GMT M sp tb sp/mgmt tb tbsp/mgmt tbsp MGMT GMT M MGMT sp tb thomas benjamin snap pryor thomas benjamin snap pryor tbsp GMT M sp tb GMT M sp tb tbsp MGMT tbsp MGMT GMT M sp tb tbsp MGMT | REALNESS REALNESS AMERICANREALNESS.COM GMT M sp tb ABRONSARTSCENTER.ORG tbspMGMT AMERICAN AMERICAN LONG LIVE LIVE LONG LONG LIVE IS DEAD IS IS DEAD REALNESS REALNESS AMERICAN AMERICAN AMERICAN REALNESS 2015 4-5 Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor, Welcome PERFORMANCE 8 Miguel Gutierrez, Age & Beauty Part I: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ 9 Keith Hennessy, Bear/Skin 10 Karen Sherman, One with Others 11 Ivo Dimchev, Fest 12 Cynthia Hopkins, A Living Documentary 13 Florentina Holzinger & Vincent Riebeek, Kein Applaus für Scheisse 14 Tere O’Connor, Sister 15 The Ballez, Variations on Virtuosity, a Gala Performance with keith the Stars of the Ballez 16 Liz Santoro & Pierre Godard, Relative Collider 17 Simone Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone & Hahn Rowe, Supernatural 18 Tere O’Connor, Undersweet 19 Michelle Ellsworth, Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome 20 Miguel Gutierrez, Age & Beauty Part 2: Asian Beauty @ the Werq Meeting or The Choreographer & Her Muse or &:@& 21 Jeremy Wade, Death Asshole Rave Video 22 luciana achugar, OTRO TEATRO: The Pleasure Project 23 Jack Ferver, Night Light Bright Light 24-27 Neal Medlyn, Pop Star Series, The 2015 Emerald Edition 28 My Barbarian, The Mother and Other Plays 29 Dynasty Handbag, Soggy Glasses, A Homo’s Odyssey 30 Anne Imhof, DEAL, 2015 party 34 Members of the House Reception 35 Susanne Bartsch & KUNT, REALNESS – A Night of Dance Art disCOuRsE 38 READING, A Platform for Critical Writing 39 Claudia La Rocco, To Whom It May Concern 40 Trajal Harrell, Eiko Otake and Sam Miller, In Conversation 10 41 Jenn Joy, Why Choreography Now? Reading, Conversation, Performance of The Choreographic CALENdAR 44-47 Calendar 48-49 American Realness & tbspMGMT credits 50 Abrons Arts Center & photo credits 3 Welcome to American Realness 2015! Holzinger & Vincent Riebeek and Jeremy Wade (co-presented with Goethe-Institut New York); two New York premieres from Tere Thank you for being here - again, or for the first time! This is the sixth O’Connor and Michelle Ellsworth; two theatrical premieres from edition of American Realness and I am excited as ever to be present- luciana achugar and Tere O’Connor; the avant-premiere of Simone ing it in partnership with the Abrons Arts Center. I must start by saying Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone, & Hahn Rowe’s Supernatural; a huge thank you to Jay Wegman for taking this project on and helping and seven encore engagements from Miguel Gutierrez (co-presented to make it happen each year. Another huge thank you to the more with Gibney Dance), Karen Sherman, Cynthia Hopkins, The Ballez, than two hundred and fifty of you who have already gotten the 2015 Liz Santoro & Pierre Godard, My Barbarian, and Dynasty Handbag. festival going by becoming Members of the House of Realness! I am The festival additionally includes the North American premiere of Neal so grateful for your support and truly couldn’t make this happen Medlyn’s Pop Star Series, The 2015 Emerald Edition, which presents without you. pared down versions of the seven performance works inspired by Featuring artists from across the US with a concentration of New Lionel Richie, Phil Collins, Prince, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Insane York makers and a small selection of international artists, American Clown Posse and Michael Jackson, that comprise Medlyn’s epic Pop Realness 2015 includes: four world premieres from Keith Hennessy, Star Series. It is another jam-packed program with lots of must-see Miguel Gutierrez, Jack Ferver and Anne Imhof (presented by MoMA events! I recommend purchasing the festival pass, which includes a ticket to 6 AR 2015 performances at the Abrons Arts Center for $100! PS1); three North American premiers from Ivo Dimchev, Florentina keithAmerican Realness wouldn’t be complete without a party, so AR 2015 features two! An opening night reception for Members of the House of Realness and a blow-out festival bash, REALNESS – A Night of Dance Art, presented by Susanne Bartsch and Zurich-based party KUNT organized by Marc Streit and Lukas Beyeler. Because I know you all love a good conversation, AR 2015 offers a discursive program that includes: READING, AR’s platform for critical writing; To Whom it May Concern, a Movement Research workshop TO with Claudia La Rocco; a public conversation between choreographers Trajal Harrell and Eiko Otake with President of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Sam Miller (presented by MoMA); and Why Chore- ography Now?, a reading, discussion and performance to celebrate the recent publication of The Choreographic by Jenn Joy. Through visceral, visual, and text-based explorations of perception, sensation and attention, the artists of American Realness are expos- ing issues and questions about identity, form, ritual, death, history, pop-culture, cooperation and the professionalization of art making in an American-focused, globally-minded context. American Realness exposes the cracks in the façade: of the practice of art making; of the construction of contemporary society; of our increasing inability to slow down and really see, hear and think. American Realness is an opportunity to reclaim the reins and rewrite the narratives. For eleven days in January American Realness inhabits the Abrons Arts Center and offers an opportunity to engage with the present. Participate. You know you want to. I’ll see you there. Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor Founder, Curator & Producer WELCOME AMERICAN REALNESS 2015 5 PERFORMANCE PARTY DISCOURSE CALENDAR miguel keith MIguEL gutIERREz KEItH HENNESSY Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Bear/Skin WORLD PREMIERE Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ THURS JAN 8, 7:00 PM . FRI JAN 9, 8:30 PM CO-PRESENTED BY GIBNEY DANCE SAT JAN 10, 7:00 PM . SUN JAN 11, 2:30 PM THURS JAN 8, 6:00 PM + 8:30 PM RUN TIME: 65 minutes FRI JAN 9, 5:30 PM + 7:30 PM . SAT JAN 10, 6:30 PM ABRONS ARTS CENTER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org RUN TIME: 60 minutes GIBNEY DANCE: AGNES VARIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER Motivated by grand spectacle and ambitious prayer Bear/Skin 280 Broadway (Entrance at 53A Chambers) / tickets $20 / GibneyDance.org appropriates Nijinsky’s choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) to consider Modernism’s dependence on appropriations of the Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ is the indigenous, folk, exotic and oriental to ask questions about ritual and first of a suite of queer pieces Gutierrez is creating over the course art today. of three years that addresses the representation of the dancer, the “ There will be a bear dance that has nothing to do with gay bears and physical and emotional labor of performance, tropes about the aging everything to do with Rite of Spring, teddy bears, the reconstruction of gay choreographer, the interaction of art making with administration, native/folk bear dances, action movies and virgin sacrifice, spring- the idea of queer time and futurity, and mid-life anxieties about time in the northern hemisphere, the land I grew up on and where relevance, sustainability and artistic burnout. Part 1 is a duet for 43- my parents are buried, and the land I now live on where my uncle year-old Gutierrez and 24-year-old performer/dancer Mickey Mahar and many others are buried. But it’s also about dancing and ritual and and follows from a packed set of precise unison dances to an irrever- appropriation; the struggle between being both settler and indigenous, ent and celebratory corruption of orderliness, suggesting modes of nomad-refugee and precarious freelancer. Don’t expect a lecture or communication and relations where hyper-emotional affect is not much coherence. Come to heal and be healed or not.”–Keith Hennessy only the conceptual and choreographic core of the performance, but also the only hope for continuing in this fucked-up world. Bear/Skin is produced by Circo Zero with support from the Zellerbach Family Foundaton and San Francisco Grants for the Arts. Project Management by Alec White. Fiscal Sponsorship Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ was commissioned for the by CounterPULSE. 2014 Whitney Biennial and was made possible with support and developmental residencies from the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, the ]domaines[ program at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon in Montpellier, France and Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. 8 9 karen ivo KAREN SHERMAN IVO DIMCHEV One with Others Fest NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE THURS JAN 8, 8:30 PM . FRI JAN 9, 8:30 PM THURS JAN 8, 10:00 PM . FRI JAN 9, 10:00 PM SAT JAN 10, 5:30 PM . SUN JAN 11, 5:30 PM SUN JAN 11, 10:30 PM RUN TIME: 65 minutes RUN TIME: 60 minutes ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org 466 Grand Street / tickets $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org Dance, words, and scrap wood are the raw materials for One with Fest is set in the context of an imaginary festival in Copenhagen. Others, an examination of who we become due to the choices The main characters are the performer Ivo Dimchev, a curator, a we make – or that others make for us. Crude, handmade wooden technician and a critic. What starts off as a realistic piece soon turns appendages – part prop, prosthetic, costume – stand alongside text into a fantasy about sex and power. and choreography to form a trio of jerry-rigged tools that dismantle affinities and art; who we are to each other; and what it means to “O ne day I just realized how bored I was with the conventionality of my be seen, handled, used and needed.