Lang Dance Spring Production 2022 • Program

LANG DANCE SPRING PRODUCTION 2022

photo: Frank Mullaney

May 6-7, 2022 New York Live Arts

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues, Tonight we are thrilled to present our first performances at New York Live Arts since 2019 (the beforetimes), and honored to include work from two esteemed guest artists: Vicky Shick, through our Guest Artist Residency, and Larissa Velez-Jackson, this year’s Movement Research Artist-In-Residence. These widely admired dance artists worked intensively with students in semester-long performance courses. It has been an honor to have these adventurous and generous artists join us for this important semester as together we (re)question and (re)imagine what it can mean to put dance on a stage.

In addition, we’re proud to present a work created by Lang faculty Rebecca Stenn in her Performance Workshop course, as well as two student-created works. Together with the guest works these dances demonstrate varied approaches to choreographic research and performance, in keeping with the spirit of our program.

These performances would not have been possible without the exceptional work of our lighting designer, Joe Levasseur, and stage manager, Tess Dworman..

We would like to thank the Lang dance faculty for their expert and thoughtful teaching during this unprecedented semester.

Lastly, we would like to thank our Dean, Jennifer Wilson, and the magnificent Rafael Muñoz, Assistant Director of The Arts. Thank you for your support and enthusiasm for the arts at Lang College.

We hope you enjoy the performance.

- Danielle Goldman, Chair of the Arts - Neil Greenberg, Dance Program Director

PROGRAM Lighting Design by Joe Levasseur Stage Management by Tess Dworman

Feblu Choreographed by: Rebecca Stenn, with the performers Music by: Jonah Weissman, drum and bass, massacre of the innocents; Flughand, Feblu; Kieran Hedben (Fourtet), Symbols Performed by: Mikaela Cadenhead, Gretel Dougherty, Daniela Garcia-Arce, Maria Jose Gomez Mont Herrera Prats, Gabriella Gubitosi, Sienna Johnson, Maura Paulson, Alexis Roman, Henry Shane, Olivia Soli, Violet Spann, Christian Stainback

practicing joy Created and Performed by: Sophie Barreto (she/her) and Keb Barshack (they/he) Music by: Sondre Lerche, Family Theme from “Dan in Real Life”; Dwayne Carter, Gabriele Ducros, Kanye West & Tyler Okonma, Smuckers (Instrumental)

REVISITATION Created and Performed by: Christian Stainback, Daniela Garcia-Arce, Gabby Gubitosi, and Violet Spann Music by: Solange, Stay Flo; FKA twigs, meta angel

Star Pû Method - Relating Right Now Conceived and Directed by: Larissa Velez-Jackson Choreography, Song, and Text: created in collaboration with the performers.

Sound design by: Larissa Velez-Jackson Performance by: Samuel Barone, Daisy Green, Ella Kuether, Juliannie Mateo

Bits and Pieces Choreography by: Vicky Shick with the dancers Music by: Primal Scream, Trainspotting; Dave Clark 5, Bits and Pieces; Patti Smith, Lo and Beholden; Lou Reed, Modern Dance; Performed by: Sophia Barreto, Keb Barshack, Cassandra Brey, Marianna Calcagno, Yi-Han Chou, Daniela Garcia-Arce, Maura Paulden, Catherine Raymond, Christian Stainback, Kami Zimmer

BIOGRAPHIES Vicky Shick (Guest Artist Residency) has been involved in the NYC dance community for four decades - performing and making dances since the late eighties. For six years she was a member of the Trisha Brown Company and has staged several of her dances here and abroad. Shick has performed and collaborated with many other choreographers and has also created student pieces at several universities, most recently at Princeton and Yale. In addition to teaching internationally, including in her hometown, Budapest, in the NYC area she teaches at Movement Research, for the Trisha Brown Company, and for 15 years at Hunter College. She was a two-time Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a two-time Bessie recipient, a grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a DiP grantee at Gibney Dance Center, and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Rebecca Stenn (Performance Workshop), dancer, choreographer, writer, educator, painter, founded Rebecca Stenn Company in 1996. The company has since performed to critical acclaim and sold-out houses in over 50 cities including such venues as The Copenhagen Festival, The Edinburgh Festival, The Joyce Theater, BAM Fisher, Danspace Project, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival among many others. The company has received support from the NEA, The New York State Council for the Arts, The Joyce Theater Foundation and American Music Center, and has been acclaimed in The New York Times, Dance Magazine, Backstage, and The New Yorker. As a principal dancer with MOMIX Dance Theater, Stenn performed in over 30 countries and appeared as a featured performer in films for Italian, Spanish and French television. Stenn is a founding member of Pilobolus Too with whom she toured throughout the world. Stenn has been a contributing editor at Dancemagazine and was the Choreographic Mentor for the National Young Arts Foundation, choreographing numerous performances at the Kennedy Center. She is currently on faculty at The New School and Princeton University and is Choreographer-in-Residence at Dartmouth College. The book she co-wrote with Fran Kirmser, A Life in Dance: A Practical Guide was released summer of 2017.

Most recently, Stenn has started a visual arts practice as a painter and is on the roster of Agora Gallery, in New York City where her work has been seen in shared exhibits. Her work has also been exhibited in galleries in London, Milan, Venice and Lisbon and at art fairs in Miami and NYC. Stenn holds a BFA from The Juilliard School and MFA from The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She is the proud mother of Jonah and Elie Weissman

Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) (Movement Research Performance) is a NYC-based choreographer, movement educator and multi-platform artist who uses improvisation as a tool for research and creation; blending dance, healing modalities, sound, humor and strategies of self-compassion in her original performance practice called Star Pû Method (a.k.a.

Star Crap Method). She has presented work at numerous NYC venues such as: Museum of Art and Design, Abrons Arts Center, Chocolate Factory Theater and in 2017 at New York Live Arts with Yackez, a collaboration with her husband, Jon Velez-Jackson. Called “an adroit physical comedian” who “seems to be questioning entrenched conventions of contemporary performance” in The New York Times, LVJ was nominated for a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer, was awarded the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grant to Artists, in 2016 and most recently was a Caroline Hearst Choreographic Fellow at Princeton University. www.larissavelez.com

Tess Dworman (Production Stage Manager) is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer, voiceover actor, audio describer, and stage manager. In New York, her choreographic work has been presented at Abrons Arts Center, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, New York Live Arts, PS122, and the Chocolate Factory Theater, among many other places. In 2020, Tess was honored as an “Outstanding Breakout Choreographer” by the Bessies New York Dance & Performance Awards. Through her training at the Interdependence Project in NYC, she became a certified

mindfulness meditation teacher in 2018. She currently performs in the work of Juliana F. May and Tere O’Connor.

Joe Levasseur (Lighting Designer) has collaborated with many dance and performance artists including: Meredith Monk, Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo, John Jasperse, Sarah Michelson, Jodi Melnick, Jennifer Monson, Neil Greenberg, and Beth Gill. He lit both Wendy Whelan's 2013 breakout Restless Creature, and her subsequent collaboration with Brian Brooks Some of a Thousand Words (2016). He has received two ‘Bessie’ awards (including one with Big Dance Theater) and a Knight of Illumination Award for his work on Meredith Monk’s Cellular Songs. When not designing, Levasseur also engages in a visual art practice.

Instagram: @sirjoelevasseur / www.joelevasseur.com

THANKS From Larissa: Special thanks to Movement Research, Lang Dance Department & Neil Greenberg at the New School. Thanks to this class’ awesome students and Marielys Burgos Meléndez for offering support toward this show.

From Rebecca: Thank you to the most wonderful group of students anyone could ever have the privilege of working with. You came to the studio each day with tenacity, enthusiasm, grit and great ideas. Thank you to Joe Lavasseur, who paints with light and to Tess Dworman and the staff at NYLA for everything. Thank you to Neil and Danielle, who guide with such grace and care. And finally, thank you to my amazing son Jonah Weissman, who wrote music for this piece. What a tremendous joy to collaborate with you.

From Vicky: Vicky would like to thank Neil Greenberg and Danielle Goldman for inviting her to create work at The New School – what a pleasure and honor. Another thank you to Tess Dworman, Joe Levasseur and the rest of the crew at NYLA. Tremendous appreciation to Leo Janks. And of course, huge heartfelt thanks to the fabulous people in this piece for their friendship, patience, generosity, and beautiful work.

Dance at Lang Situated in the Arts major at Eugene Lang College, the Dance program offers a unique undergraduate dance curriculum centered on recent developments in the field, combining intensive practice and performance opportunities with a rigorous liberal arts education. Students at Lang explore dance through varied modes of analysis—verbal, textual and physical—through a curriculum that emphasizes research and experimentation. Conversation is fostered across artistic genres and students are encouraged to think about dance in social, historical, and cultural contexts, through a variety of disciplinary lenses. This approach stimulates aspiring dancers and choreographers to think about their roles in society and to consider multiple ways of engaging a public through dance.

www.langdance.com

Lang Dance Faculty 2021-2022 luciana achugar J. Bouey João Carvalho Ana “Rokafella” Garcia Danielle Goldman Neil Greenberg Joanna Kotze Deborah Lohse Nia Love Juliette Mapp Darian M. Parker Katy Pyle Sarah Richter Vicky Shick Stacy Matthew Spence Rebecca Stenn Mariana Valencia Larissa Velez-Jackson Sasha Welsh