D.C., the High Museum of Art and Nexus Keith Antar Mason Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta, GA, (1995) and at Africus, The First William Wilkins Johannesburg Biennial in Johannesburg, South Africa (also 1995). In Gared Williams 1992 Chong received an Individual Artist Fellowship in Photography with from the National Endowment for the Arts. Albert Chong is married to Prentiss Slaughter artist Frances Charteris and is the father of a son, Ayinde, and a Ghost Drumming daughter, Chinwe. Michael Oludare, Master Drummer of Visual artist Johnny Coleman is currently an Assistant Professor at Oberlin Oshogbo, Nigeria College in Ohio, where he teaches sculpture and interdisciplinary media. He has created a sound installation for the Urban Evidence Project Speaking Drum (Cleveland, OH 1996), collaborated with dancer/choreographer Adenike Kweyao Agypaon Sharpley in the performance enactment Crossroads (1996), collaborated with sound and voice for Kevin Everson's independent film Adult Material Lighting designed by (1995), created a multimedia installation project for inSITE 94 in San Christien Methot! Diego, CA (1994), as well as numerous installations at the David Zapf Design One Gallery in San Diego. The artist was included in the 5th Havana Bienal, Set Consultant Museo Nacional (1994). He is currently composing a sound installation Felix E. Cochran for FAVA Oberlin Poets Series. Coleman is known for his evocative installation projects that utilize sounds and common materials drawn from the spaces Production Stage of everyday to enhance the viewers experience. Johnny Coleman lives in Manager Oberlin, Ohio with his wife, artist Nanette Macias Yannuzzi, and their son Ayo. Jesse Wooden

Assistant Stage Manager Ted Williams Travel Arrangements by The Hittite Empire is an African American performance company based in Yvette Dickson/ Santa Monica, California. With a core membership of ten theater and Winnitours, Inc., performance artists, the ensemble has produced more than 450 presentations Bronx, NY in Santa Monica at the Highways Performance Space, in numerous art spaces and theaters in Los Angeles, New York, London and in its home Very special thanks city of St. Louis, Missouri. The company's founders-Keith Antar Mason, for the personal stories provided by Ellis Rice and Michael Keith Woods-met at Webster University in St. Jared Ambrose Louis where they founded the Afrikan People's Art Continuum (APAC, Rochester Blanks "a pact with the community") to produce theater and performance pieces Will Bryant in schools, churches, and theaters throughout the community. Their goal as Clinton Crawford a company is to use new performance techniques as a framework to Pierre Cobb deal with current social problems in the Black community. Their produc­ Leroy Howard tions are all original work, some written or developed collaboratively. Many Curtis Jones are written and directed by Hittite Empire Artistic Director Keith Antar William Keitt, Jr. Mason, the award-winning poeVperformance artist. Lamel Myers The Hittite Empire's 49 Blues Songs for a Jealous Vampire was pre­ Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood sented at Lincoln Center's Serious Fun Festival in 1992. River and Bus Brooklyn, NY Boy Blues were performed at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, GA in 1992. for black boys who have considered homicide when the Louis Blackburn streets were too much won the 1982 Playwright's Award at the Midwest Christian Davenport Black Theater Conference. Golden, CO Poet and author Quincy Troupe has written ten books, including five Jamal Jabari Jabril volumes of poetry. Troupe edited James Baldwin: The Legacy, and co­ Saif Fuden authored with Miles Davis Miles: The Autobiography, both of which were Abdur-Rahmen published by Simon & Schuster in 1989. The writer is the recipient of two Rick Lowe Houston, TX American Book Awards: one in 1980 for Snake-Back Solos and one in 1990 for Miles. Troupe's fifth volume of poems, Avalanche (with accom­ Joel Talbot panying artwork by the Cuban artist, Jose Bedia), was published by Coffee Los Angeles, CA House press in 1996. A reissue of Weather Reports: New and Selected Poems will come out in the fall of 1996. The Genius of Miles Davis: John H. Coleman, A Critical Memoir will be published in the fall of 1997. Redlands, CA Troupe is a former two-time Heavyweight Champion of Poetry spon­ sored by The World Poetry Bout of Taos, New Mexico. He is Professor of A.G. Miller Creative Writing and American and Caribbean Literature at The University Raheem Kamillisa of California at San Diego, and lives in La Jolla with his wife, Margaret, Oberlin,OH and his son, Porter. The writer is currently working on a novel, The Michael Lovelace Footman Chronicles, and a memoir of growing up with his father, Quincy Albert Wagner Trouppe Sr., one of the greats of the Negro Baseball League. Cleveland, OH Special Thanks to Kuchichagulia Barber Shop; St. Paul Community David Wesley McCoy, Sr. Baptist Church; Rhode Island School of Design; the Getty; Brody Arts Lynn, MA Fellowship; California Arts Council Multicultural Entry Grants Program.

These performances are dedicated to Gloria Chong; In loving memory of David Wesley McCoy, Sr.,Quincy Trouppe, Sr. Jesse Wooden, Sr., "Troupe" Mason, and to all the spirits who came before and those who are yet to come.