For Immediate Release: October 30, 2006
PEGGY JARRELL KAPLAN
CONTEMPORARY DANCE
PORTRAITS OF CHOREOGRAPHERS 1981 – 2006
November 18 – December 22
The Ronald Feldman Gallery will exhibit photographic portraits of choreographers and their dancers by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan. Selected from twenty-five years of work, the exhibition includes Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch, Kazuo Ohno, William Forsythe, and, from a new generation, Boris Charmatz, Ann Liv Young, and Christopher Williams.
Special events related to performance will take place at the Feldman Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition.
(See performance schedule below and the attached.)
Kaplan’s collection, an historic archive of choreographers who have influenced the direction of international contemporary dance and an up-to-date record of emerging choreographers, includes postmodern dance from New York (the early Judson Church Theater and their heirs), dance and physical theater from Europe, butoh and new dance from Japan, and Eastern Europe performance.
In choosing to photograph performing artists in the photographer’s studio – a different kind of stage – Kaplan plays upon the tension between feeling and artifice. She uses the portrait genre to approach dance obliquely, conveying qualities related to performance, but not its replication. Each image offers a visual translation of the body, lending a unique and personal identity to each artist’s larger work.
Peggy Jarrell Kaplan’s portraits have been exhibited internationally at dance festivals and at performing arts venues. Her portraits were selected by Pina Bausch for inclusion in her 2004 dance festival in Düsseldorf, and Mikhail Baryshnikov commissioned her work to accompany the White Oak Dance Project’s tour of PASTforward. Her photographs have been exhibited at the French Institute Alliance Française, the Goethe-Institut, and The Lincoln Center Museum and Library of the Performing Arts in New York, and at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
An exhibition by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, Subject to Arrest: Portraits of Russian Artists 1984 - 1995, is on view at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, through December 15.
Performance Series: 7 – 9 PM
Thursday, November 30: Holly Faurot & Sarah H. Paulson, whose work exists between the realms of performance and dance, will present I want to see you limp with pleasure, with 12 performers, video, and sound.
Wednesday, December 6, 13, 20: Chez Bushwick Presents The Aunts, Jonah Bokaer, DD Dorvillier, Juliette Mapp, Jennifer Monson, Michael Portnoy & Johnnie Moore, Lee Sher and Saar Harari, and Ann Liv Young, and others.
Saturday, December 16: Noon – 2:00: Yvonne Rainer book reading/signing from her memoir, Feeling Are Facts.
There will be a reception November 18, 6 – 8. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 6. Monday byappointment. For information, contact Cathy Serrano at (212) 226-3232 or cathy@feldmangallery.com.
HOLLY FAUROT & SARAH H. PAULSON
I want to see you limp with pleasure
Thursday, November 30, 7 – 9 PM
The Ronald Feldman Gallery will present I want to see you limp with pleasure, a one-night-only performance artwork by Holly Faurot & Sarah H. Paulson. This young collaborative duo has been working together for the past five years to create endurance-oriented work based on what they refer to as the Surveillance System, a physical network of bodies controlling one another through movement, video, improvisation, and sound.
This work will be presented in conjunction with a photography exhibition by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, Contemporary Dance, Portraits of Choreographers 1981-2006.
Faurot & Paulson’s work exists somewhere between the realms of performance art and dance and focuses on movement as a language of basic human interaction, whether it is through a subtle gesture or a theatrical spectacle. The artists use dancers and non-dancers to maintain a balance between trained and pedestrian movement. Choreographed and improvisational elements based on spontaneous decisions force the performers to learn how they fit within the system and how they can or cannot manipulate one another.
In I want to see you limp with pleasure, the artists sit atop ottomans, performing private gestures, as they act as distant directors of the two-hour nonlinear event. The remaining ten performers in the adjacent room take cues from the artists via live feed video displayed on multiple monitors. Performers also rely on two pre-recorded videos to dictate their movements and boundaries. In one video, a woman executes fleeting gestures, while in another, an ambiguous animal form is caught by a surveillance camera. Selected performers are responsible for actively switching the videos on the monitors. Chance occurrences and retreats from the system fuel the self-regulating work.
Faurot & Paulson’s work relates to voyeurism, shifts in power-positions, and translation through different media. These multi-media and multi-sensory works become human dioramas that function as abstracted representations of the outside world. The temporality of installation art, contemporary dance, conceptual art, and video trends are all influences that inform their collaborative work.
The work features sound by Joel Mellin, an experimental computer music composer who writes software using JMSL (Java Music Specification Language).
The performance is ongoing and presented in the round. Audience members may arrive and leave at any time between 7 and 9 pm.
For more information, contact Cathy Serrano at (212) 226-3232 or cathy@feldmangallery.com. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 6. Monday by appointment.
CHEZ BUSHWICK PRESENTS
A SERIES OF WEDNESDAY NIGHT PERFORMANCES
December 6, 13, and 20: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Chez Bushwick, a Brooklyn-based organization, will present three programs of contemporary dance, performance, and experimental choreography at the Feldman Gallery, in conjunction with a photography exhibition by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, Contemporary Dance: Portraits of Choreographers 1981 – 2006.
Performing artists include The Aunts, Jonah Bokaer, DD Dorvillier, Juliette Mapp, Jennifer Monson, Michael Portnoy & Johnnie Moore, Lee Sher and Saar Harari, Ann Liv Young, and several others. The program will be announced.
Founded and guided by artists, Chez Bushwick is dedicated to the advancement of interdisciplinary art and performance, with a strong focus on experimental dance. Since its inception in 2002, the organization has been acknowledged as a new model for economic sustainability in the performing arts, offering New York City’s only $5 subsidy for rehearsal space, and fostering the creation, development, and performance of new work. Chez Bushwick is also responsible for a number of monthly performance programs, which are presented in a variety of spaces, that encourage artistic freedom, collaboration, and creative risk-taking.
The series at the Feldman Gallery is the first presentation of Chez Bushwick’s programming in a New York gallery.
For more information contact Cathy Serrano at the Ronald Feldman Gallery at (212) 226-3232 or cathy@feldmangallery.com. or Jonah Bokaer at Chez Bushwick at (917) 459-1072 or jonahb37@hotmail.com.
YVONNE RAINER
BOOK READING AND SIGNING
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16: 12:00 – 2:00 PM
The Feldman gallery will host a reading and signing by Yvonne Rainer of her book, Feelings are Facts: A Life, recently published by M.I.T. Press. Coffee and bagels will be served.
Dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, Yvonne Rainer was one of the founders of the influential Judson Church Theater in 1962 and central figure in the American postmodern dance movement. Her memoir traces her personal and artistic coming of age, using diary entries, letters, program notes, excerpts from film scripts, snapshots, and film frame enlargements.
The same bracing honesty, sly wit, human insight, and formal brilliance that made Yvonne Rainer among the most influential figures of her generation make ”Feelings are Facts” an irresistible pleasure. The book is both a moving personal memoir and a fascinating cultural history; it reveals the complex relationship between the emotional life and creative work of a remarkable artist during a period of seismic shifts in American culture and society.
--Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
For more information contact Cathy Serrano at (212) 226-3232 or cathy@feldmangallery.com.
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