Liz Aggiss: Hi Jinx

Performance Lecture

Performance lecture: Tuesday, April 15, 2008
8:00 pm @ Academy Hall

Liz Aggiss will perform a lecture entitled Hi Jinx, an homage to Heidi Dzinkowska, the seminal - and fictional - early 20th-century dancer, choreographer and filmmaker.

Featuring dance reconstructions, an extensive film archive, and live demonstrations of Dzinkowska’s highly influential ‘dance commandments’. A cheeky take on the creation of mythologies, personal gurus and the history of art.

Followed by a reception and artist-led viewing of Men in the Wall.

Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie: Men in the Wall

4-screen 3-D video installation

Installation: Tuesday, April 15 – Saturday, April 19, 2008
Greene Gallery, Rensselaer campus. (hours below)

Opening reception 9:00 pm Tuesday, April 15, following the performance lecture Hi Jinx

Men in the Wall is a four-screen 3-D video installation where four men, life-size, chat across the boundaries of their own cramped frames, looping through a sequence of poetry, jokes, songs, quibbles, flamenco, and napping. To enter this quirky world, viewers don old school stereoscopic 3-D glasses to watch these shared lives, revealing a public quartet of private differences.

“As each guy occupies his own space – now dancing, now playing the guitar while singing lieder – each acts as human semaphore, sending human-shaped signals. It's as tightly constructed as a classic American sitcom, and funnier” — Peter Goddard, Toronto Star

Men in the Wall was commissioned by the UK Arts Council Capture 3 program, with support from The Centre for Research and Development (Arts and Architecture) University of Brighton. Premier 2004.

Program Length: 25 minute continuous loop

Billy Cowie: In the Flesh

A single channel 3D work projected on the floor

Installation: Tuesday, April 15 – Saturday, April 19, 2008
Greene Gallery, Rensselaer campus. (hours below)

Opening reception 9:00 pm Tuesday, April 15, following the performance lecture Hi Jinx

The audience enters a darkened space wearing blue/red anaglyph 3D glasses. On reaching their designated spot they are surprised to see a dancer on the ground in front of them. Although she is in fact a projection (a Spectrefilm), she appears to be actually in the space, solid and real; she is there, in effect, ‘in the flesh’.

Premiered at Paradiso, Julidans Festival July 2007 Amsterdam.

Direction/choreography/music/text – Billy Cowie
Art direction – Silke Mansholt
Performer – Sara Popowa

“The most uncanny thing I have ever seen…” — Deborah Levy, Novelist

“A woman comes slowly towards you from the floor. Her meditative and soft energy involves you into her world and brings you to another dimension of the space. It’s as if you could touch her – a magical experience.” — Suzy Blok, Artistic Director – I Like to Watch Too (Amsterdam 2007)

Program Length: 4 minute loop

Curated by Hélène Lesterlin.

Artist biographies:

Liz Aggis and Billy Cowie — have been collaborators for 25 years with signature wit and sharpness. Based in Brighton, UK, they have made over twenty live performance pieces for their company Divas and have toured extensively, as well as created single and multiple screen dance installations, four films, live performance installations alongside dance theatre, cabaret, and live art. Renowned for their highly visual, interdisciplinary brand of dance performance, they incorporate elements of theatre, film, opera, poetry and vaudevillian humor, crossing genres and pushing into new directions.

Liz Aggiss is a performer, choreographer, filmmaker, and writer. Her work is eclectic, satirical, funny, and provocative. Often characterized by grotesque, stylized movement, Aggiss explores issues of body politics, word play, power and the artifice of performance.

Billy Cowie is a Scottish composer, choreographer and filmmaker. His myriad interests have him writing text for dance, new musical forms especially in relation to dance, composition for voice; exploring an expressionist dance theatre language, interdisciplinarity, convergence arts and hybrid performance languages, humour, stand-up dance and performance skills; creating dance for camera works; and researching dance and learning difficulties. Cowie's first novel 'Passenger' comes out in 2008.

Aggiss and Cowie's book Anarchic Dance includes a three hour DVD-Rom that is a visual and text record of their live and screen dance work, and was published in 2006 by Routledge.

Additional Information:

» www.anarchicdance.com

» www.lizaggiss.com

» www.billycowie.com

» back to top

Hi Jinx, Men in the Wall, & In the Flesh are FREE and open to the public.

SCHEDULE:

PERFORMANCE LECTURE:	Tuesday, April 15, 2008 @ 8:00 PM Academy Hall
OPENING RECEPTION:	Tuesday, April 15, 2008 @ 9:00 PM Greene Gallery
INSTALLATION:	Tuesday, April 15 - Saturday, April 19, 2008
INSTALLATION TIMES:	Tuesday 4.15 4 - 10 pm Wednesday 4.16 12 - 5 pm Thursday 4.17 12 - 8 pm Friday 4.18 12 - 8 pm Saturday 4.19 12 - 8 pm
INSTALLATION LOCATION:	Greene Gallery, Rensselaer Campus
	» Download event as calendar file

Download the Rensselaer campus map and make your way to Academy Hall / Greene Gallery. Parking is available in the adjacent lot with entrance on College Avenue for the performance lecture and in the North lot for the installation. There will be signs to direct you to the event. Look for the "EMPAC EVENT" signs on the night of the reception.

» Driving Directions / Map