2013 Next Wave Festival DEC 2013 George Segal, Torso: Hand on Thigh, 1978 Published by: BAM 2013 Next Wave Festival sponsor 2013 Next Wave Festival Brooklyn Academy of Music Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkins, BLEED President Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer Tere O’Connor Dance Choreography by Tere O’Connor DATES: Dec 11—14 at 7:30pm Dec 13 at 10pm LOCATION: BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) RUN TIME: Approx 60min no intermission BAM 2013 Next Wave Festival sponsor Support for new dance presentations in the BAM Fisher provided by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Major support for dance at BAM provided by The Harkness Foundation for Dance The SHS Foundation #TereOConnor BAM Fisher 2013 Next Wave Festival BLEED was made possible by the Creation of the component works of New England Foundation for the Arts’ BLEED was made possible thanks to: National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Secret Mary was supported by the BLEED Foundation and additional funding Lower Manhattan Cultural Council from The Andrew W. Mellon Founda- and presented at the River to River tion and the Boeing Company Chari- Festival in July 2012. table Trust; The MAP Fund, a program CHOREOGRAPHY of Creative Capital supported by the poem was commissioned by New Tere O’Connor Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and York Live Arts and made possible, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; in part, by the National Endowment COMPOSITION/SOUND DESIGN the Campus Research Board and the for the Arts. Additional support was James Baker Creative Research Board in the School provided by contributors to the Dance of Fine and Applied Arts at the Uni- Theater Workshop Commissioning LIGHTING DESIGN versity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Fund at New York Live Arts. Premiere Michael O’Connor the Maggie Allesee National Center for November 2012. Choreography at Florida State Univer- COSTUME DESIGN sity; and Big Tree Productions, Inc. Sister was commissioned by The Walter Dundervill Tere O’Connor Dance is supported by Krannert Art Museum at the University The National Endowment for the Arts, of Illinois in Urbana Champaign for the PERFORMERS the New York State Council on the Open Studio series. Premiere Septem- Tess Dworman, devynn emory, Arts, the New York City Department of ber 2013. Natalie Green, Michael Ingle, Cultural Affairs, and individual donors. Ryan Kelly, Oisín Monaghan, Tere O’Connor is a participant in Cynthia Oliver, Heather Olson, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Mary Read, Silas Riener, Extended Life Dance Development David Thomson program made possible in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. MUSICIANS Chris Gross, cello Tere O’Connor is a recipient of a Julia Read, voice Process Space 2013 artist residency James Baker, all other instruments made possible by Lower Manhattan and vocals Cultural Council to develop BLEED. Portions of the movement material for this work were created in collaboration with the dancers. I thank them for their creativity, generosity, and rigor during this process. I am wholly indebted to these amazing people whose exquisite contributions make the work possible. —Tere O’Connor Photo: Oisín Monaghan and company by Chris Cameron 2013 Next Wave Festival CHOREOGRAPHER’S NOTE qualities. My experience with craft- Thank you for coming to see our work touring nationally and internationally. ing dances has been a journey away and the work of others engaged in He has created numerous commis- BLEED is the culminating work of from the exigencies of definition or dance, this fragile yet powerful form. sioned works for other dance a two-year project during which I resolution that might be useful in I would love to hear from you. You companies including the Lyon Opera constructed three other pieces—Secret the construction of “cogency.” I have can go to our process blog where I Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, and Mary, poem, and Sister—all from very moved decidedly towards abstraction will repost these notes and where you a solo for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Indoor different source materials and each and its potential to mirror conscious- can leave your own thoughts— Man. O’Connor received a 2013 Doris with an entirely different cast. I then ness. Contradictory impulses coexist bleedtereoconnor.org Duke Performing Artist Award, is a collapsed these into this fourth work, in my works. A search for singularity 2009 United States Artist Rockefeller simultaneously remembering and of meaning gives way to a complex Fellow, and a 1999 Guggenheim forgetting the previous dances. All 11 weave of disparate elements. I work Fellow. He has received awards from of the magical performers from the with a willfully convoluted palette the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, other works are here, yet the move- where recognizable imagery and the Who’s Arts International’s DNA Project, and ment material is gone. Ghosts of the anomalous enjoy equal value. I am Creative Capital. He has been honored other dances resonate through the not looking to shape hidden stories with three Bessie Awards—one for new work and shape its form, but they into dance but rather to understand Heaven Up North in 1988, another in are subterranean and exert their pres- how the sequencing of events accrues 1999 for sustained achievement, and sure on this new construction from the meaning in choreography. The viewer Who the third in 2005 for Frozen Mommy. caves of memory. joins me in the definitions of the His work has been supported over the parts, but I must provide a structural years by the National Endowment for The ephemeral—overly romanticized frame that allows for this and perhaps Tere O’Connor Dance the Arts, the New York State Council in dance history in my opinion—is an promotes the dislodging of memo- Company History on the Arts, the NYC Department of actual tool for me and is integral to my ries in the viewer in order that they Cultural Affairs, NEFA/National Dance process. In this expanded version of a might comingle with the images of Tere O’Connor Dance was founded Project, the New York Foundation concept that has always been central the dance. People’s projections are in 1982 to support the work of Tere for the Arts, the MAP Fund, Jerome for me, erasure is a form of construc- braided with my construction to final- O’Connor in association with dancers Foundation, Altria Group, Inc., the tion. Each image or section of a dance ize the work. and collaborators. The company Harkness Foundation for Dance, and is absent in the next, but its essence aims to challenge the boundaries the Mid Atlantic Fund for US Artists. remains to color the forthcoming I am conflicted about author’s notes, of dance by constructing a complex events. I craft these wafts of memory so forgive me this indulgence. I am dance language, to present the O’Connor was the 2013 chair of the into my choreography, privileging just attempting to help the viewer works created to broad audiences, Chime Without Borders mentorship them over the recapitulation of dance come on board with what might feel and to pass this creative information program initiated by the Margaret movements. Because inference, es- like an enigmatic project. The intense on through extensive teaching and Jenkins Dance Company in San Fran- sence, quality, reference, and affect complexity of living on earth right now dialogues. With more than 36 cisco. A much sought-after teacher, he seem to be some of the purveyors of finds a good friend in dance. Spending works, the company has performed has taught extensively at universities meaning in dance, I long ago ceded some time with an information system throughout the US and in Europe, and festivals around the world. He is any desire for the expression of spe- that does not hope to deliver mes- Canada, and South America. currently a Center For Advanced Stud- cific ideas to the ambiguous contours sages but rather acts as a container ies professor in dance at the Univer- and endless associative pathways of for multiple individual responses sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the choreographic mind. might prove to be an antidote to the he received a faculty award for excel- polarized dogma that holds our world Tere O’Connor lence in research from the College of Choreographer-Artistic Director This work is sparked by my immersion in its grip. Fine and Applied Arts in the spring of in the poetics of dance and the infor- 2013. Tere O’Connor has been making mation I have gleaned from 30 years dances for 30 years, creating more of wrestling with its indeterminate than 36 works for his company, and 2013 Next Wave Festival dence at Issue Project Room and will Shemy & Company, Megan Sprenger/ be premiering an evening-length work mvworks, Makiko Tamura/small apple Tess Dworman on January 18 & 19 at the Actors Ryan Kelly co., Christopher Williams Dances and Performer Performer Fund. emory was a 2009 Fresh Tracks Miriam Wolf, among others. Ingle is resident at Dance Theater Workshop, also a freelance lighting designer and Tess Dworman is a Brooklyn-based Ryan Kelly is an artist and dancer a studio series resident at NYLA, and stage manager. Anytime he isn’t doing Who’schoreographer and performer currently living and working between a BAX studio series resident. emory’s something else, he creates work with originally from Chicago. She studied Los Angeles and New York City. He work has been commissioned and his own group Michael and the Go- at the Laban Centre in London and received his MFA from the Interdis- shown at Abrons Art Center with Getters.