We Are Destroying Ourselves–A Dance Wrecking: Wrecking Performance and Artist Talk
Thursday, November 9, 2023 at 2:50pm
Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio, 247 Pine Street, Middletown, CT
FREE!
We are destroying ourselves: a dance wrecking is a durational performance and embodied conversation that asks can destruction be an act of care? We are destroying ourselves literally and metaphorically stages a conversation with white supremacy and American Modern Dance using the form of the dance wrecking. In these wrecking events we invite a guest artist to publicly dismantle, remake, and share a volume from our series my body as the topic coming around again. The wrecking is a compelling way to question received dance traditions, expose audiences to the choreographic process, and explore what collective practices of decolonization can look like.
Sponsored by the Dance Department and Wesleyan University Embodying Antiracism Initiative.
Parking available on Pine Street or Freeman Athletic Center parking lot off of Pine Street.
PROGRAM
My Body as the Topic Coming Around Again / Vol. 1 (Land)
Choreography and Text: Rebecca Pappas with the Ensemble
Performers: Ellen Smith Ahern, Theo Armstrong, Taylor Zappone
Wrecker: Kerry Kincy
Dramaturgy: Meredith Bove
Music: Asuna
Costume Design: Joy Havens
Costume Construction: Elinor Watt with Skye Gasataya
Previous Wrecker: David Hochoy
PROFILE OF WRECKER
Kerry Kincy is an artist with a strong commitment to bringing expressive arts into all spaces and all communities, particularly in underserved and invisible populations not traditionally served by arts organizations. Kerry is a core faculty member with New Haven Ballet where she leads the Shared Abilities Program where dancers both with and without physical disabilities work in partnership to create performances. She provides the vocabulary and the tools to utilize the transformative power of art to both typical and differently-abled communities in schools, colleges, Alzheimer’s residential programs, hospitals, correctional facilities, and with veterans with PTSD.
Kerry is the Director of Free Center Middletown and cultivates free programming so all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds can move together as a means to strengthen social and cognitive abilities and to grow awareness of the mind/body connection as a path to healing.
PROFILES OF COLLABORATING ARTISTS
Ellen Smith Ahern (she/her) grew up dancing in Illinois and came east to study dance at Middlebury College. Since then she's collaborated with many artists, including Jane Comfort & Company, Lida Winfield, Kate Elias, Rebecca Pappas, Hannah Dennison, Pauline Jennings, Polly Motley, El Circo Contemporaneo, Amy Chavasse, David Appel and Tiffany Rhynard’s Big APE. Ellen has had the opportunity to perform and teach throughout Mexico, Cuba, Qatar, Europe and the US. With generous support from many institutions and community members, she shares her work through film, installation and live performance in a diverse array of venues, including the National Gallery of Art, Dance on Camera Festival/Film at Lincoln Center, Bates Dance Festival, AVA Gallery, Dixon Place, the Flynn Theater, Middlefield Community Center, the Ionion Center of Kefalonia and the Rococo Theatre in Prague. Ellen lives with her family on Abenaki lands in N’Dakinna/New Hampshire, where she continues to work as an independent artist and practice social work.
Theo Armstrong (they/he) is a movement artist and writer based in Brooklyn. They currently dance with/for Portia Wells, micca, and Rebecca Pappas and have co-created in various capacities with Thea Little, BodyCartography Project, ChristinaNoel and the Creature, Milka Djordevich, and Andrea Haenggi/the Environmental Performance Agency. Their choreographic work has appeared at The Tank, BaX, SMUSH Gallery, The Dance Collective, Artefix NYC, and Green Space. Their written work has appeared in Isele Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, and Culturebot, among other places. They received a BA in English Literature and a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa.
Rebecca Pappas (she/her) makes dances and social practice projects that excavate the body as an archive for personal and collective memory. Her choreography has toured nationally and internationally, including to Singapore, Estonia, Mexico, and Canada, and she has received residencies from Yaddo and Djerassi, and funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the Mellon Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME). In 2021 she was a CT Office of the Arts Fellow. Between 2001-2014 she made dance projects in California and from 2014-18 was based in Indianapolis where she served as an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ball State University. In 2018 she returned home to Hartford, CT to accept a position at Trinity College where her focus is on dance and community.
Alexis Robbins (she/her), a native of Wakefield, RI, graduated from Hofstra University with a B.A. in Dance and B.S. in Exercise Science. Currently based in New Haven, CT, Robbins is a choreographer, performer, teaching artist, musical collaborator, and improviser. As the Artistic Director of her project based company kamrDANCE, she has shown work at Triskelion Arts, Actors Fund Arts Center, Dixon Place, Center for Performance Research, Symphony Space, Arts on Site, AS220, SMUSH Gallery, the Transit Museum (Downtown Brooklyn), Whitneyville Cultural Commons, and many more, as well as created four dance films. She has current teaching affiliations with Neighborhood Music School and Rockwell Dance Center. Past and guest teaching affiliations include the Hartford Dance Collective, MiXt Co, Elm City Dance Collective, and as an adjunct professor at Hofstra University. Robbins has performed in CT as a featured soloist at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, the Friday Pop Up Series on the New Haven Green, Kehler Liddell Gallery, and events by New Haven Jazz Underground, Hartford Jazz Society, Make Music Day, and Arts on Call (IFAI). She has been awarded the Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship from the New Haven Arts Council and the CT Office of the Arts for her community tap jams with live music, and commissions from Artspace New Haven (City Wide Open Studios 2019 and Open Source 2021) and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (2020). Robbins currently serves on the Sandbox Advisory Board at the New Haven Arts Council where she is a passionate advocate for dance and marginalized artists. She hopes to continue to share her love for dance and music with communities in Connecticut and beyond.
Taylor Zappone (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, teaching artist and poet who has been based in Connecticut for 2 years. A Waterbury native, Taylor is thrilled to be back dancing and advocating for the arts in her home state. After receiving her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2017, she spent a year as a freelance dancer and choreographer in New York City. There she performed and presented some of her own work at several venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Since returning to Connecticut, Taylor has been lucky enough to work with the Judy Dworin Performance Project, Peter Kyle, and Rebecca Pappas. She is a Resident Artist with The Dance Collective.
Adam Bach is an Artist/DJ/Entrepreneur. Past- Yoshiko Chuma, Catherine Galasso, Object Collection, Tatyana Tenenbaum, nora chipaumire, UMASS-Amherst, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Current- Software development for Anthony McCall. Gardening in South Berkshire, MA. adambach.com
Meredith Bove is a choreographer and writer based in western Massachusetts. She approaches movement as a practice for experiencing the body as unfixed, mutable, and process-oriented. Her work has been seen at various venues and festivals across the U.S. and in Berlin, Germany. She has performed in the work of Jérôme Bel, Luis Lara Malvacías, Sharon Mansur, Stephanie Miracle, Jillian Peña, Sara Smith, and Karinne Keithley Syers among others, and collaborated with choreographers Andrea Jenni and Jessie Laurita Spanglet. In 2018, she was artist-in-residence at A.P.E. Ltd Gallery with Lailye Weidman, researching dramaturgical practices and creative companionship. Meredith has taught at Hollins University, Keene State College, Mount Holyoke College, Montgomery College, Springfield College, The Dance Exchange, The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, and the Collective (Baltimore). Her writing on performance has appeared on ThINKingDANCE and Culturebot, and most recently on and for The Making Room (2018), a collaboration between choreographers Bebe Miller and Susan Rethorst. She served as Associate Editor for Contact Quarterly between 2018-2020. She holds a BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MFA from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA.
Kelly Silliman is a dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, organizer, and homeschooling mom of four living in Western Mass. She was a founding member and eventually co-artistic director of Drink to This!, a program for emerging artists in Hartford, CT, and co-founded Royal Jelly, a Boston-based performance collective of dancers, artists, and musicians. Kelly has performed with NewARTiculations Dance Theatre in Tucson, AZ, and in Charlottesville, VA: Prospect Dance Group, inFluxdance, and UpRooted Dance Theatre. From 2012-2022 Kelly directed and performed with the tinydance project, and was a Five College Associate from 2014-2016, when she published a paper titled “Shifting Climates: Applying Principles of Sustainability to Dance-Making Endeavors.” Kelly holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Stetson University, and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College, where she served as a teaching fellow. Kelly is the Program Director for the Northampton Center for the Arts, and collaborates with Deborah Goffe/Scapegoat Garden and Cat Wagner.
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We Are Destroying Ourselves—A Dance Wrecking: Wrecking Process
Thursday, November 9, 2023, Noon–2:30PM
Cross Street Dance Studio, 160 Cross Street, Middletown, CT