The University of Washington Chamber Dance Company presents
“A Chair is a Chair is a Chair”
Dancer: Barbi Powers/Photo: Steve Korn
I somewhere read a review about a postmodern dance performance that ended with a line something like "a folding chair will never look the same to me." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the quote again, but I have thought about it frequently over the past year. Metal folding chairs are strewn throughout early postmodern work––underlining the utilitarian, democratic and non-theatrical foundations of the movement.
Tonight's program looks back more than fifty years to 1961 when a group of renegade choreographers participated in a dance composition class that opened the future of modern dance to a limitless palette of expression. The class, taught by composer Robert Dunn and based in notions of John Cage and various cultural fascinations of the time, such as Existentialism, Zen Buddhism and Taoism, led students to think about such issues as: What makes a dance a dance? What is dance's connection to other arts?
In 1962 the students presented their work in the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village beginning an era of disassembling formal characteristics of Western concert dance. These audacious Judson Church artists changed modern dance forever and opened up infinite possibilities for future choreographers.
Hannah C. Wiley, Founding Artistic Director
Contact Improvisation
Dancers: Katherine Cook, Brandin Steffensen
Accumulation
Premiere: 1971/Choreography: Trisha Brown
Music: Grateful Dead, Uncle John’s Band
Rehearsal direction: Hannah C. Wiley
Dancer: Joseph Blake
N.E.W.S. (adaptation of News)
Premiere: 2004/Choreography: Deborah Hay
Adapted and Performed by Brandin Steffensen
Chair/Pillow (excerpt from Continuous Project – Altered Daily)
Premiere: 1969/Choreography: Yvonne Rainer
Music: Ike & Tina Turner, River Deep – Mountain High
Notator: Valerie Katz, 1970
Staging: Karena Birk
Rehearsal direction: Hannah C. Wiley
Dancers: Joseph Blake, Laura Halm, Barbi Powers, Brandin Steffensen
Chairs (excerpt)
Premiere: 1992/Choreography: Zvi Gotheiner
Music: Rachmaninoff
Rehearsal direction: Hannah C. Wiley
Dancer: Barbi Powers
Hannah C. Wiley founded the Chamber Dance Company in 1990. From 2011 to 2014, she held the Floyd & Delores Jones Endowed Chair in the Arts, and was awarded a Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professorship in 2003. After teaching at Mount Holyoke College for ten years, Hannah joined the UW faculty in 1987 and served as director of the Dance Program until 2001. She has created ten DVD documentaries about the work of Michio Ito, Dore Hoyer, Mary Wigman, Joseph Gifford, Eve Gentry, Tandy Beal, Bebe Miller, Doris Humphrey, Jean Erdman, and Shapiro & Smith Dance. Her research has been published in Dance Research Journal, Graduate Research Journal, Foot and Ankle, Impulse and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Hannah received a B.A. with a major in drama from the UW in 1973, and a M.A. in dance and dance education from New York University in 1981.
Trisha Brown (1936) graduated from Mills College in Oakland, CA, studied with Anna Halprin, and taught at Reed College before moving to New York City in 1961. Instantly immersed in what was to become the postmodern phenomena of Judson Dance Theater, her movement investigations found the extraordinary in the everyday and challenged existing perceptions of what constitutes performance. In 1970, Brown formed her company and has been choreographically prolific throughout the ensuing years. She was named a Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame, and was the first woman choreographer to receive the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Genius Award. In 1988, Brown was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the government of France. In January 2000, she was promoted to Officier and in 2004, she was again elevated, this time to the level of Commandeur. Brown is also an accomplished visual artist, whose drawings have been seen in exhibitions, galleries and museums throughout the world including the Venice Biennale, The Drawing Center in Philadelphia, The New Museum, White Cube, Documenta XII, Walker Art Center, Centre Georges Pompidou, Mills College, Musée d'art Contemporain de Lyon, and Museum of Modern Art.
Zvi Gotheiner (1952) was born and raised in Messilot, a kibbutz in northern Israel. He began his artistic career as a gifted violinist with the Young Kibbutzim Orchestra, where he attained the rank of soloist and concertmaster at age fifteen. He began dancing at seventeen, and soon after formed his first performance group. He visited New York in 1978 on a dance scholarship from the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation, and went on to dance with the Joyce Trisler Dance Company, Feld Ballet/NY, and the Bat-Sheva Dance Company. After directing Tamar Ramle and the Jerusalem Tamar Dance Company in Israel, and the Israeli Chamber Dance Company in New York, he founded Zvi Gotheiner & Dancers in 1989. Gotheiner is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts choreography fellowship and The National Arts Club Weiselberg Award, and has received commissions from Zurich Tanz Theater, Utah's Repertory Dance Theater, Colloquium Contemporary Dance Exchange, the American Dance Festival, and The Joyce Theater's Altogether Different series. As is often the case in Gotheiner's work, Chairs looks into the heart of relationships and the power of community.
Yvonne Rainer (1934) was born in San Francisco, CA, and raised by parents who considered themselves radicals. Her mother was of Polish-Jewish descent and her father of Italian ancestry. At a young age, her father introduced her to films, while her mother enrolled her in dance classes. She dropped out of college after a year and moved to New York at age twenty-two where she studied with Anna Halprin, Merce Cunningham, James Waring and Mia Slavenska, and danced in the companies of Waring and Edith Stephen. In 1962, along with Steve Paxton and Ruth Emerson, Rainer approached the Reverend Al Carmines to ask if they could begin performing at the Judson Memorial Church, founding the Judson Church Theater. Rainer formed her own company after the Judson performances ended and her style was " . . . eclectic, theatrical, even surrealistic. Her favored method was juxtaposition of radically diverse elements, sometimes by chance." (Sally Banes) Rainer's famous No Manifesto begins "No to spectacle. No to virtuosity. No to transformations and magic and make-believe." Although she occasionally re-stages some of her choreography, Rainer has turned her energy toward filmmaking.
About the Chamber Dance Company
The Chamber Dance Company presents rarely seen modern dance works of historic and artistic significance, and offers a unique experience to Seattle audiences. The CDC is one of only a few companies in the nation who share a commitment to preserving modern dance history while offering these artistic treasures to local audiences. Founded in 1990 by Hannah Wiley, the Chamber Dance Company, composed of candidates for the Master of Fine Arts degree in dance, has enjoyed a more than twenty five year commitment from the University and has become a favorite of Seattle audiences. At a time when much of the modern dance canon is being lost to history, the Company's mission to present, record, and archive works of historical and artistic significance is more important than ever. The UW Dance Program is proud to present the CDC in order to assure these dances are kept alive and accessible for local dance audiences and scholars. For more information on History Link: http://bit.ly/1LoakeO
A comprehensive and evolving interactive CDC repertory database and linked CDC repertory archive, the product of the Chamber Dance Company's seasons of presenting selected modern dance classics can be found at: http://chamberdancecompanyarchive.com.
Dancer: Laura Halm/Photo: Steve Korn