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In Performance: Jonah Bokaer’s REPLICA (NYC)

REPLICA
December 17th, 7:00pm
December 18th, 7:00pm

New Museum
235 Bowery
NYC, NY 10002
212.219.1222
www.newmuseum.org/events

REPLICA, a collaborative performance piece by Daniel Arsham, Jonah Bokaer, and Judith Sanchez Ruiz, examines memory loss, pattern recognition, and perceptual faculties as they apply to the human body. The piece employs built spaces, objects, lighting, and other media to create the illusion of an expanded space through the use of video and/or still images. REPLICA creates situations onstage that could not veritably exist in physical space. This happens through the use of creative geography in video and built spaces, transporting movement to different locations that appear to be just outside the audience’s sightline.

Photo by Michael Hart

Photo by Michael Hart

REPLICA has been commissioned by the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS), Washington, DC, with support from the Harman Center. Additional presentation support is being provided by the New Museum, Carré d’Art de Nîmes, Institut Valenciá d’Art Modern, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and USArtists International, a program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Creation:

Choreography & Performance: Jonah Bokaer & Judith Sanchez Ruiz

Visual Design & Scenography: Daniel Arsham

Original Music: Alexis Georgopoulos/ARP

Media System Design: Jonah Bokaer

Video Editing: Nicoletta Massignani

Original Lighting: Aaron Copp

Bios:

Originally from Ithaca, NY, Jonah Bokaer trained in dance at Cornell University, and subsequently graduated from North Carolina School of the Arts as a North Carolina Academic Scholar (Contemporary Dance/Performance, 2000). Recruited for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the unprecedented age of eighteen, Bokaer pursued a parallel degree in visual and media studies at The New School (2003-07), where he received the Joan Kirnsner Memorial Award. Additional studies in media and performance occurred at Parsons School of Design, NYU Performance Studies, and through self-taught explorations into digital media and 3D animation; this education led to the development of a rare, multidisciplinary approach to choreography, addressing the human body in relation to contemporary technologies. Bokaer has worked with Merce Cunningham (2000-07), John Jasperse (2004-05), David Gordon (2005-06), Deborah Hay (2005), Tino Sehgal (2008), and many others. He has also interpreted the choreography of George Balanchine as restaged by Melissa Hayden. Bokaer’s work has been presented widely throughout venues in the United States and abroad, including Cornell University, Dance Theatre Workshop, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, La Mama ETC, P.S. 122, Symphony Space, the ISB (Bangkok), Naxos Bobine, Studio Théâtre de Vitry, and La Générale (Paris), Les Subsistances (Lyon), La Compagnie (Marseille), La Ferme Du Buisson (Marne-la-Vallée), De Singel (Beligum), International Tanzmesse NRW (Germany), PSi (Copenhagen), Kunsthalle St. Gallen (Switzerland), and others. Upcoming engagements in 2009 include the Attakalari Performance Biennale (Bangalore), Salon Tudor (Santiago), and a new commission from the National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC).

Daniel Arsham’s practice spans the fields of art, architecture, and stage design. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Miami, Florida, Arsham was one of the founders of the seminal Miami artist-run spaces The House and Placemaker. Arsham attended the Cooper Union for the advancement of Science and Art and received the Gelman Trust Fellowship. His work has been shown at P.S.1 in New York (Greater New York 2005), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Athens Biennial, Mills College Art Museum in Oakland California, and Carre d’art in Nîmes France. In 2006 legendary modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham commissioned Arsham to design the set, lighting, and costumes for eyeSpace. The performance premiered in 2007 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, and now tours extensively as part of the Cunningham Dance Company’s repertoire. This began Arsham’s five-year collaboration with the late choreographer and established the basis of his collaborative work for the stage. Arsham interpreted Robert Rauschenberg’s 1960s in-situ set designs for the Cunningham Dance Company for their 2009 Paris tour. Informed by his initial collaboration with Cunningham, Arsham’s expanded practice has included collaborations with Hedi Slimane, Bob Wilson, Jonah Bokaer, Friends With You, and Snarkitecture. He is represented by Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin Paris/Miami, and Ron Mandos Gallery Amsterdam/Rotterdam. A monograph of Arsham’s work was published in 2008 by the French Centre National des arts plastiques and is available in the New Museum Store.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Judith Sanchez-Ruiz joined Danza Abierta Company, the major exponent of Cuban avant-garde dance with whom she toured extensively, teaching and performing in Latin America (1991-96). The choreographic works she has created and performed since that time include On Walcott, which was based on poetry by Caribbean-born Nobel Prize laureate Derek Walcott and featured the musical direction of Henry Threadgill at Aaron Davis Hall in 2001. Her work has been has presented in Cuba, Argentina, Spain, and the US. In New York her work has been shown at P.S. 122, Movement Research at Judson Church, P.S.1 (MoMA), Joyce SoHo, Aaron Davis Hall, The Kitchen, Queens Museum of Arts, New School University, Danspace Project St. Marks Church, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Sanchez Ruiz currently resides in New York City and has been a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company since 2006. She was recently awarded “Mujeres Destacadas 2008” by El diario, a Spanish-language newspaper in New York.

Alexis Georgopoulos is a composer and artist based in New York City. As ARP, he makes hypnogogic, minimal music, most often with analog synthesizers and, increasingly, classical stringed instruments. Since 2002, he has performed internationally and has been presented in such spaces as P.S.1, Deitch Projects, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 303 Gallery, Luggage Store Gallery, Jack Hanley Gallery, New Langton Arts, Yerba Buena Center, and Frieze Art Fair. He has released work on DFA, Smalltown Supersound, Troubleman Unlimited, Rong, Eskimo, Lo, Root Strata, White Columns, and Deitch Projects labels. He has remixed Lawrence Wiener, Lindstrom, and Shocking Pinks, and has been remixed by Hot Chip, Munk, Optimo, and Soft Pink Truth. In late 2008, he composed and performed a live score with violinist Nicky Mao for Doug Aitken’s film Migration, a recording of which is forthcoming. More recently, a number of his pieces were used in the soundtrack to the documentary film Objectified (Gary Hurstwit, 2009). His forthcoming album The Soft Wave will be released by Smalltown Supersound in May 2010 and will be accompanied by remixes by Swedish group Studio (Information) and the American artist Keegan McHargue (Metro Pictures). His collaboration with British composer Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy) will be released on the RVNG imprint in early 2010. He is also a member of the groups Q&A (DFA), The ALPS (Type/Mexican Summer), and co-founded the group Tussle, which he departed in 2007.

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Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

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