Event Info:

Liveshorts: ST2C

A Narrow Vehicle (Trouble) — Performers acting like ushers and doubling as shaman enact a cleansing ritual on the audience, which becomes a screen for projections of familiar spiritual imagery and the five elemental lights. Culminating in a performance of trance R&B saxophone meandering, a narrow vehicle brings up a promise — made by universities, militant groups, spiritual organizations, and pop culture. The promise is of freedom and self-actualization via transmutation of defiled elements, and we locate this process in (or on) each audience member. Imparting the message evokes a claustrophobic, aggressive style, but the promise is kept.

Another Circle (Jen DeNike) — Using video, performance, and sound as live ritual magic, a series of circles transforms the space into a vessel for scrying, an act of obtaining spiritual visions by peering into a reflective surface. In DeNike's video a prima ballerina in classical tutu and toe shoes performs what appears to be an infinite pirouette. The ballerina's circular movement becomes the pendulum for scrying. A live ballerina (Lucy Van Cleef) will perform abstract choreographed movements in reaction to and mirroring the video in collaboration with Rose Kallal who will perform an improvised sound accompaniment using a combination of vintage analog synth, guitar, and tape delay; her dark ambient sonic drone providing a complementary yet contrasting circular soundtrack.

AMAZINGLAND IN TROY EMagicPAC (Steve Cuiffo, Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle) — Amazingland is the second in a trilogy of theater pieces that embrace and subvert American popular entertainment. The piece is about illusion, delusion, and the role of deception in American culture. Cuiffo, Lyford, and Sobelle will enter magic contests as their illusionist personas, Louie Magic, Dennis Diamond, and Daryl Hannah, and, succeed or fail, create faux-documentary video to be integrated into performance. Their goal is to expose the pathos behind the gloss of popular Vegas-style illusion shows — and also to blow your mind out of the back of your skull with some incredible magic.

Curators: Kathleen Forde, Helene Lesterlin, Micah Silver, Emily Berçir Zimmerman

Tickets are REQUIRED for this event

Biographies:

Trouble (Sam Hillmer and Laura Paris) is a Brooklyn-based art collaborative is devoted to creating extreme environments that havewith no exterior;, public art both condoned and illegal;, and other kinds of visual/sound art intended to be used for some purpose. Their work is about community, spirituality, politics, craft, and beauty. Outreach is a part of all of Trouble's projects, as is what they call "in-reach": designing events that strengthen the ties within the DIY art community and the art world as a whole.

Jen DeNike lives and works in New York City. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Kunst-Werke, P.S.1/MoMA, Julia Stoschek Collection, Brooklyn Museum, CCS Hessel Museum, MOCA Miami, Site Gallery England, and Tensta Konsthall Sweden, among others. She received her MFA from Bard College in 2002. Her work is in the MoMA permanent collection and a solo exhibition of her work is currently on view at THE COMPANY Los Angeles.

Lucy Van Cleef is a dancer with the Los Angeles Ballet. She has performed in Jen DeNike's ballet Scrying at MOMA, Another Circle, and Hard Light, and is interested in finding ways to bring classical ballet's forms across boundaries to illuminate the other fine arts. Lucy grew up in Madison, NJ, and trained at the New Jersey School of Ballet, Ballet Academy East NY, the San Francisco Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet in NY. She completed an apprenticeship with North Carolina Dance Theatre in 2007 and joined Los Angeles Ballet later that year. As a dancer with LAB, Lucy has performed numerous roles in classical ballets, works by George Balanchine, and has recently had two roles created for her by Los Angeles choreographers Josie Walsh and Sonya Tayeh.

Rose Kallal is a NYC based 16mm film and sound installation and performance artist. She has performed at P.S.1/MoMA, Gavin Brown’s Enterprises at Passerby, Lisa Cooley Gallery, and has done projects for Performa, Creative Time, and most recently the exhibition Narcissus Trance in London. Kallal uses a variety of instruments such as analog synthesizer, tape delay, drums and guitar, and draws upon minimalism, drone, ambient and metal.

(Louie Magic) is an actor and magician. Credits include: "North Atlantic" (Wooster Group); “Theatre For One” (Christine Jones); "Digital Effects" (Off The Grid); "Hell Meets Henry Halfway" (Pig Iron); "Fluke" (Radiohole); "Major Bang" (Foundry Theater); "Lenny Bruce" (Joe's Pub); "Orange, Lemon, Egg, Canary" (P.S.122); "Passion of the Crawford;" "Patriot Act" (New York Theatre Workshop); "Amazing Russello" (Joe's Pub); and David Blaine's television specials (consultant).

(Dennis Diamond) is the co-artistic director of rainpan 43, a renegade absurdist outfit devoted to creating original actor-driven performance works. He is a member of Pig Iron Theatre Company and has been awarded two Independence Foundation Fellowships and three grants from the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. Geoff received a 2006 Pew Fellowship in the Arts as a performance artist and is a 2009 Creative Capital grantee. He is a graduate of Stanford University, and trained at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

(Daryl Hannah) is the co-artistic director of rainpan 43. Other recent credits include: “Phoenix” (Humana 2010), “The Africa Trilogy” (Luminato Festival), “The Great Immensity,” and “Gone Missing” (The Civilians). Trey is an associate artist with The Civilians, a 2009 Creative Capital Grantee, a recipient of the Princess Grace Award and the Fabergé Theatre Excellence Award. He is based in Brooklyn and has an MFA from UCSD.