Featured: American Realness Festival (NYC)

AMERICAN REALNESS
A Festival of Contemporary Performance January 8-11, 2010

At a time when international perspectives of American dance hang onto Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown, and too
many American performing arts presenters are afraid of dance that traverses the heritage of lights and tights, AMERICAN REALNESS commands attention to the proliferation of choreographic practices transcending the traditions and expanding the definition of American dance and performance.

REALNESS: A slang term born from the LGBT community defined by the ability of a drag queen, transgender
or other LGBT person to look like or pass as the opposite gender.

AMERICAN REALNESS: An expansion of REALNESS beyond gender roles into style, ways of life and art making.

AMERICAN REALNESS presents and highlights the work of eight contemporary choreographers during APAP 2010; the Annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference, January 8-15, 2010, to debunk stilted perceptions of American dance and give way to a new notion of American contemporary performance.

“But virtually every great modern dance company was founded more than 40 years ago. Where is the
current, not to mention next, generation of great modern dance companies to carry the torch?”
– MICHAEL KAISER, THE HUFFINGTON POST

MIGUEL GUTIERREZ AND THE POWERFUL PEOPLE
Last Meadow

Last Meadow is a new evening length work using original choreography and writing mixed with stuff from James Dean’s three movies to look at the myth of America the father, and confusion as a potentially transformative, sensory-enlivened state.

ABRONS ARTS CENTER
466 GRAND STREET
TICKETS $15

ANN LIV YOUNG
Ann Liv Young Does Sherry

Sherry, Ann Liv Young’s newest performance alter ego uses techniques from church, Alcoholics Anonymous and traditional psychology in her own
brand of performative therapy. She is about fixing your issues, whether it’s marital trouble or a lack of creativity in the kitchen.

While you can’t get much whiter than Sherry she is sexually and racially progressive, working alongside two colored people. And her methods, though traditional in some sense, are more likely to involve pork chops, mayonnaise and chocolate sauce than a weekly visit to your therapist. Whatever Sherry does, Ann Liv Young says it works and she has proof.

ABRONS ARTS CENTER
466 GRAND STREET
TICKETS $15

LUCIANA ACHUGAR, Franny and Zooey
ZOE|JUNIPER, A Crack in Everything
LAYARD THOMPSON, cUp—pUck…

LUCIANA ACHUGAR
Franny and Zooey
Franny and Zooey makes the audience hyper aware of their physical presence in the theatre and their role as voyeur by bringing to the foreground the space and time gap between the process and the moment of performance.

ZOE|JUNIPER
A Crack in Everything
For A Crack in Everything, Co-Artistic Director and Choreographer Zoe Scofield creates a feral ballet of aggression and catharsis inside a highly controlled, modular and crafted environment designed and built by Co-Artistic Director Juniper Shuey.

LAYARD THOMPSON
cUp—pUck…
Thompson’s clownish work seriously employs psychological movement and recycled materials to question the nature of gender, sexuality, materiality, consumption and the paradox of the self as a verb.

ABRONS ARTS CENTER
466 GRAND STREET
TICKETS $15

JEREMY WADE
I Offer My Self to Thee

A hallucinogenic play about the body’s relationship to the untenable, the great void, the grain of sand in the vastness of empty space, with a revelation that life is about moving towards love and not away from it.

ABRONS ARTS CENTER
466 GRAND STREET
TICKETS $15

JACK FERVER
A Movie Star Needs a Movie

Jack Ferver’s A Movie Star Needs a Movie isa darkly satirical new work about the relationship between shallow ambition and fame.

ABRONS ARTS CENTER
466 GRAND STREET
TICKETS $15

TRAJAL HARRELL
Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Jusdon Church (S)

Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (S) takes a new critical position on postmodern dance aesthetics emanating from the Judson Church period. By developing his own work as an imaginary meeting between the aesthetics of Judson and those of a parallel historical tradition, that of Voguing, Trajal Harrell re-writes the minimalism and neutrality of postmodern dance with a new set of signs.

PRESENTED BY:
THE NEW MUSEUM
235 BOWERY AT PRINCE STREET
TICKETS $18

JEREMY WADE
there is no end to more

In a bold and violent juxtaposition of movement, text, animation and video of manga (Japanese comics) drawing, Wade takes a playful and cynical look at Japanese kawaii (cute) culture— from the infantile fluff of Hello Kitty to teenage doe-eyed love portrayed in anime— exploring its ubiquitous influence on the world today.

PRESENTED BY:
THE JAPAN SOCIETY
333 EAST 47TH ST (btwn 1st and 2nd Aves)
TICKETS $20

See American Realness Website for dates and times.