AMERICAN REALNESS tbsp/mgmt tbsp MGMT MGMT tbsp MGMT thomas benjamin snap pryor tbsp tbsp/mgmt MGMT tbsp MGMT tbsp MGMT thomas benjamin snap pryor tbsp tbsp MGMT tbsp MGMT tbsp MGMT tbspMGMT tbsp MGMT AMERICANREALNESS.COM | ABRONSARTSCENTER.ORG tbspMGMT FERNANDO BELFIORE LIGIA LEWIS JONATHAN CAPDEVIELLE ANTONIJA LIVINGSTONE THOMAS F. DEFRANTZ JOSHUA LUBIN-LEVY MILKA DJORDJEVICH JAMES MCGINN JACK FERVER JEN MCGINN KEYON GASKIN ERIN MARKEY KEITH HENNESSY YVONNE MEIER JASSEM HINDI JILLIAN PEÑA AMERICAN REALNESS 2016 METTE INGVARTSEN CHRIS PECK JENN JOY DOMINIQUE PÉTRIN KELLY KIVLAND NORMAN RUTHERFORD JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO SARA SHELTON MANN HEATHER KRAVAS STEPHEN THOMPSON JENNIFER LACEY LARISSA VELEZ-JACKSON M. LAMAR THE BUREAU FOR THE FUTURE OF CHOREOGRAPHY CLAUDIA LA ROCCO THE CULTURE WHORE LIGIA LEWIS WELCOME WELCOME TO AMERICAN REALNESS 2016! The festival turns SEVEN this year! I am so grateful for your ongoing presence, American Realness 2016 offers an expanded program of discursive activities engagement and participation. American Realness doesn’t exist without the including a series of public conversations led by Jenn Joy and Kelly Kivland, artists, staff, crew and especially the audiences, so thank you for being here Claudia La Rocco and Lane Czaplinski, Joshua Lubin-Levy and Thomas F. again or for the first time! Thanks also to Jay Wegman and the full staff of DeFrantz; original essays commissioned for READING, AR’s platform for Abrons Arts Center and Henry Street Settlement who help realize the program critical writing and CREATIVE DIFFERENCES a Movement Research workshop each year. Another huge thank you to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the keithwith Claudia La Rocco. Lambent Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, all of AR’s institutional and AR 2016 also presents not one, not two, but three parties, offering audiences a co-presenting partners: Performance Space 122, Sunday Sessions at MoMA PS1, chance to mingle outside the theater. The festival kicks off with a reception for Gibney Dance Center, Goethe-Institut, Cultural Services of the French Embassy Members of the House of Realness, features the all night blow-out DOWNLOAD in New York, Institut Francais, The Cultural Services of the Québec Government shared by The Culture Whore, and a Closing Night Soirée hosted by Kickstarter! Office in New York and Movement Research. And thanks especially to the Members of the House of Realness who have helped make this program Through visceral, visual, and text-based explorations of perception, sensation, possible with your individual contributions. form and attention, the artists of American Realness expose issues and questions around identity, ritual, blackness, history, pop-culture, futurity, and consumption Featuring artists from across the US with a concentration of New York in an American-focused, globally-minded context. American Realness exposes makers and a small selection of international artists, American Realness 2016 the cracks in the façade: of the practice of art making; of the construction of includes: four world premieres from Erin Markey, Jillian Peña (co-presented contemporary society; of our increasing inability to slow down and really see, hear with Performance Space 122), The Bureau for the Future of Choreography and and think. American Realness is an opportunity to reclaim the reins and rewrite James and Jen McGinn; six US premieres from Jennifer Lacey / Antonija the narratives. Livingstone / Dominique Pétrin / Stephen Thompson, Keith Hennessy & Jassem Hindi, Yvonne Meier, Jonathan Capdevielle (co-presented with PS 122), Fernando For eleven days in January American Realness inhabits the Abrons Arts Center Belfiore and Mette Ingvartsen (presented by Sunday Sessions at MoMA PS1); and offers an opportunity to engage with the present. Get into it! three New York premieres from Ligia Lewis, Heather Kravas and Sara Shelton Mann, Keith Hennessy and Norman Rutherford; and seven encore engagements I’ll see you there. from keyon gaskin, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Antonio Ramos, M. Lamar, Milka Djordjevich & Chris Peck and Jack Ferver (presented by Gibney Dance Center). All together American Realness presents sixty-seven performances of twenty productions over eleven days. Feast on performance! I recommend purchasing at least one festival pass, which includes a ticket to six Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor AR 2016 performances at the Abrons Arts Center for $100! Founder, Curator & Producer 4 5 PERFORMANCE JENNIFER LACEY / ANTONIJA LIVINGSTONE / HEATHER KRAVAS DOMINIQUE PETRIN / STEPHEN THOMPSON DEAD, DISAPPEARS NEW YORK PREMIERE Thursday, January 7, 8:30pm CULTURE ADMINISTRATION & TREMBLING US PREMIERE Friday, January 8, 8:30pm Saturday, January 9, 5:30pm & 8:30pm Thursday, January 7, 7:00pm & 8:00pm Sunday, January 10, 2:00pm & 8:30pm Friday, January 8, 5:30pm & 6:30pm Monday, January 11, 8:30pm Run time: 60 minutes Run Time: 55 minutes ABRONS ARTS CENTER, MAIN GALLERY ABRONS ARTS CENTER, STUDIO 1 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org In this intimate and out-of-bounds choreographic salon, time-based sculptures dead, disappears is a new solo work created and performed by Heather Kravas. shift between the human and the animal, the real and the imaginary; a series of Striving to reconcile the immediate with the verifiable, the work cites Richard unexpected contemplative landscapes. Initiated by Antonija Livingstone in 2009 Serra’s 1967 Verb List in an investigation of self-referencing action. Kravas also as a partnership with Jennifer Lacey, the work is an ever-expanding display of regards her own body of work and her body itself as it moves through a a collection of Medicine Dances: co-created and performed with Montréal-based landscape of effortful states. Words and action vie for primacy, and language visual artist Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, guest artist Dana Michel, and eclipses movement with a litany of acts that could be performed by, for and on Berlin-based sound artist Brendan Dougherty. Culture Administration & Trembling the artist. Generating emotional intensity as a by-product of sensual formality, invites the public to spend time together to wonder about being a spectator, a dead, disappears invites the audience to view the performer as simultaneously witness, or a companion. woman and object – and to see their own observation as completion of the Culture Administration & Trembling was co-produced by Festival TransAmériques, Agora de la Danse, Studio artistic act. 303, Les Escales Improbables Montréal. With support from ImPulsTanz, Vienna, Centre Choréographique Nationale de Langedoc-Rousillion, Fabrik Potsdam, Osprey Arts Center. This presentation is supported in part dead, disappears is made possible with an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2014), by Canada Council for the Arts, Goethe-Institut and The Cultural Services of the Quebec Government office commissioning support from the OnEdge Festival/Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art and in New York. additional support from Collective Address. 8 9 LIGIA LEWIS JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO SORROW SWAG NEW YORK PREMIERE #NEGROPHOBIA Thursday, January 7, 10:00pm Friday, January 8, 5:30pm Friday, January 8, 10:00pm Saturday, January 9, 8:30pm Sunday, January 10, 7:00pm Sunday, January 10, 5:30pm Run Time: 45 minutes Monday, January 11, 8:30pm Sunday, January 17, 1:00pm ABRONS ARTS CENTER, PLAYHOUSE 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org Run Time: 75 minutes ABRONS ARTS CENTER, UNDERGROUND THEATER Sorrow Swag takes race and melancholy as points of departure for an experience 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org that unfolds through the language of sadness. Performed by Biran Getnick with musical accompaniment by George Lewis, Jr., of Twin Shadow, the performance #negrophobia examines the erotic fear associated with the black male body. uses texts and images derived from mid-century classical theater (Beckett and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko juxtaposes interior and exterior landscapes to expose a Anouilh) to interrogate race, authorship, gender, and grief. Sorrow Swag disrupts confessional identity-mashup where visual and performance aesthetics collide the canonical by means of an imaginative reformulation that prioritizes sensation. in a face-off of self-revelation, ecstatic theatricality, and discomfort. Part social The work takes place in an immersive visual and auditory space and uses color commentary and part self-critique, #negrophobia references issues related to as a synesthetic texture and emotional referent to produce a choreography that grief, misogyny, and black patriarchal constructs of masculinity housed within engages language, text, affect and embodiment. the chaotic frame of a body and mind on the verge of psychosomatic collapse. #negrophobia features UK based model, performance artist and night-life Sorrow Swag was produced with funding from the Berlin Senat’s Tanzstipendium with further support from Human Resources Los Angeles, ADA Studios Berlin, and a residency at Pieter Space LA. Sorrow Swag personality IMMA/MESS. is presented in collaboration with, and in part made possible by the generous support of the Goethe-Institut. #negrophobia was originally commissioned by Gibney Dance Center as part of their Making Space series with additional support from friends of anonymous bodies and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund with residency support from the Bushwick Starr and Miami Theater Center. Additional developmental