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Program
One
Friday & Saturday, March 2 & 3, 8pm
Sunday, March 4, 7pm
$15 ($10 students/seniors)
Series pass $45 ($30 students/seniors)
Post-show talkback Friday, March 2
Karen Sherman
– sixty one
Karen Sherman's sixty one is a collection of solos
riddled with uneasy moments, some genuine laughs, and odd dancing.
As is her way, she is certain to end up with bruises while exploiting
her rigorous approach to performing. Equally exciting and disconcerting
both to watch and to dance, sixty one embodies the ferocity, giddiness,
and soft underbelly for which Sherman's work is known.
Based in New York from 1988 to 2004, Karen
Sherman now works out of Minneapolis, MN. Her work is known
for its humor and concurrent commentary on darker aspects of the
human emotional landscape. She is inspired by science, social issues,
and the impact of one's surroundings on the individual. Her representations
of sexual identity, and the experience of inhabiting the female
body specifically, push beyond the conventional to give voice to
the queer body, and are hallmarks of her performances. Her work
has been presented by P.S. 122, Jacob's Pillow, The Walker Art Center,
Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon
Place, The Southern Theater, Red Eye Theater, and many other spaces,
events, and benefits around the U.S. and Canada. She was a MacDowell
Colony Fellow in 2003, a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence in
1999-2000, and is currently a McKnight Fellow in Choreography. She
has worked and collaborated with numerous artists, including Circus
Amok, Sally Silvers, Sarah East Johnson/LAVA, Clarinda Mac Low,
Nami Yamamoto, Cydney Wilkes, Morgan Thorson, Hijack, The Love Everybody
Players and the feminist punk-electronica band, Le Tigre. She is
also a musician, fifth-generation lasso spinner and spent several
summers studying flying trapeze, including in France with Jean Palacy,
one of the last great teachers of the art. She has worked in nearly
every aspect of arts production as a producer, curator, production
manager, and technician. www.karenshermanperformance.org
Photo by Sean Smuda
"multi-talented… amazing… badass" –
The Village Voice
“Sherman is a charismatic performer, whose work is exquisitely
crafted and powered by lean, incisive movement.” –
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Laurie Van Wieren and the B-Specifics –
5 DANCERS AND A DJ plus ANTHONY
(1) Anthony is a solo character rhythm dance about a lounge lizard
who considers himself a master of the tango. The piece first appeared
in an Out There series produced by the Walker Art Center and the
Southern Theater (Minneapolis) in 1981. Anthony was influenced
by the drunken clown-character in Japanese film and theater, as
well as the movement style of Eiko and Koma in their performance
Canal. (2) Van Wieren’s company, the B- Specific's will be
performing 5 dancers and a dj, a formal dance collage of
idiosyncratic movements and gesture performed to music played on
a boom box by a taciturn dj. Sewn together with humor and intuition,
and then taken apart revealing the lives of the performers and the
chaotic world that we live in, 5 dancers and a dj was created
in the Red Eye Isolated Acts Performance Process in Minneapolis,
2006.
Laurie Van Wieren is an
independent choreographer, based in Minneapolis, who has been creating
dance and performance since 1980. Her work, which has a strong visual
element, reflects her background—she grew up on the west side
of Chicago, and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
and moved to Minneapolis in 1975. As a solo performer, and with
her company, the B-Specifics, she has performed at the Walker Art
Center, the Southern Theater, Danspace Project, DTW, First Avenue,
and on the Lake of the Isles. She is the recipient of fellowships
from the McKnight, Jerome, Bush, and Rockefeller Foundations. Active
in the Twin Cities arts community for the past 20+ years, Van Wieren
has collaborated with many video, theater, and music artists. She
is the founder and producer of a monthly choreographers showcase
and discussion, the 9x22 Dance Lab, a vital meeting-place for dancers
and dance-makers in Minneapolis. She teaches a class called Out
of Character at the University of Minnesota. This past summer she
was invited to perform her solos Our Lady of Sorrow and
Anthony at a festival of movement and dance in Yaralslavl,
Russia. www.mnartists.org/Laurie_Van_Wieren
Photo by Warwick green
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“Laurie Van Wieren is
a master of the small exquisite movement, deftly employed to compose
characters that become indelible in the mind.” –
Camille LeFevre, Minneapolis Star Tribune
HIJACK’s Cast of Thousands
Border Town is HIJACK’s latest execution of their
Cast of Thousands formula, using mass unison, Busby Berkely-style
floor patterns, but not conforming to the politics of the Hollywood
aesthetic or the implications of a mass unison mind frame. With
a short rehearsal period, the choreography may seem spontaneous
and aesthetically raw, but there is a carefully hewn structure.
For a week, HIJACK will work with students from Columbia College
Chicago. They will be scattered and bossed around, corralled, and
flattered. They will run up the walls, balance their delicate heads,
and survive this dance.
HIJACK is the choreographic
collaboration of Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. They both grew
up in and around Chicago, met at Colorado College in 1990, and have
created over 30 dances and performed at over 50 venues since moving
to Minneapolis in 1993. HIJACK is a regular guest at top Minneapolis
dance venues such as Walker Art Center, Southern Theater, and Red
Eye Collaborations, and has infiltrated venues in Japan, Russia,
Canada, New York, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Oregon, Maine
and street corners in Berkeley, California. HIJACK was honored to
inaugurate the new Walker Art Center's McGuire Theater in April
2005.
HIJACK is the confluence
and clash of two independent compositional/kinesthetic impulses.
Their dances embrace juxtaposition. Believing work left in dialogue
form opens itself to dialogue with the audience, they present two
individuals' point-of-view, yet unreconciled. They ask, "how
can two different or contradictory elements (people/values) exist
together?" with the idealistic belief that they can. In this
way they avoid didactic treatment of social issues and strive, instead,
for subtlety and wit in addressing serious subjects.
They regularly host residencies with
their favorite dance innovators and publish Watcher-Reader,
an obscure journal of dance writing. HIJACK has
been commissioned by University of Minnesota, Macalaster College,
Carleton College, Ballet Arts Minnesota, Smokebrush Theater (Colorado),
3-Legged Race, Walker Art Center, Links Hall (Chicago), Bedlam Theater,
and Barebones Puppet Collective. They have been artists in residence
at Blacklock Nature Sanctuary and Bates Dance Festival. Their grants
and Fellowships include: Bush Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship, Jerome
Foundation, and Forecast Public ArtWorks.
HIJACK are the curators
of Tramp, they also perform in Program Three.
Hijack photo By Bill Star
“They challenge contemporary dance performance to a game
of chicken, HIJACK going full-speed over the edge… while contemporary
dance comes to a cautious halt 10 feet before the edge is even in
view.” – Katie Bodin, Pulse of The Twin Cities
Workshop: Morgan Thorson - Dance Clinic
(see workshops)
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