Liz Aggiss performed a lecture entitled Hi Jinx, an homage to Heidi Dzinkowska, a seminal (and fictional) early 20th-century dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. A cheeky take on the creation of mythologies, personal gurus, and the history of art, the event featured dance reconstructions, films, and live demonstrations of Dzinkowska’s highly influential “dance commandments.” 

Aggiss is a performer, choreographer, filmmaker, and writer whose provocative and eclectic work is often characterized by grotesque, stylized movement, and who explores issues of body politics, wordplay, power, and the artifice of performance.

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’.

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 Theater 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.

Nine Years is a funny and hopeful yet borderline tragic performance event in the format of lecture/travel video diary by the UK based Lone Twin.

This performance is one in a series of pieces where the theater duo hilariously recounts and, in some cases, rewrites their true stories from traveling across the globe to do research for their work. In this final planned performance tour as a twosome, Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters attempt to bring together their entire body of over 700 performances and nine years of work in one 90-minute show. Drawing from extensive video documentation, Nine Years will re-present, re-negotiate and re-contextualize their performance work to date. That includes their 12-hour line dances blindfolded and dressed as cowboys in Ghost Dance, their daily cycle rides interacting with a variety of local communities in To The Dogs and their reading of all 135 chapters (plus epilogue) of Moby Dick on a North Sea journey from Rotterdam to England.

“How are you?” “I’m fine, considering the circumstances. And how are you?” “Yes.”

KOMMER is an awkward, spare, painfully funny portrait of human frailty in 50% theater, 50% film. The actors of the Amsterdam-based theater collective Kassys use precise movement and a deadpan delivery to create a stilted world on stage, where six people gather to mark and ponder the loss of a dear friend. Each person tries to absorb the news and give relief to the others, but the well-meant words and gestures wind up more like misplaced clichés. They reflect the inherent discomfort of the situation, stuck between tenderness and missed communication. In the second half of the performance, the actors leave the stage and the audience gets to catch a glimpse of their “real” lives, as they go out into the night after the show. KOMMER means “sorrow” in Dutch

In Amplification, Australia’s foremost contemporary dance company collides fierce dancing, driving music and unsettling imagery for an exhilarating and engaging performance. Choreographer Phillip Adams’ work pushes against human physical and mental limits with both dark humor and morbid fascination. Taking car accidents as the starting point, Amplification magnifies the moment of impact -- 1.6 seconds of frozen time -- alternating between highly charged, skidding movement and the cold, clinical atmosphere of an emergency ward. Featuring sensational dancers, live turntable composition and a lab-like visual design, Amplification refracts a world of ritual, burial, and betrayal.

Come join us at WHMT studios for a performance of Frozen Mommy, a darkly humorous dance theater work stripped of theatrical spectacle or hidden narrative. In Frozen Mommy, the dancers inhabit a bare stage space and deftly lead the viewer on an elliptical journey, bringing together in close proximity snippets, dances, words, and elements of great disparity. Imitating the magpie strategy of human thought processes, the dancers' actions accumulate and combine over the course of the work, to create a funny, disturbing and strangely familiar vision.

Tere O'Connor Dance:

Choreographer: Tere O'Connor Performers: Hilary Clark, Erin Gerken, Heather Olson, Matthew Rogers, Christopher Williams Sound design: Tere O'Connor, James Baker Lighting design: Brian MacDevitt Technical director: Michael O'Connor

DANCE MOViES: An ongoing EMPAC series showing the latest, daring work made by contemporary dancers creating short films and experimental videos. Catch the predatory actions of people stuck in a stylish Spanish lobby, a solitary and obscure channel surf on a couch in Iceland, an elegant dance for two hands, a jog in the subways of Sweden. Also includes the film Bitings and Other Effects shot in the opulence and decay of Palermo, in which feverish courtiers bitten by the tarantula are reduced to stunning, sleep-walking dances in mirrored ballrooms and on crumbling balconies.

DANCE MOViES 6 program:

• Foxtrot Tetrameter, 1997, 5' (Sweden)
• No One, 2004, 15' (USA)
• I Ti (Fingerdansen), 2002, 6' (Sweden)
• A.P.A.A.I. (Events), 2005, 10' (Spain)
• Zimmer, 2004, 8' (Iceland)
• Bitings and Other Effects, 1995, 30' (Netherlands)

Foxtrot Tetrameter

2007, 5' (Sweden) Directed by Mary Westermark and Sofie Lagergren Choreographed and performed by Lisa Spets Sound by Dan Jonsson A sudden appearance in the subway, a dancer moves to an internal jogging rhythm, as transportation streams eddy around her. Foxtrot Tetrameter is one short film in a series of four, with dance solos being performed in the surroundings of Stockholm.

After having worked on the films for almost two years, my father asked me, very gently: 'These dance films you are working on, are they some kind of instruction films for fox-trot?' -Mary Westermark

No One

2004, 15' (USA) Choreographer/Director: Arielle Javitch Sound Design: Matt Rocker Photography: Zachary Levy Performers: Hristoula Harakas, Anee Lentz, Takemi Kitamura, Johari Mayfield, Paulina Danilczyk A somber and still piece that combines imagery, wordless theater, location and dance. Created as a meditation on the genocides that took place in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, and the response of the international community.

I Ti (Fingerdansen)

2002, 6' (Sweden) Choreographed and performed by Cristina Caprioli A strikingly simple premise: two hands fly eloquently and fluently over a flat surface, flashing through hidden narratives, gestures, signs, finger dances. In direct reaction to Italo Calvino's text "Ti con Zero" and based on the live performance "I Ti", this video was made in collaboration with artist Mateusz Herczka.

A.P.A.A.I. (Events)

2005, 10' (Spain) Directed by Guillem Morales Performed and choreographed by the company Erre que erre A nightmarish vision peopled by pale and stylish patrons, waiting in an unidentified lobby. Time scrubs forward and backwards, scissors catalyze long sequences of inexplicable action, and it becomes clear that these people have entered a loop in time: they cannot escape and they are unlikely to survive.

Zimmer

2004, 8' (Iceland) Directed by Helena Jonsdottir Helena Jonsdottir's film rests in the nether world of the committed couch potato, the apparent antithesis of the dancing body. She redefines the body, itself a landscape, and leads the viewer subtly through cultural perspectives on physical expression and awareness in the age of instant communication and entertainment.

Bitings and Other Effects

1995, 30' (Netherlands) Directed by Clara van Gool Choreographed by Angelika Oei Performed by Martine Berghuijs, Faroog Chaudhry, Anne-Katrine Haugen, Vivianne Rodrigues de Brito, and Jamie Watton Bitings and Other Effects was inspired by the southern Italian dance the Tarantella, which itself was named after the poisonous spider and the supposed cure for its bite: a frenetic dance. Shot in the opulence and decay of Renaissance-era Palermo, feverish courtiers bitten by the tarantula are reduced to stunning, sleep-walking dances in mirrored ballrooms and on crumbling balconies.

Troika Ranch is a dance theater company based in New York City, which uses interactive digital media and computer technology as an essential component of its performances. Founded in 1990, the company stages works in which projections and sounds are created through a specific process of interaction between live performers and digital media. In performance, movement sensing devices are coupled with a programming environment, with special emphasis on real-time signal-processing of digital video.

Troika Ranch will give two presentations: the afternoon lecture will focus on the movement sensor technology, computer processing and software development they implemented for their productions, and the evening presentation will show the technology in action in their stage works, with excerpts and demonstrations.

entre-deux is a performance for an audience of one. A unique experience, wherein a viewer comes to a predetermined place (in this case, the entre-deux lounge in Folsom Library on the Rensselaer campus) at an appointed time to await their performance.

In the company of a guide, the viewer then takes a short trip as they are brought to the performance location, where they will have 10 minutes on their own, to enjoy their very own performance. The total experience will take about 45 minutes.

This piece was originally created and presented in Montreal. Redesigned and recreated, this is its US premiere. 

DANCE MOViES: An ongoing EMPAC series showing the latest, daring work made by contemporary dancers creating short films and experimental videos. DANCE MOViES 5: International dance films on the football field, projected on a large screen, under the stars. Includes the stylings of hip-hop and skateboard dancer Bill Shannon, a high-octane solo in the city streets of Uruguay, a couple defying the laws of gravity in New Zealand, a meditation on high diving in Norway, and the lush film Counter Phrases, by Belgian choreographer Anne Theresa de Keersmaker, filmed in flowering formal gardens to five commissioned scores by contemporary composers.

DANCE MOViES 5 program:

Break, 2005, 14' (New Zealand). The Art of Weightlessness: excerpt, 2003, 4' (USA) Alt I Alt (All in All), 2005, 5' (Norway). Tra La La, 2004, 3' (UK). Montevideoaki, 2005, 5' (Uruguay). Counter Phrases (2), 2000, 27' (Belgium). Total Running Time: 58 minutes

Break

2005, 14' (New Zealand). Written, directed and choreographed by Shona McCullagh Performed by Ursula Robb, Thomas Kiwi and Arlo Gibson Music by David Long Set in rural New Zealand, a nine-year-old boy and his parents struggle with an impending change. As their familiar world turns upside down, gravity seems to shift too. This film is an emotional and sensitive portrait of a family in turmoil.

The Art of Weightlessness: excerpt

2003, 4' (USA). Directed by DB Griffith Performed by Bill Shannon Bill Shannon has made his name as a skateboard-hip-hop dancer and choreographer, and is also know as the Crutchmaster. DB Griffith captures him musing on his crutches by the seaside, slipping through the air as though escaping gravity's hold.

Alt I Alt (All in All)

2005, 5' (Norway). Directed by Torbjørn Skårild Performed by Knut Eivind Reinertsen Sound by Nina Skogtrø As simple a set up as can be: a man dives from a diving board. And yet through the use of rhythmic cuts, edits, sounds, and constantly changing perspectives, this video builds an almost cubist refraction of the simple act of diving into a pool of water.

Tra La La

2004, 3' (UK). Choreographed, directed and animated by Magali Charrier Performed by Allison Rees-Cummings, Barbara Lindenberg, Barbara Pallomina Music and sound design by Jules Maxwell Commissioned by South East Dance, Moving Pictures Festival of Dance On Film and Video, Channel 4 and Bravo Fact. Tra La La is a poetical reflection on the ephemeral nature of innocence and childhood. It magically combines live action with chalk drawing animation to create a black and white tale where three young women lead us through the lost imaginary realm of their past.

Montevideoaki

2005, 5' (Uruguay). Directed by Octavio Iturbe Based on the solo While going on a Condition, created and performed by Hiroaki Umeda. Against the dramatic city backdrop of Montevideo, Uruguay, Umeda's fluid and subtle solo flickers against the hard lines of the buildings. A study of the human body in the urban landscape.

Counter Phrases (2)counter phrases

2000, 27' (Belgium). Directed by Thierry de Mey Choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker Based on the stage work "(But if a look should) April Me" Performed by ROSAS (dance) and the Ictus Ensemble (music) Counter Phrases, made by long-time collaborators Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Thierry de Mey, features dancers from ROSAS with original music commissioned from ten contemporary composers. We are showing only the second half of the film.

1. Water, music by Thierry de Mey
2. Floral Fairy, music by Toshio Hosokawa
3. Heysel, music by Georges Asperghis
4. Dance Patterns, music by Steve Reich
5. Green, Yellow and Blue, music by Fausto Romitelli

Thierry de Mey is a film-maker, visual artist and composer who often works with dancers and choreographers on performance and film projects. Rosas, directed by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, is a contemporary dance company based in Brussels, which creates film and stage works and tours internationally. ICTUS is a Brussels-based contemporary-music ensemble housed in the buildings of the dance company Rosas since 1994 and in residence at the Lille Opera since 2003.