Friday, April 13, 2012
8pm Doors at 7:30pm
Tickets: $10
Curated by dancer/choreographer Luke Miller
Performances by Rebecca Lazier, Jack Ferver, Vanessa Walters, Kyle Abraham
Video by Jason Akira Somma

Location One presents an evening of dance performance and live video, curated by dancer/choreographer Luke Miller. He has recruited some of hottest dancers and choreographers from the downtown dance scene to create some very special performances for the evening.

The dancers will be performing in a video environment created by Jason Akira Somma, who has developed his own analog video technique in which the video signal itself becomes the performer. Using discarded, malfunctioning and obsolete electronics, Somma creates his own custom video mixers from scrap parts to create unique and unexpected effects. Drawing on his background in dance, he carefully moves his body in sympathy with the subject, which then directly affects the video being generated in real time through video feedback, creating a new interactive world.

“Nam June Paik meets performance art. He is an electronic archaeologist.”
-William Forsythe

“A magician of light.”
-Chrissie Iles

“The future of art and dance.”
-Le Figaro, Paris 2010

Approaching the evening as a collaboration of all those involved, Vanishing Acts exposes a friction between the recent physical history within a space and the specter of memory that the projections conjure.

Kyle Abraham

Kyle Abraham, professional dancer and choreographer, began his training at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He continued his dance studies in New York, receiving a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Over the past few years, Abraham has received tremendous accolades and awards for his dancing and choreography including a 2010 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance for his work in The Radio Show along with a 2010 Princess Grace Award for Choreography, a BUILD grant and an individual artist fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, a Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowship and 2009 was honored as one of Dance Magazine’s 25 To Watch.

Abraham was heralded by OUT Magazine as one of the “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.” His choreography has been presented throughout the United States and abroad, most recently at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Bates Dance Festival, Harlem Stage, Fall for Dance Festival at New York’s City Center, Montreal, Germany, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, The Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum located in Okinawa Japan and The Andy Warhol Museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Abraham’s most recent work, The Corner, commissioned by Ailey 2, is currently touring internationally with great reception. As a performer, Abraham has worked with acclaimed modern dance companies including David Dorfman Dance, Burnt Sugar Dance Conduction Continuum, Nathan Trice/Rituals, Mimi Garrard Dance Theater, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Dance Alloy, The Kevin Wynn Collection and Attack Theatre. In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, Abraham.In.Motion, Abraham also teaches his unique approach to post-modern dance in various schools and studios throughout the United States. For more information please visit: http://abrahaminmotion.org

Jack Ferver

Jack Ferver’s solo Two Alike, a collaboration with the visual artist Marc Swanson, was presented at Diverse Works in conjunction with The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston in 2011 and will premiere in New York at the Kitchen this coming May 17th-19th. In 2011 Ferver also premiered his duet with Michelle Mola, Me, Michelle, at the Museum of Arts and Design as part of Performa 11. It returned as part of American Realness at Abrons Art Center. Ferver has been creating full-length works since 2007. He has been presented at PS 122 (NYC), The New Museum (NYC), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Danspace Project (NYC), Abrons Art Center (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), and Théâtre de Vanves in France. Shorter and solo works have been presented at MoMA PS1, Dance New Amsterdam, LaMaMa E.T.C., The Culture Project, and NP Gallery. His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Modern Painters, and Dance Magazine. His writing has been published in the magazine Novembre. He has curated for Danspace Project, Center for Performance Research, and Dance New Amsterdam. He teaches privately as well as at New York University and has set choreography at The Juilliard School.

Rebecca Lazier

Rebecca Lazier is the artistic director/choreographer of Terrain, a project-based NYC dance company and Senior Lecturer at Princeton University. Lazier and Terrain have performed in many New York venues including Danspace Project, The Kitchen, the Guggenheim Museum, 92nd Street Y, Joyce SoHo, and Movement Research at the Judson Church. In addition, Terrain has toured to a variety of locales from Martha’s Vineyard to Los Angeles, Jacob’s Pillow to New Orleans, from Nova Scotia, Canada to Perm, Russia. Lazier is currently preparing Terrain for a five city tour to Turkey and a three-week residency in Canada. Recently, Lazier has received grants for her choreographic research from the Canada Council on the Arts, NY Department of Cultural Affairs and the American Music Center. She has been artist-in-residence at Movement Research, The Joyce Theater Foundation, The Yard, and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program. Prior to teaching at Princeton, Lazier was on faculty at distinctly different institutions ranging from the Hartford Ballet to UCLA, from the State Conservatory of Turkey to Wesleyan University, and from American Repertory Ballet to White Mountain Summer Dance Festival. For more information please visit: www.terraindance.org

Luke Miller

Luke Miller, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, began his dance training at the age of sixteen at Christine’s School of Dance and the Civic Light Opera Academy. Prior to his involvement with the performing arts, he studied visual art, music and swam competitively at his high school. Luke won the title of Mr. Dance of Pennsylvania 1997 for Dance Masters of America Chapter Ten. On scholarship, he then went on to receive his formal education at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

He joined Susan Marshall & Company in 2003 and has since collaborated in the making of Sleeping Beauty and Other Stories, Cloudless, Sawdust Palace and Frame Dances. From the Company’s repertory he has performed Kiss, Arms and Fields of View. Luke has taught the Company’s work to students at Wittenberg University, the University of Wisconsin Steven’s Point, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the University of Monatana, and the University of Wisconsin Madison. He has staged repertory on professional companies including; Dance Alloy, Hedwig Dances, Hubbard Street and Pacific Northwest Ballet. In ‘09 he contributed in the development and teaching of SUMAC (Systems for Understanding Movement And Composition), an annual one week workshop held at Barnard College that focuses on collaborative skill building within the art-form. Luke recently assisted Susan in choreographing Asphalt Orchestra for it’s run at Lincoln Center Out Of Doors festival in August of ’09 and acted as assistant choreographer in the making of For You, a solo created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in May of ’10.

In the play Madama Fortuna, written/directed by Antonio Rodriguez and presented by Dixon Place at Chasama, Luke portrayed the role of BunnyTeddy and choreographed the production. He co-directed and choreographed the play The Pet Goat with writer Brian Boyles at WAX and performed as Ron Reagan Jr. in Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge.

In film, he worked with David Neuman in the making of the WB production I Am Legend.

Luke received a 2009 Bessie Award for his collaboration and performance in Dark Horse/ Black Forest; a work choreographed by Yanira Castro.

He performed in the ADF ’07 reconstruction of Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights and acted as assistant to the choreographer in its ’08 off-broadway restaging.

Luke has also performed in the work of Eun Me Ahn, Keely Garfield, Molissa Fenley, Stanley Love, David Dorfman, Fiona Marcotty, Julie Atlas Muz, Stephen Petronio, Christopher Williams, Amber Sloan, Paige Martin, Renee Archibald and currently in the companies of Yanira Castro and Neil Greenberg.

His own work has been shown at many venues throughout New York City including The Joyce SoHo, WAX, Galapagos, The Flea Theater, M Shanghai, 100 Grand, and The Roxy.

Jason Akira Somma

Jason is a practicing video/performance artist and photographer based in the NYC. Merging his two backgrounds as a visual artists and choreographer he has been experimenting on ways of transcending dance from the ephemeral state on stage to the walls of galleries. He specializes in integrating technology as an extension of the body for the physically impaired and elderly.

His film work has been featured on the Sundance Channel, Independent Film Channel, PBS, NY Dance Film Festival, MTV Europe, American Dance Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop (NYC), Seoul (Korea) Film Festival, SPEX Magazine (Germany), Cinedans Festival (Amsterdam) and in the Performatica Festival (Mexico). His photography and film work have also been featured in The Deitch Project (SoHo), P.S. 1 (MoMA), Robert Altman Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Va.), and the Anderson Gallery (Richmond, Va.) His photography work has also been featured in numerous periodicals and magazines in the U.S. and Europe to include the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Europe Magazine, Village Voice, Time Out NY, and LA Times to name a few. Jason has been commissioned by the BBC Bigscreens Moves festival in the UK and was a guest artist at the Center of Contemporary Art (CCA) in Glasgow as well as a guest artist at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Somma was the first American to receive the Rolex Arts Initiative Award for Dance and has been working under the mentorship of Jiri Kylian over the past 4 years. He collaborated with Jiri Kylian on a dance piece commemorating the Nederlands Dans Theatre’s 50th anniversary and has since collaborated on two other projects. He has set work on the Lyon Opera Ballet, and collaborated with Robert Wilson by directing 5 short films that were shown at the Guggenheim Museum. When not performing or creating Jason has given numerous lectures internationally at universities funded via the US Embassy on “Arts and Science/Performance and New Technology.”

In March of 2011 Jason premiered the very first free floating interactive holograph film installation called the “Phosphene Variations” at the Chaillot National Theater of Paris to rave reviews. He has had the unique opportunity to be a guest consultant for the University of Glasgow in the Neuroscience department for a research study focusing on how the perception of movement affects brain imaging and transcranial magnet stimulation.

Vanessa Walters

Vanessa is the lead choreographer for the performance group, Fischerspooner. She has also choreographed music videos for Zola Jesus, AVAN LAVA, the Blank Dogs, Department of Eagles, Cyndi Lauper, Kings of Leon, Creep, and Nintendo, as well as live events for Mercedes Benz, Juicy Couture, House of Diehl, Daisy Spurs, Chaos & Candy, Narcissister, JVA, and the musical Camp Wanatachi, as well as her own works, BATHORY and The Man Piece. In 2011, Vanessa co-choreographed both “100 Beginnings” and “Alley of the Dolls” with Nicole Wolcott. For 2012, look forVanessa’s new piece entitled, “Ripening”. www.vanessawalters.com

The Marina Abramović Studio is a space within Location One dedicated to the ongoing performance series of long-durational works focusing on open-ended forms of workshops, panels and discussions. It includes resident artists at the Location One as well as a larger community of artists and thinkers interested in the development of performance art as practiced by the pioneer of performance art Marina Abramovic for almost four decades. “The laboratory approach” of the Marina Abramović Studio has the goal of supporting the growth of performance art by promoting the works of emerging artists on an international scale, organizing and collaborating on events using a network of people converging at Location One. It shows the commitment to experimentation across all art forms and points to recent efforts to return performance art to its central position within the gallery system. Starting in the Fall of 2009, the ongoing performance workshops will occasionally be opened to the public in the form of live art exhibitions. In addition, public panels and discussions will promote and seek critical discourses on contemporary performance art practice and related issues. The first event open to the public at Location One presented Abramović’s dynamic vision for this specific institution. All programs are curated by Jovana Stokić.

October 27, 2009 Marina Abramović: Performing the Gallery/Performing the Museum The discussion focused on Abramović’s investigations of the transformative quality of time in context of a gallery exhibition. The talk included exclusive video material from Abramovic’s innovative group exhibition in Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery, held July 3 – 19 2009. For this groundbreaking event, the Whitworth emptied every gallery space in order to create room for this unique work to develop and breathe. The show began with an hour-long performance initiation with Marina Abramović, leading up to a series of extraordinary encounters between artists and audience. Quite unlike anything staged before in a museum or a gallery, it provided a transformative gallery-going experience. more >>

Click here to view the embedded video.

Friday, November 7, 2009
Nikhil Chopra

Nikhil Chopra’s work has been included in “Indian Highway” at the Serpentine Gallery (2008–09), “Making Worlds” at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), and “Marina Abramovic Presents,” the Manchester International Festival (2009). His most recent performane “Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX” in the New Museum for Contemporary Art was part of Performa 09 Biennial in New York City. He lives and works in Mumbai, India.

Friday, December 11, 2009
Lotte Lindner & Till Steinbrenner

www.lindner-steinbrenner.com
Born 1971 and 1967, live and work in Hannover, Germany. 1996-2004 Braunschweig School of Arts, Dipl. and MA with Marina Abramovic and John Armleder.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Friday, December 18, 2009
Performance artist Lilibeth Cuenca

lilibethcuenca.com
Lilibeth Cuenca (b.1970 in Manila) lives in Copenhagen Denmark. Cuenca is a graduate from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen, (1996-2002). Cuenca works primarily with video and performances. With consummate style and an almost voracious curiosity, she navigates the inter spaces between different kinds of realities and extremes. Between the perfect staging of music videos and the raw reality of documentaries. Between personal confessionals and political commitment. Taking her own Danish-Filipino background as her point of departure, Cuenca displays a keenly honed sensitivity, almost like that of an anthropologist, to the narratives that exist in and between a place of birth and home country. She gathers, adapts, and universalises these narratives in her both critical and humorous approach to central issues such as identity, culture, religion, gender, and social relations.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More videos from the Abramovic Studio

February 4, 2010 – Lucy Skaer

February 5, 2010 – Nico Vascellari

February 12, 2010 – Jovana Stokic discusses the Abramovic Institute in San Francisco

February 24, 2010 – Ragnar Kjartansson

February 26, 2010 – Maria Jose Arjona

March 11, 2010 – Viola Yesiltac and Eun-Hye Hwang

April 16, 2010 – Paula Orell, Curator from the Plymouth Arts Center

April 21, 2010 – Shoba

May 14, 2010 – Elana Katz

May 28, 2010 – Anna Berndtson

June 3, 2010 – Snezana Golubovic

Marina Abramović:
Performing the Gallery/Performing the Museum

Tuesday, October 27, 2009,
doors at 6pm, talk begins promptly at 7pm
Public Discussion with MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ
Inauguration of ABRAMOVIC STUDIO AT LOCATION ONE
presented by Jovana Stokić

The discussion will focus on Abramović’s investigations of transformative quality of time in context of a gallery exhibition. The exclusive video material from Abramovic’s innovative group exhibition in Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery, held July 3 – 19 2009, will be shown. For this groundbreaking event, the Whitworth emptied every gallery space in order to create room for this unique work to develop and breathe. The show began with an hour-long performance initiation with Marina Abramović, leading up to a series of extraordinary encounters between artists and audience. Quite unlike anything staged before in a museum or a gallery, it provided a transformative gallery-going experience.

The evening inaugurates Abramović Studio at LOCATION ONE. Beginning October 2009 the studio, curated by Jovana Stokić, involves artists from Location One residency program in engaging with performance art. The ABRAMOVIĆ STUDIO within Location One is dedicated to exploring long-durational performance works through open-ended forms of workshops, panels and discussions. Marina Abramović, will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at MoMA in the spring of 2010 titled “Artist is Present” in which she will be performing continuously throughout the whole duration of the exhibition.

Marina Abramović
Since the beginning of Marina Abramovic’s career, during the early 1970s, where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the most historic early performance pieces and continues to make important durational works. In 2005, she held a series of performances called Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was honored for Seven Easy Pieces by the Guggenheim at their International Gala in 2006 and by the AICA USA with the “Best Exhibition of Time Based Art” award in 2007. Marina Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery.

Jovana Stokić
Belgrade-born, New York-based art historian and critic Jovana Stokić holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at the New York University. Her dissertation, titled “The Body Beautiful: Feminine Self-Representations 1970 – 2007,” analyzes works of several women artists – Marina Abramovic, Martha Rosler, Joan Jonas — since the 1970s, particularly focusing on the notions of self-representation and beauty. Jovana has curated several thematic exhibitions and performance events in the US, Italy, Spain and Serbia. Her recent exhibition “Best Regards form the Blind Spot,” focused on videos by Marina Abramovic, and younger women artists from the region of Serbia and Montenegro. Jovana was a fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the curator of the Kimmel Center Galleries, New York University. She has most recently written an essay for Marina Abramović’s MoMA exhibition catalogue.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brina Thurston received a BFA in Film and Video Production from NYU, and an MFA in Photographic studies from Bard-ICP. In the past year she completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center and has exhibited at Rivington Arms, Dean Projects and Gavin Brown @ Passerby. Her video works have also been presented in numerous venues such as the New York Underground Film Festival at Anthology Film Archives, a WWII Bunker in Kiel Germany, a bar in Austin Texas and on the internet.

video stills from “Colon Karaoke” 2008

website: http://www.brinathurston.com

Brina’s residency at Location One is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

15 artists will spend seven days at Location One working intensely and in restricted conditions to produce wearable creations with only the tools and materials provided to them. A cross between art and fashion, the project temporarily removes the gallery from the appointed function of “showing” and moves it to the world of artistic production, raising questions about the circumstances, both physical and mental, of the creative process.

Open Stitch removes artists from the comfort of their own environments, imposes constraints, and compels them to work among others. The action will be documented via live-streamed video. Following the production stage, the gallery space will be left in its raw, post-production state, and an installation of the work produced will be on display. A video montage of the production process will be projected as part of the installation.

[Show as slideshow]

Open Stitch was conceived and organized by Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria in collaboration with Jessie Cohan. Participating artists include Ayah Bdeir, Jessie Cohan, Barry Doss, Stefany Anne Golberg, George Hudacko, Selma Karaca, Ryan Kennedy, Miranti Kisdarjono, Katherine Moriwaki, David Quinn, Chris Sanders, Davina Semo, and Wikiwikicorp, a collective that includes Jean Barberis, Aya Kakeda and Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria.

September 7-13 Workshop
7 days, 56+ hours, 15 artists/designers working intensely and in restricted conditions to produce wearable creations with only the tools and materials provided to them. The project removes artists from the comfort of their own environments, imposes constraints, and compels them to work among others. The action will be documented via live-streamed video.
Open to the public every day from 12 to 6pm

Timelapse Video

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September 14-30 Installation
The gallery space will be left in its raw, post-production state, and an installation of the work created will be on display. A video montage of the production process will also be projected.
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 12 to 6pm

Click here to view the embedded video.

September 21 & 28 at 7pm Open House Wednesdays
Two talks about Cultural Constraints and Social Identities relating to clothing and fashion. Speakers to be announced.

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Saturday October 1st Runway show – Performance – Party
Opening with a short performance by the Glen Rumsey Dance Project, the evening features a staged showing of the garments produced by the participating artists, plus music, DJ and cocktails.

Read press for the show: (PDFs)

Gay City News

Village Voice “Don’t Call it ‘Project Runway, the Art Exhibit”
by Corina Zappia

	Shelley Hirsch is an unorthodox, extraordinary fusion of vocalist, composer and performance artist whose work encompasses story telling pieces, staged performances, compositions, improvisations, collaborations, installations and radioplays, which have been presented on 5 continents. Hirsch has performed hundreds of concerts of improvised music with Anthony Coleman,Christian Marclay, Toshio Kajiwara, Aki Onda, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Billy Martin, DJ Olive, Dennis Delzotto, Fred Frith, Min Xiao Fen, David Watson and many many others. Her vocals can be heard on 30 cds including her most recent releases “The Far In Far Out Worlds of Shelley Hirsch” (Tzadik) and “Duets” with guitarist Uchihashi Kasuhisa ( Innocence) and “O Little Town of East New York” (Tzadik) and “Haiku Lingo” both with longtime collaborator, keyboardist/composer David Weinstein.
Photo by Caroline Forbes	Composer/performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 25 years in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He leads the trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla. Recent recordings include Intervals, a double-CD of solo work, and Are You Be, by R.U.B. (Rothenberg/Kazuhisa Uchihashi/Samm Bennett) on Rothenberg’s Animul label. Chamber music releases include Ghost Stories, on Tzadik and Power Lines on New World, along with Port of Entry, Sync’s release on Intuition. Other collaborators have included Sainkho Namchylak, Paul Dresher, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Yuji Takahashi and Evan Parker. For more visit www.nedrothenberg.com
photo by Mark Lentz	David Weinstein is keyboardist, composer and multimedia artist whose musical works juxtapose sound effects, traditional and non traditional instruments, synthetic sound, ancient and exotic tunings and noise. His group Impossible Music uses sound effects, found sound and cheap electronics to construct virtual soundtracks. As a keyboardist Weinstein has recorded and performed in collaboration with musician/artists including Shelley Hirsch, Angie Eng, Elliott Sharp, Doris Vila, Ned Rothenberg, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Rhys Chatham, Butch Morris, Christian Marclay and many others. Weinstein’s discography includes “Perfume” (Avant/Hips Road) and “A Classic Guide¡¨ (No Man’s Land).
	Samm Bennett is a composer and percussionist who over the past 25 years has blazed his own paths in the exploration of rhythm and polyrhythm. He’s long maintained an interest in electronic instruments as well as acoustic percussion, and his music has always been defined by an enthusiastic embrace of new sonic possibilities. The years he spent in NY saw him working as an improvisor or bandmember with Elliott Sharp, Shelley Hirsch, Ned Rothenberg, Hahn Rowe, Tom Cora and many others, as well as a bandleader and singer/songwriter with his own groups Chunk and History of the Last Five Minutes. Since 1995 he has resided in Tokyo, where he’s performed and recorded with musicians such as Haino Keiji, Yoshigaki Yasuhiro, Haco, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Carl Stone, Akiyama Tetuzi, Tanaka Yumiko and others. He is a member of the the song/electronica project Skist, along with vocalist and sound creator Haruna Ito. Solo performance has become Bennett’s main focus over the last couple of years, and in 2004 he released “Secrets of Teaching Yourself Music” (Improvised Music From Japan IMJ-516), a live recording from solo concerts at various Tokyo venues. The album features his work on WaveDrum plus various other instruments and gadgets. The Wire’s Edwin Pouncey called the record an “amusing and entertaining DIY musical primer… Bennett’s lively manipulation of sound never fails to uncover some new means of communication between the objects he has assembled.”
photo from downtownmusic.net	Electric bassist Stomu Takeishi has recorded and toured with Myra Melford’s Crush Trio, Henry Threadgill’s Make A Move band, Eric Friedlander’s Topaz and with Dave Tronzo’s Tronzo Trio. He has recorded with Paul Motian and Mick Goodrick and has performed with Don Cherry, Bob Moses, Dave Liebman, Wynton Marsalis, Randy Brecker, Rasheed Ali, and Leni Stern.

Shelley Hirsch will perform solo and improvisational works with turntablists Marina Rosenfeld and Toshio Kajiwara. Hirsch will be celebrating her record release The Far in Far Out Worlds of Shelley Hirsch (Tzadik) and Duets with Uchihashi Kasuhisa (Innocence).

SHELLEY HIRSCH is a vocalist, composer, performance artist whose written and improvised work for stage, concert, record, film, television and radio has been presented on 5 continents. Hirsch has been called “enormously inventive, scathingly satiric and virtuosic” by the NY Times. Her work incorporates extended vocal techniques, real and imaginary language, international music styles, stream of consciousness, electronics, characterizations, storytelling, movement and mixed visual media.

She has presented her mostly staged solo pieces at prestigious festivals, theaters and museums around the world including The Hebbel Theater (Berlin), WienerFestWochen (Vienna), The Zurcher InternationalTheaterSpektakel (Zurich) Adelaide State Theater (Australia) The Whitney Museum (NYC) Experimenta Festival (Buenos Aires), Helsinki Biennale (Finland) Angelica Festival (Bologna Italy)City of Women Festival (Llubliana Slovenia). She has performed improvised music with musicians Anthony Coleman, Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Fred Frith , DJ Olive and Toshio Kajiwara, Min Zhou Feng among others and can be heard on dozens of CDs including her latest CDs Duets with Uchihashi Kasuhisa and a soon to be released solo CD The Far Out Far In Worlds Of Shelley Hirsch on Tzadik; States; her storytelling CD O, Little Town of East New York on Tzadik ; Haiku Lingo on No Mans Land (both with keyboardist David Weinstein) and with the groups September Band and X-Communication (both on FMP). She can also be heard on CDs by Richard Teitelbaum, Jon Rose, Elliot Sharp, Nicolas Collins, John Zorn, David Moss, Sven Ake Johannson and Alexander Von Schlippenbach, Butch Morris, Jim Staley, Hans Koch, Martin Schutz and many compilation CDs. Hirsch is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including NEA, NYFA , NYSCA and Creative Capital.

IN HOT PURSUIT at Location One
New Theatre. Innovative Directors.
Curated by Jocelyn Ruggiero

Philoctetes
Or A Treatise on Three Ethics
by André Gide,
directed by Sonja Moser
March 7th, 8th, 9th 8:00 PM
Tickets: $10, Members free

During their voyage to Troy, the Greeks abandoned one of their own men. His name was Philoctetes. He suffered from a foot wound that bled, oozed, emitted a foul stench and caused him to wail in pain – wails that filled his fellow Greeks with an unbearable pity, a pity that they feared would dampen their courage for the ensuing battle. Consequently, he was dropped on a deserted island, with only a bow and arrows with which to survive. Ten years of bloody war followed.

Now, hoping to discover the key to victory, the Greeks consult the priest Calchus, who tells them they must return to the island where they left Philoctetes and retrieve his bow and arrows. This weapon will win the war for Greece. Ulysses, the slyest of the Greeks, is dispatched for the mission, and with him he brings Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, whose youth and innocence he hopes will act as a foil for his scheme.

On Philoctetes’ frozen island of hostile solitude the three engage in an entirely different battle: What is virtue? Ulysses, Neoptolemus and Philoctetes set patriotism against humanism against individualism, as each one strains to act in accordance with his own sense of truth. In this rarely performed work, originally titled THE FOUL WOUND, Andre Gide’s indictment of society and defense of the solitary artist figure is both heartbreaking and breathtaking.

SONJA MOSER (Director)
Sonja Moser’s Off-Broadway credits include the New York premier of Maria Irene Fornes’ ENTER THE NIGHT at the Signature Theatre. Off-off Broadway she has directed at P.S. 122, HERE, The Duplex, Dixon Place & Expanded Arts, and has made work regionally for the University of Iowa, the Iowa Playwrights Festival and HBO Workspace. She is a graduate of the Woodruff-Bogart directing program at Columbia University, where she first discovered Gide’s Philoctetes.

SARAH BELLOWS (Neoptolemus)
last worked with Sonja on DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL (The Duplex, HBO/WB Workspace). She recently completed a training program at The Actors Center where she played Irina in THE THREE SISTERS and Boomer in a clown show. Favorite roles include Claire in THE MAIDS and Rebecca Runkle in DOPPLEGANG-BANG by David Adjmi.

JOCELYN RUGGIERO (Ulysses)
last worked with Sonja Moser playing Marlene in a production of THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT. Other acting credits include SONNETS FOR AN OLD CENTURY, directed by KJ Sanchez at Location One in January; FEFU AND HER FRIENDS at Santa Fe Stages, directed by Maria Irene Fornés; THE MAN WHO SHOT HIS WASHING MACHINE, directed by Tom O’Horgan at TNC; SPRINGTIME at The Image Theatre and LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING at Long Wharf Theatre, directed by Mike Bradwell. Jocelyn is currently rehearsing PERSEPHONE, written and directed by Emily Davis, a play that will use masks and puppets by Shannon Harvey. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College.

LISA SHAHEEN (Philoctetes)
Recent New York credits: Gardenias in Winter (Lambs Theatre), Furious (John Houseman Theatre), Tuna and Jack (American Globe Theatre) Why We Have a Body (John Houseman Theatre) Hey Hey Bernadette- staged reading (John Houseman Theatre).

For information on Andre Gide, see www.andregide.org

Click here to view the embedded video.