Foofwa d’Imobilité/Neopost Ahrrrt

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Musings & Involuntaries 1–6
January 21-24
Performance Times: Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 3:00pm
Ticket Prices: $17 ($12 members, $14 students, $10 RUSH tickets)
BUY TICKETS ON LINE HERE

*Opening Reception on Thursday, January 21st at 7:00pm
*Post show discussion moderated by Nancy Dalva on January 21st

The efforts of Foofwa d’Imobilité and collaborators Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter result in Involuntaries 1–6, a world premiere that saunters along the edge of reason. The US premiere, Musings, is a collaboration with lighting designer Jonathan O’Hear and reflects on the ideas of icons; John Cage and the late Merce Cunningham. The performance will also include the screening of videos by Foofwa d’Imobilité and Alan Sondheim.

Involuntaries 1-6
World Premiere
A Production of Foofwa d’Imobilité/Neopost Ahrrrt
Collaboration with Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter
Performed by Azure Carter, Foofwa d’Imobilité, and Alan Sondheim
Music by Alan Sondheim
Costumes by Basse-Couture
“If you want to understand what they’re about, perhaps these works will open up the vast chasm of comprehension on the edge of falling apart - I can’t think of any better pieces in this regard, and, for that matter, in the sheer beauty of fractured movement.” -from “Breaking New Ground” by Alan Sondheim

Musings
US Premiere
Choreographed by Foofwa d’Imobilité
Performed by Foofwa dit Mobilité
Music by Foof Mobile
Lighting Design by Jonathan O’Hear

Musings should have been a duet and will bear the mark and weight of absences, hence its subtitle: “solitary duet”. The piece is structured in a succession of several “musings”, separated by nothingness.

The title implies the notions of “daydreams”, “meditations”, “reflections”, “studies” and “introspections”. Each “musing” includes a moment of meditative study around some of Merce Cunningham’s and John Cage’s ideas – independence of dance and music, using chance as a way to make artistic decisions and Zen Buddhist philosophy applied to theatrical art – adding a curious and lively look to it.

Foofwa d’Imobilité
Born Frédéric Gafner in Geneva in 1969 from parents in dance and photography, Foofwa d’Imobilité studied at the Ecole de Danse de Genève and was a member of the Geneva-based Ballet Junior. He danced professionally with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany (1987-1990) and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, in New-York (1991-1998). In 1998, he started his own work with solos and duets. Basing himself in Geneva, he founded Neopost Ahrrrt in 2000 and created : Media Vice Versa (2002), on media and digital images, Perform.dancerun.2 (2003), on the relations between dance and sport, and Injuria (2004), on the precariousness of dancers’ conditions. He collaborated on three pieces with French choreographer Thomas Lebrun: Le Show (2001), Un-Twomen-Show (2004) and MIMESIX (2005) and toured throughout Europe with them. He created also Benjamin de Bouillis (2005), a solo about out-of-body experiences, Live & Dance, (2005) a piece for 8 dancers or non-dancers, Incidences (2006), a multi-media and indeterminate piece about rituals and primitivity, BodyToys (2007), a trio about the manipulated bodies of the entertainment business, and The Making of Spectacles (2008), a quartet asking the audience to construct the dance by voting in a public, democratic process. Foofwa made numerous dance videos and collaborated with artists such as Alan Sondheim, Nicolas Rieben, Christian Marclay and Antoine Lengo and has had large group pieces commisioned by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2, the Bern Ballet and the Ballet Junior. He won several international dance competitions, among them, a bronze medal at the 1986 International Dance Competition in Jackson, Mississipi, a 1987 Prix Professionnel at the Prix de Lausanne, a 1995 New York Bessie Award and the 2006 Swiss Prize for dance and choreography. He is a recepient of a 1999 Swiss-based Fondation Leenaards cultural grant, and a 2009 individual grant from the New York-based Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Collaborators

Azure Carter
Azure Carter is a singer/songwriter, performer, video-maker, writer, and costume designer. She has a B.A. in Contemporary Art History from UCI and an M.A. in Environmental Conservation from NYU. She lives with her partner, Alan Sondheim, in Brooklyn, NY. She has a digital album, Avatar, coming out in 2010 with ESP-Disk that she recorded with Alan and Myk Freedman. Currently she is working on an on-going performance/video piece, The Fairyland Around Us, based on the writings of early 20th century naturalist, Opal Whitely. Her blog site is: thedonkeyskin.blogspot.com.

Alan Sondheim
Alan Sondheim was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; he lives with his partner, Azure Carter, in Brooklyn NY. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Brown University in English. A new-media artist, writer, musician, and theorist, he has exhibited, performed and lectured internationally.

Sondheim’s videos and films have been shown internationally, most recently at Millennium Film in New York (2009), Yonsei University in South Korea, Subtle Technologies (Toronto, 2009), Eyebeam (2009), and Brown’s Interrupt Festival (2008). Sondheim recently ended a solo installation and nine-month residency at the Odyssey exhibition space in the virtual world, Second Life.

In 2004,Sondheim had a five-week residency at the Center for Literary Computing and the Virtual Environments Laboratory, both at West Virginia University; in 2006 he was a 6 week resident of the same. In 2005 he was resident artist/writer at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. He produced two cds at the latter (his older records have been reissued by ESP-Disk and Fire Museum). Two new cds have since appeared with FireMus- eum, a vinyl record with Qbico, and another cd with Porter Records. In January-August 2008 he was on an eight-month National Science Foundation (NSF) consultancy at WVU. His research is in the art and aesthetics of codework, body and behavioral modeling, virtual environments, and avatars in general. In 2007, Sondheim was also the recipient of a new media New York State Council of the Arts grant.

On and off, for the past 17 years, Sondheim has worked with Azure Carter and the Swiss dancer/ choreographer Foofwa d’Imobilite; their work has premiered across Europe and the U.S. Sondheim’s own laptop and Second Life performances have been widely seen; most recently he has been involved in online avatar performance with Sandy Baldwin for live audiences in Paris, London, Basel, Portland OR, and Providence RI. Sondheim also collaborates with Myk Freedman, lap steel, and Azure Carter, voice/performance.

Current interests include aesthetics and productions of virtual environ- ments and installations, mapping with motion capture and 3d laser scanners, Buddhist philosophy and its relation to avatars and online environments, and experimental choreography.
Alan Sondheim Mail archive at http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
Webpage (directory) at www.alansondheim.org

*There will be a free preview of this performance Tuesday, January 12th at 12:15 in DNA’s 2nd Floor Gallery. A brief Q&A session will follow.

*A post-show discussion moderated by Nancy Dalva (writer/producer of Mondays with Merce, Cunningham Dance Foundation) will follow the Thursday, January 21 performance.

These performances are made possible with the support from the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York. Foofwa d’Imobilité/Neopost Ahrrrt is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Canton of Geneva and the City of Geneva. Musings was created thanks to the generous support of Ms. Annette Ringier.

Photo Credit: Gregory Batardon