David Dorfman Dance

2020 -21

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State University of New York

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(A)Way Out of My Body Conceived and Directed David Dorfman Choreography and text David Dorfman Dance Performers David Dorfman, Lily Gelfand, Kellie Ann Lynch, Jenn Nugent, Nik Owens and Myssi Robinson Music Composed by Sam Crawford, Zeb Gould, Jeff Hudgins, Elizabeth de Lise Music Performed by Elizabeth de Lise, Sam Crawford Musical Direction……..………………………….Sam Crawford Original Visual Design*………………….....Andrew Schneider Associate Visual Design & Production Manager… Sarah Lurie Dramaturg…………………...……………………..Anne Davison Costume Designer…………………..……………...Oana Botez Notable Collaborators………….Jared Brown, Doug Gillespie, Jasmine Hearn, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kendra Portier, Lisa Race, Claudia-Lynn Rightmire, Simon Thomas-Train Please note: Tonight’s informal performance is presented without original visual design The creation of this work was made possible by New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Dancers’ Workshop, Ohio University, NYU Tisch Summer Residency Program, The Wooden Floor, The Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College (NEFA Expeditions Tour Planning Grant) and Connecticut College.

(A)Way Out of My Body is dedicated to DDD Board Emeritus Paul O’Neil in honor of his three decades of service.

A message from David Dorfman We are here in this intimate space it’s almost like a body, a vessel, a container for movement art, healing, and ever active minds and souls searching for new realities. Our exploration of “Out of Body” experiences was the springboard for what has turned into a meditation on the frailty and power of the body, the power of our collective will, our vivid hopes - and a never-ending dive into our past to understand our present and future.

I, along with DDD, wish to thank Kim Engel, Bryan Robinson, and the entire staff at University at Albany for inviting our company onstage and “in the raw.” It’s hard to wrap our minds around the fact that this was meant to be performed for you back in 2020. What a time warp. We are elated to have had the opportunity to reschedule this as we continue to find our way through the pandemic.

Thanks for being here to complete the system with us.

Enjoy your experience!

About the Company Since its founding in 1987, David Dorfman Dance (DDD) has performed extensively throughout the world - North and South America, Great Britain, Europe and Central Asia with our most recent foreign tours taking us to El Salvador and Panama.

Closer to home DDD has regularly performed in New York City at major venues, including The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, Danspace Project/St. Mark’s Church, La Mama Theater, The Duke on 42nd Street, The Met

Breuer, and the 92ndSt. “Y”/Harkness Dance Festival. DDD celebrates its 16th year as Company-in-Residence at Connecticut College where David Dorfman earned his MFA in dance in 1981 and then returned as Professor of Dance in 2004. This is our 2nd Year as Commissioned Artist-inResidence of Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson Hole, WY. “To get the whole world dancing” is at the core of DDD’s mission to promote the appreciation and critical understanding of dance by bringing the company’s work to broad and diverse audiences. David and his company seek to destigmatize the notion of accessibility in post-modern dance by embracing viewers with visceral, meaningful dance, music, text and visuals. By sustaining a vision to create innovative, inclusive, movement-based performance that is radically humanistic, DDD maintains a commitment to examine and unearth issues and ideas that enliven, incite, and excite through dialogue and debate about social change and a myriad of other topics. For this work David and the company’s dancers and collaborators have been honored with eight New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards.

DDD’s works include tonight’s (A)Way Out of My Body (2020); Aroundtown (2017); Come, and Back Again (2013); Prophets of Funk (2011), set to the music of Sly and the Family Stone; Disavowal (2009), inspired by radical abolitionist John Brown; underground (2006), inspired by The Weather Underground; Older Testaments (2005), set to music by composer/trumpeter Frank London of The Klezmatics; Lightbulb Theory (2004), original commissioned score by Michael Wall; Impending Joy (2004), original commissioned score by Chris Peck; and See Level (2003), original commissioned score by Chris Peck and visual design by Samuel Topiary.

Throughout the past thirty-five years, DDD has engaged audiences worldwide, with community-based projects playing an important role, particularly in the 1990s. In Out of Season (The Athletes Project) and Familiar Movements (The Family

Project), the members of the company rehearsed and performed with groups of volunteer athletes or family members selected in the communities to which the company toured. In No Roles Barred, DDD examined the personal roles assumed, formed, and interwoven in our modern social construct, engaging groups ranging from corporate executives and underserved youths to college administrators, doctors, carpenters, and social dance enthusiasts. These three community projects have been presented over 30 times in 18 states and two foreign countries. The company’s recent work in foreign communities have been projects such as the collaboration in El Salvador with Glasswing International and the United States Agency for International Development.

Together there our company and youth volunteers, in centers dedicated to the prevention of violence, pledged to use our bodies for peace and co-created movement vocabulary celebrating the possibilities of freedom through movement. All of these efforts help DDD promote its mission of Kinetic Diplomacy: the idea that if you’re dancing, you’re not hurting another human being.

About the Performers David Dorfman, Artistic Director and Founder (1987), has been Professor of Dance at Connecticut College since 2004.

Dorfman received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue his research and choreography in the topics of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissidence, and underground movements.

DD has been honored with four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, an American Choreographer's Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard, a New York Dance & Performance “Bessie” Award and a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in

Dance. His work has been commissioned widely in the U.S. and in Europe by Dancing Wheels, AXIS Dance Company (Oakland), and Bedlam Dance Company (London).

His forays into theater include Indecent, by Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman, for which DD received a Lucille Lortel Award and Chita Rivera Nomination for best choreography for the play’s Off-Broadway run; Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People at Yale Rep; Our Town, a co-production of Deaf West and Pasadena Playhouse; Assassins at Yale Rep; and the original musical Green Violin at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, for which he won a 2003 Barrymore Award for best choreography.

Dorfman tours an evening of solos and duets, Live Sax Acts, with dear friend and collaborator Dan Froot, most recently in New York City and at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe. As a performer, he toured internationally with Kei Takei's Moving Earth and Susan Marshall & Co. DD hails from Chicago and holds a BS in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis (1977).

DD continually thanks Martha Myers and the late Daniel Nagrin, for being his dance mom and dad; his late parents, Oscar and Jeanette, for inspiring him to dance to heal and instilling the importance of a good joke; and his in-house “family project”, Lisa and Samson, for sharing with him the practice of unconditional love.

Lily Gelfand is a Brooklyn-based dancer, experimental cellist, composer, and teaching artist. Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, Lily received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance and Choreography from Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College. While at Ohio University, she also began her dance musician training under the mentorship of Andre Gribou. As a dancer, Lily has had the pleasure of

performing works by Kyle Abraham, Joanna Kotze, Kendra Portier, David Dorfman, Jasmine Hearn, Thryn Saxon, Serena Chang, and Ani Javian. As a cellist, Lily is currently on staff as a dance musician at The Juilliard School, and has composed and performed original collaborative works for Christina Robson, Jasmine Hearn, Dance Lab NY, Toscana Dance Hub, Venza Dance, The Wooden Floor, Douglas Gillespie, and Nik Owens. Additionally, Lily is a 200 Hour RYT through the Yoga Alliance, and uses cello as a source of sound healing for a variety of meditations and restorative practices throughout the city. Her favorite color is green.

Kellie Ann Lynch (she/her) has been making, laughing and performing with David Dorfman Dance for several years. She lives in Connecticut and is a Co-Founder and CoArtistic Director of Elm City Dance Collective based in New Haven (elmcitydance.org). Other companies Kellie has had the great privilege of dancing with include Kate Weare Company, Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc, Wire Monkey and Adele Myers and Dancers, with whom she danced for 10 years. As a freelance dance artist, she has also had the opportunity to work with incredible independent choreographers along the East Coast. Kellie has received artist fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Connecticut Office of the Arts, and her work has been commissioned, produced and performed throughout the Northeast including at Bates Dance Festival as an Emerging Choreographer. In addition to making and performing dances, she maintains a private teaching practice in New Haven and is working toward her Feldenkrais certification. Kellie has a BA in Dance from Rhode Island College and an MFA in Dance from Smith College.

Jenn Nugent addresses her body, mind and being through questioning. She articulates internal experiences through performance and teaching and augments these practices by

sharing and refining ideas in front of others—a transmission of spoken and gestural language.

Nugent has been performing in NYC since 1999, most notably with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from (2009-2014), David Dorfman Dance from (1999-2007), and Paul Matteson (2002-2020). She was a 2005 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awardee: “For her physical and emotional audaciousness, and for making abandon look controlled and control look abandoned, in the works of David Dorfman Dance among others.”

Her practices are profoundly inspired by Linda Rogers Albritton, Ann Cummings, Patricia Cummings, Beatrice LaVerne, Bambi Anderson, Dale Andree, Gerri Houlihan, Daniel Lepkoff, Wendell Beavers, Lisa Race, David Dorfman, Patty Townsend, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Paul Matteson, and Janet Wong, Nugent is a teaching artist at Sarah Lawrence College, Gibney Dance NYC, and the virtual platform freeskewl.

Nik Owens began his movement experience as a competitive gymnast for 17 years and started his dance training in his senior year of high school and continued at Wesleyan University, where he received a BA in Dance and a certificate in Environmental Studies. He has worked with Nicholas Leichter, Tania Isaac, and Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and has performed works by The Dance Exchange, Gierre Godley’s Project 44, Aaron McGloin Dance, Raja Kelly/The Feath3r Theory, Bryn Cohn and Artists, Helen Simoneau Danse, The Bang Group, Abdul Latif D2D/T, Dual Rivet, and 10 Hairy Legs. He has worked on several duet

projects and has been commissioned to create works at Rivertown Dance Academy in New York and The Wooden Floor (under David Dorfman Dance) in California. He currently collaborates and performs with Tiffany Mills Company, David Dorfman Dance, and Kayla Farrish Decent Structure Arts, and is working on a solo of his own creation titled The Right Kind.

freely within it.

Myssi Robinson is a Bessie-nominated performer and maker from Richmond, VA. She has interpreted many dances. Her own art practice currently involves creative archiving, mixed-media marking and spatial design. Intuition and empathy play with maximalist instinct to give life to the art that she makes. It whispers may we all heal.

Gratitude to Carolyn Johnson and Darrin Robinson for her life and abilities to create

About the Designers and Collaborators Sam Crawford (composer/musician) completed degrees in English and Audio Technology at Indiana University in 2003. A move to New York City led him to Looking Glass Studios where he worked on film projects with Philip Glass and Björk. His recent sound designs and compositions have included works for the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company (Venice Biennale, 2010), Kyle Abraham (Pavement, 2012), Camille A. Brown and Dancers (BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, 2016), and David Dorfman Dance (BAM Next Wave, 2013). La Medea, Crawford’s live multi-media collaboration with director Yara Travieso, premiered at PS122’s Coil Festival in 2017.

Elizabeth de Lise (composer/musician) (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based artist whose work bridges the gap between “experimental and widely accessible” (John Vettese for NPR). Their edgy-pop trio, Lizdelise released their EP, Body, with Sheer Luck Records in March 2021— a reckoning with dysphoria and celebration of queer identity. de Lise performs in Yara Travieso's experimental film/theater works and as a company musician with David Dorfman Dance.

They’re an associate producer/sound designer for the Material Feels podcast and music contributor to NPR's Invisibilia.

Andrew Schneider (Visual Designer) is an OBIE awardwinning, Drama Desk- nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, video, and installation since 2003. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Schneider creates and performs original performance works, builds interactive electronic art works and installations, and was a Wooster Group company member (video/performer) from 2007-2014.

Rooted at the intersection of performance and technology, Schneider’s work asserts that the phenomenological impact of art is no different from any other category of lived experience.

“We live in an increasingly synthetic world of our own making.

In the name of more and faster connection, we are animals that have separated ourselves the actual world around us. The work I make is highly technical, but It is not about the technology. I am more interested in the application of the technology and how it can bring us closer together, shake us from the synthetic, and offer a genuine experience to every audience member’s consciousness, rather than just watching something “over there”. I am interested in how curating meaningful time-based experiences can lead to more meaningful human-to-human interaction. If theater at its core is humans telling stories about ourselves to each other, then I hope it is in the service of getting

better at being human. This is why I make the work that I make.

This is also how I try to make the work that I make – with an incredible team of value-aligned recurring collaborators who are interested not just in the work of making experience, but in a vigorous interrogation of what power structures exist in the rooms in which we make and how to systemically try to make change in inequitable systems.”

Andrew’s original performance work in NYC includes NERVOUS/SYSTEM (2018 –BAM Next Wave Festival) AFTER (2018 – Under the Radar Festival, The Public Theater) YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award – The Invisible Dog, 2016 Drama Desk nom – 3LD); DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Dance Roulette), TIDAL (2013 – River to River festival); and WOW+FLUTTER (2010 – The Chocolate Factory Theater) among others.

Andrew has been a recurring collaborator with The TEAM, Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera, David Dorfman Dance, Hotel Savant, Fischerspooner, Kelela, and AVAN LAVA. His offbroadway designs include Dolphins and Sharks at the Labyrinth Theater; Small Mouth Sounds at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre; and Roosevelvis at the Vineyard Theatre. Schneider has taught master classes on Technology and Performance at Bowdoin, Carleton, and Connecticut College. He is currently a Professor of the Practice and Visiting Fellow in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies through the Brown Arts Initiative at Brown University, as well as an adjunct professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. Andrew holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. Sarah Lurie (Associate Designer and Production Manager) is a New York based lighting designer and manager whose work has been seen around the city. Recent works include design at Abrons Arts Center, The Barrow Group, Bushwick Starr, Cherry Lane, La Mama, and Target Margin. Collaborators include Miguel Gutierrez, Haruna Lee, and Sibyl Kempson. Selected credits: No More Shimmering Cowboys (Out of Line Festival,

Yara Travieso), High Winds (LAX Festival), Dog Gone Day/Memory Retrograde (BAX/Ars Nova/Under the Radar), So Long Boulder City (SubCulture), American Realness at Weiner Festwochen, Mourning Becomes Electra (TMT), A Cabaret for Dark Times (ETW), The Children’s Hour (FSSA), Infernal Machine (ETW), Hasan Minhaj’s Homecoming King (Cherry Lane Theater), Colin Quinn’s The New York Story (Cherry Lane Theater) www.sarahelurie.com Anne Davison (Dramaturg) is a NY-based theater and dance dramaturg. She has collaborated with David Dorfman Dance since the development and premiere of Come, and Back Again (BAM Next Wave 2013). Recent projects include David Dorfman Dance's Aroundtown (BAM Next Wave 2017); Jane Comfort and Company's 40th Anniversary Retrospective (La MaMa 2018) and Beauty (2011); doug elkins choreography, etc.'s Kintsugi, O, round desire, The Weight of Smoke, Hapless Bizarre, Mo(or)town/Redux, and Fräulein Maria; Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman’s musical adaptation Love's Labour's Lost (Shakespeare in the Park); and Timbers and Friedman’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Public Theater and Broadway). She also works in film, television and theater casting. Recent casting projects include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”, If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins), and independent films Anya, A Woman, a Part and Radium Girls. M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama.

OANA BOTEZ (Costume Designer) is a Princess Grace, Barrymore, and Drammy Award recipient, and a NEA/TCG Career Development Program Recipient. In New York Botez’s work has been seen at the BAM Next Wave Festival, Bard SummerScape, Baryshnikov Arts Center, David H. Koch Theater/Lincoln Center, Soho Rep, LCT3, Public Theater, Classic Stage Company, Playwrights Horizons, Joyce Theater, Big Apple Circus, BRIC Arts Media, 59East59, La MaMa, and HERE Arts Center. Regional venues include the Wilma Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Actors Theater of

Louisville, CalShakes, Hartford Stage Company, Long Wharf Theater, Berkeley Rep, ArtsEmerson, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Walker Arts Center, Peak Performances, ADI, and Curtis Institute of Music. International stages include Bucharest National Theater, Arad National Theater, Bulandra Theater, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Les Subsistances, Budapest National Theater, Cluj Hungarian National Theater, Bucharest Operetta Theater, International Festival of Contemporary Theater, Le Quartz, La Filature, Centro Cultural Universidad del Pac fico, Palazzo Simoncelli, Edinburgh International Festival, and Singapore Arts Festival. Botez is a graduate of Bucharest Art Academy and received an MFA in Design from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Ms. Botez currently an Assistant Professor Adjunct in the Design Department at Yale School of Drama and resides in Manhattan. oanabotez.com

DAVID DORFMAN DANCE/ ART SWEATS, INC. Chloe Carlson, President David Dorfman Ginger Gillespie David Kyuman Kim Julie Leff

Board of Directors

Kellie Ann Lynch Jeffrey Mittman, Treasurer Rudy Nickens Paul O'Neil, Emeritus Karen Waltuck

Artistic Director: David Dorfman Executive Director: Erin Roy Company Manager: Journee Hardaway Company Intern: Julia Ramirez Development Consultant: Benvenuti Arts Bookkeeping: Quant Solutions Exclusive USA Tour Representation: PENTACLE Sandy Garcia sandyg@pentacle.org www.pentacle.org Consider making a tax-deductible donation to DDD (checks payable to “Art Sweats, Inc.” at PO Box 1227 Peter Stuyvesant Station NY, NY 10009) or online at daviddorfmandance.org.

Follow DDD on Facebook @DavidDorfmanDancePage and on Instagram @dorfmandance.

Share your thoughts and experience of A(Way) Out of My Body with us by emailing them to info@daviddorfmandance.org.

Tonight’s Sponsors Tonight’s performance is part of Dance in Albany, a joint series presented by the UAlbany Performing Arts Center and The Egg UALBANY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER PAC, 266 518-442-3995 www.albany.edu/pac

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Additional support is provided by the University at Albany Foundation and University Auxiliary Services.

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PERFORMING ARTS CENTER HOUSE POLICIES Latecomers will be seated at the discretion of the management and its staff. .

The use of photographic or recording devices of any kind during this performance is strictly prohibited. .

There is no food or drink allowed in the theatres, nor is smoking allowed in UAlbany buildings. .

To avoid disrupting the performance, kindly disable any noise making electronic devices you may have with you. .

Please take time to note the location of the fire exits nearest to you. In the event of an emergency, please proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly fashion and follow the directions of our staff.

Created and produced by the University Art Museum, NYS Writers Institute and UAlbany Performing Arts Center in collaboration with WAMC Public Radio, this popular series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspirations, their craft and their careers.

“Roundtable” host Joe Donahue conducts live on-stage interviews followed by a Q&A with the audience.

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