FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Inquiries: Erica Gionfriddo ARCOS Dance 860-983-5974 [email protected] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: AUSTIN CONTEMPORARY DANCERS PARTAKE IN PRESTIGIOUS EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL AUSTIN,TX. Three Austin-based choreographers take work to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August, representing the city on the international stage. This August three independent dance forces, ARCOS Dance, Ellen Bartel Dance Collective, and Kaysie Seitz Brown, will present work and represent the city on the international stage at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh Scotland. The Fringe is an annual event that brings thousands of performing artists and millions of theater goers from around the globe, as well as producers and presenters scouting the “next big thing” in the performing arts realm (think: “the SXSW of performing arts). All three Austin representatives make their Fringe debut this year, and will spend their time immersed in the stimulating environment, meeting other artists, forging new connections, and inspiring new collaborations. ARCOS Dance, EBDC, and Brown will bring these rich experiences back to the Austin community, invigorating their local practices in teaching, creating, and performing. ARCOS Dance is a multimedia dance company that combines cutting-edge choreography, evocative sound design, interactive video, and theatrical elements to push past the lines that separate artistic disciplines and to innovate distinct new forms of performance relevant to a contemporary audience. Founded in 2011 by Curtis Uhlemann and Erica Gionfriddo, ARCOS embodies its mission by developing and performing original repertoire shows and evening- length multimedia productions. Uhlemann and Gionfriddo co-choreograph in a process forged by their years of artistic partnership and passion for visceral, athletic movement, collaborating dynamically with video artist and composer Eliot Gray Fisher. After seven years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, building an impressive following of dance students, managing a respected pre-professional training program, and directing and choreographing for an acclaimed regional dance company, the founders of ARCOS decided to embark on their own creative venture that would combine their respective talents and expertise and test the boundaries of their creative work. Within a couple years of creating vibrant multimedia performances and dance repertoire, ARCOS continued to expand its audience and outreach, relocating to Austin, TX in 2013. Over the last year, the directors have integrated with the dance community, offering professional level technique classes, hiring local performers, joining the faculty of area studios, and teaching at several high schools in Travis County. The artistic trio has been awarded residency at prestigious programs in OR, WY, and NE for the 2014-15 season. ARCOS brings its full-length multimedia production The Warriors: A Love Story for the duration of the festival run (August 1-24). Based on the lives of multimedia director Eliot Gray Fisher’s maternal grandparents, the lyrical show follows him as he confronts his grandmother’s death, and, in the process, much broader questions of humanity’s relationships to love and war. Photo courtesy ARCOS Dance (continues) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Inquiries: Erica Gionfriddo ARCOS Dance 860-983-5974 [email protected] Fisher’s maternal grandmother, Ursula, was a dancer who studied with modern dance pioneer Grett Palucca in Dresden, Germany, before the war and survived the 1945 Allied bombing of Dresden. After fleeing her bombed home, she met and married J. Glenn Gray, during the reconstruction in Munich where they both worked after the war. The couple relocated and raised two daughters in Colorado Springs, where Ursula continued to dance with Hanya Holm and develop her own creative movement program that was beloved by the community for decades. Glenn, who grew up a Pennsylvania Photo courtesy ARCOS Dance farm boy and received his PhD in Philosophy the same day as his draft notice, died before Fisher was born but left a legacy in his 1959 philosophical memoir The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, which includes excerpts from his extensive war journals. Those personal writings served as inspiration for scenes in the ARCOS production, and Ursula’s love of movement and beauty made dance a fitting vehicle to tell this highly personal but universal story. An ensemble of dancers, interactive video projections, and live music conjure up fractured moments: Plato’s allegory of the Cave; a dancer’s flight to survive; the philosophy professor’s struggle to understand; and a warrior’s epiphany upon nearly shooting his own reflection. The Warriors originally premiered in 2013 at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, NM, receiving high praise from local press and the attention of LA based producer Ines Wurth, who is working with the company in her 2014 line up at the Fringe. The ARCOS production was recently awarded a $10,000 grant from the Rea Charitable Trust (Midland, TX) supporting the tour to Scotland and a re-staging of the work in Austin during the 2014-15 season. Ines Wurth Presents ARCOS Dance (www.arcosdance.com) The Warriors: A Love Story Zoo Southside (zoofestival.co.uk/) August 1-24, 8:30pm Ellen Bartel and Kaysie Seitz Brown have been invited to present work in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as a part of the Dance-Forms’ 67th International Choreographers’ Showcase. This marks the thirteenth year Dance Forms has invited award-winning choreographers to present work at the Fringe. Both Bartel and Brown will premiere choreography at the Fringe. Ellen Bartel (Ellen Bartel Dance Collective, 13/14 nominee Austin Chronicle’s Critic’s Table Award, Founder: Big Range Austin, The Dance Carousel, SpankDance) will represent the city of Austin as “Creative Ambassador” in the city’s newly formed program. As a local dance artist for over two decades Bartel affirms that “our city has shaped my views about this art form; I see this opportunity as a means to share a slice of Austin with an international community.” This new duet, a collaboration with dancer Amy Myers and composter Adam Sultan, is inspired by the discovery of new adventures later in life, and proposing the questions: “Are we (continues) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Inquiries: Erica Gionfriddo ARCOS Dance 860-983-5974 [email protected] ever too old experience new things? How do we continue to make ourselves available for such adventures?” Bartel and Myers will explore the answers by performing a structured improvisation in which they continually ask questions while moving vigorously move though the space. This yet untitled work will premiere at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Bartel will also two teach master classes at local dance studios. Ellen Bartel received her B.A. in Liberal Arts from S.U.N Y Potsdam in 1993 and in 2012 her M.F.A. in Dance at the University of Texas focusing on the pedagogical methods of contemporary dance and choreography of site-dance. For her thesis Ellen was interested in examining the different choreographic ways in to the creation of dances in alternative spaces. This led to a site- work about spaces of transition and site-inspired dances. Ellen’s independent artistic-scholarly pursuits also include observing and learning different choreographic methodologies, somatics, and Photo courtesy EBDC butoh dance. Ellen Bartel Dance Collective, formed in 2014, is a project-based contemporary dance performance group. In two decades of dancing in Austin, Ellen has managed a small dance studio (‘97-‘06), directed a slow-motion improvisation group (’95-’01), directed non-profit Spank Dance (’00-’13), created 47+ new dance works, directed 55+ butoh improvisations, spearheaded community dance events such as the annual Dance Carousel (’04-’12), Big Range Austin Dance Festival (’08-’12), Hot September Flurries (05-07), and co- founded the Austin Independent Choreographers. She has choreographed for T. V. commercials, theater, fashion shows, as well as Performance Art events, and has collaborated with local composers: Graham Reynolds, Andy Hadaway (now NYC), Adam Sultan and Peter Stopschinski among others. Ellen has danced in 20 original new works from local choreographers including Ariel Dance Theater who she performed extensively with until 2001. Ellen’s choreography has been shown in many venues in Austin, and also Houston, Dallas, Waco, San Antonio, and in Brooklyn, NY. In local press, Ellen has been most recently been accepted into the City of Austin’s Creative Ambassador program, and been called a Dance Mobilizer, Dance Phenomenon, chosen for Austin’s Fortunate 500 for several years, nominated for Best Dance Concert and Best Choreography for numerous Critics Table Awards, Best of the Fest in HPT’s Frontera Festival, and a chosen for many Top Ten Dance Events. Ellen has been awarded scholarships for education, funding to create new work, generous contributions both monetarily and time from members of the Austin community, and, Ellen also gets invited to fancy art parties now and again. Ellen Bartel Dance Collective (www.ebdc.us) In The World of Things-and-Stuff, World Premiere Dance Forms 67th International Choreographers’ Showcase Gryphon Theatre Hazy Eyes Gowanus Guest Room, March 2014 Photo by Julia McGhee (gryphonvenues.com/) Daily August 5-9, 10am (continues) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Inquiries: Erica Gionfriddo ARCOS Dance 860-983-5974 [email protected] Kaysie Seitz Brown will perform the international premier of the solo Capricious Aplomb, choreographed by Brown in collaboration with video- choreographer Ana Baer and composer Richard Hall. Through Baer’s and Brown’s process the dance developed into an exploration of the portrayal of stability in defiance of an inward struggle with feelings of instability within an environment in which abstract images occasionally project on the dancer throughout the work. Kaysie Seitz Brown is an educator, choreographer, and dancer based in Austin, TX and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX.