| Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance presents Book of Clouds, a collaborative performance-installation contemplating the sublime sky, June 7 – 10, 2017 at Baryshnikov Arts Center, John Cage and Merce Cunningham Studio, 450 W. 37th Street (near Tenth Avenue), NYC. Performances: Wed-Fri at 7:30pm, with a free family workshop on Sat at 2pm and a performance-installation from 3-9pm. Tickets start at $10 and are available at 1-800-838-3006 or http://bookofcloudsnyc.brownpapertickets.com.
Jody Sperling, artistic director of Time Lapse Dance, collaborates with Vancouver-based visual artist Amy-Claire Huestis, and composer/ video artist Omar Zubair on Book of Clouds. The trio create a space for contemplating the skyscape. The work utilizes inventive light technologies, movement, and sonic composition to expand perceptions of time and space. Huestis engineers her own magic-lanterns (analog projection devices) and deploys them with her extraordinary hand-painted slides and slide-wheels depicting her recorded drawings of clouds, sun, moon, and Earth. Zubair designs the sonic environment, shaping rhythms of light and motion, and layering in video systems. Sperling navigates the site-scape of light and sound, adding a kinetic energy to the images and embodying the act of gazing.
Wednesday, June 7 at 7:30pm: A stellar benefit event including a revival of Time Lapse Dance’s Ice Cycle, which transports the Arctic ice-scape to the stage, followed by a champagne sunset reception and the first New York iteration of Book of Clouds.
Tickets: $65 General | $30 Artist Rate | $100 Patron (includes $35 tax-deductible contribution)
Thursday, June 8 at 7:30pm: This evening begins with a panel discussion with climate scientists and communicators on the complex interactions between clouds and climate change which will be followed by a performance of Book of Clouds.
Friday, June 9 at 7:30pm: Performance of Book of Clouds followed by a twilight artist talkback.
Saturday, June 10 at 2pm: Free Family Workshop
Join Time Lapse Dance for a cloud dance workshop. The program is designed for children (ages 5-11) partnered by one parent/caregiver. Adults and children will move together. Capacity limited – advance registration recommended.
Saturday, June 10 beginning at 3pm: Book of Clouds Durational Installation
This extended installation-performance will occur from 3pm-9pm, and attendees are welcome to arrive and experience the work at their own pace. Entry to the installation is $10, and all tickets will be sold the same day. Re-entry for patrons who leave and return within the six hour period will be subject to venue capacity.
Jody Sperling (Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance/Choreographer/Performer), a dancer-choreographer from New York, is the founder and Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance (http://timelapsedance.com/). She has created more than 40 dance works and has performed and taught in the US, Bahrain, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Scotland and north of the Arctic Circle. In 2014, Sperling participated in a polar science mission to the Arctic as the first-ever choreographer-in-residence aboard a US Coast Guard icebreaker. During the expedition, she researched ice formation processes, danced on sea ice a dozen times, and made the short dance film “Ice Floe,” winner of a Creative Climate Award. Out of that experience, Sperling developed the program “Bringing the Arctic Home” a dance-theater work which transports the polar icescape to the stage. In conjunction with performances, the program incorporates outreach on climate literacy including lecture presentations; interdisciplinary panels with artists, scientists and climate educators; family workshops; and audience talkbacks. Sperling’s work focuses on combining choreography with climate science and uses dance to promote climate change awareness with a multi-faceted approach.
Sperling is internationally regarded as the leading exponent of the dance style developed by modern dance pioneer and technologist Loïe Fuller (1862-1928). This style involves expansive silk costuming and extends the body’s motion into a larger kinesphere. Years of working in this style have influenced Sperling’s acute sensitivity to the moving body’s impact on the environment. Sperling was the choreographer, creative consultant, and coach for “La Danseuse” (2016, Dir. Stephanie DiGiusto), a French feature film inspired by Fuller’s life, which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and made its NYC debut at Lincoln Center Film Society’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema Festival.
Visual artist Amy-Claire Huestis makes a space to encounter the mysterious and to suspend a state of wonder in her interdisciplinary practice of expanded painting, light, and experimental media. Cultivating communal thought processes and engaging with nature, her soulful and explorative pieces are experience-driven and often collaborative. Her installations, performances, experiential pieces, books, paintings and drawings speak to a broadened conception of time, often involving visual processes of storytelling, slowness, synchronicity, and durational exercises and actions. One of her unique experimental media projects is to pioneer the re-invention of the magic lantern projector. She brings the device and its form forward, fabricating her own projectors using new technologies, and developing her own system of painted and shadow-cut light pictures. With her seeing machines and seeing tools, she casts a historic and mystical perspective on the phenomena of the image. She has shown extensively across Canada and United States, including exhibitions at Young Projects in Los Angeles and Battat Contemporary in Montreal. She has been supported by the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and through numerous awards and fellowships. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University and an MFA in Media Arts from UCLA. Her most recent residencies were the Bothy Project in Scotland and Mildred’s Lane in Pennsylvania.
Composer, sound designer and artist Omar Zubair, utilizing the skills developed and continually honed through art practice, scientific experimentation, and trans-ethnographic participation, has been focusing on expanding the scope of reality by creating a process of bringing back artifacts from the dream place, catalysing the growth of new sensory organs via confocal synaesthetics, and building placetimes and languages from which multi-species groups can come together into temporary superorganisms. He has created sound for the Wooster Group, Lady Gaga, French perfume commercials, movie trailers, spiritual gatherings, and has been traveling the country for a number of years developing a new national anthem. He has an MA in Philosophy from California State University, Los Angeles. A few highlights from his prolific career include the following projects. He has collaborated with Amy-Claire Huestis since 2012 with recent showings at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, The Museum of Morbid Anatomy in Brooklyn, and alongside James Turrell’s work at Young Projects in LA. As a member of the Canadian experimental performance group Bluemouth Inc. Since early 2009, he has created audio-visual environments in forgotten church attics and all-but-lost subway tunnels. The group was selected to perform as part of the Cultural Olympics at the opening ceremonies during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics; and also created a half-mile underground refugee camp experience in Brooklyn (co-produced by PS 122) as part of the French Alliance’s Crossing the Line festival (a small festival with 8 performances that year, including Philip Glass and Ryogi Ikeda). Since 2009, he has collaborated with Andrew Schneider-former video designer for the Wooster Group-to develop a series of wearable-robotics performances exploring the implications on self identity of prosthetic sensory organs. In 2015, they were awarded an OBIE for the production youarenowhere, which then, subsequently, went on a world tour. Since 2013, Zubair has taught a course combining improvisational dance and music at The Juilliard School. In November 2016, his music was presented at both The Whitney Museum in New York and Le Grand Palais in Paris.
Time Lapse Dance (TLD), a 501(c)3 non-profit dance company, was founded by dancer-choreographer Jody Sperling in 2000. The company presents visually alluring kinetic theater that fuses dance, music, lighting and costume design. Since inception, TLD has presented annual seasons in its home base of New York City. Along with performances, the company offers programs such as community engagement on arts and climate, lecture presentations, school and family shows, workshops, and masterclasses. TLD has been in residence at many colleges and universities including, among others, The Ailey School, Brenau University, Hunter College’s Mellon-funded Arts Across the Curriculum Initiative, Wesleyan University, Vassar College, University of Massachusetts/Amherst, Hofstra University, DeSales University, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Bloomfield College, University of Nebraska, University of Wyoming and Marlboro College. TLD has received commissions from Vermont Performance Lab (VPL), University of Wyoming/NEA American Masterpieces and the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics. The company has received grants from New York City’s Department of Cultural Awards, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the American Music Center and the Harkness Dance Foundation.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council.
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