Please contact the Rensselaer Dance Club for more information about this event.

Let ‘im Move You is a series of performance and visual works rooted in the J-Sette dance form. The most recent performance in the series, This Is a Formation, both agitates and plays with the energetic lead-and-follow form of dance, which originated in the Black femme communities of Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1970s and has been widely popularized by the Jackson State University Marching Band dance team, the Prancing J-Settes. 

Artists jumatatu m. poe and Jermone “Donte” Beacham are in residence at EMPAC to develop the next phase of the work, Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation, designed as a three-part performance that will travel across historically Black neighborhoods, queer night clubs, and institutional art spaces and theaters. The artists will be joined by a team of collaborators, including seven dancers, lighting, audio, and visual media designers, as well as two ethical and artistic consultants, to expand the theatrical and technological elements of the work. The team will also conduct a series of workshops with Rensselaer students as part of the development of the piece.

Work-in-Progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.  

Thomas F. DeFrantz is an artist and scholar who works at the apex of dance, technology, and critical Black studies. His historiographic and aesthetic focus opens shapeshifting conversations about the curation of art, ideas, politics, and bodies. DeFrantz will be at EMPAC as an advisor and collaborator to jumatatu m. poe and Jermone “Donte” Beacham’s Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation residency. In conjunction with that project, he will present this public talk on his research. 

DeFrantz is professor in the departments of African and African-American Studies and of Dance at Duke University. He is co-editor of Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings, and Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance. 

DANCE MOViES Commissions support new works that fuse dance with the technologies of the moving image; these world premieres were followed by a panel discussion with the artists. 

TAO (11 min, Argentina, 2013) is the third collaborative dance film between Argentinian filmmaker Cayetana Vidal and choreographer and dancer Sofia Mazza. In an illusory world, two lovers living parallel lives, day for one and night for the other, with seasons inverted, only meet in the artful interlocking of image and sound. Vidal is a film director and writer who has written, directed, and edited several dance-for-the-camera projects, often in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Sofía Mazza.

In The First Place… (US, 5 mins, 2013) is comprised of 10 short films, shot in Rome, that reframe the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (an Italian pastoral romance published in 1499). Each film is a decisive moment in which the protagonist must use landmarks to reorient himself while pursuing his beloved. The film features music by Erin Gee. A Lecoq-trained actor, Colin Gee was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil, and the founding Whitney Live artist-in-residence at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Recent commissions have included works for SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum. He has frequently collaborated with sibling/composer Erin Gee, providing the libretto for her opera, SLEEP (2009), which premiered at the Zürich Opera House, and Mouthpiece XIII, Mathilde of Loci, Part I (2009) presented by the American Composer’s Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. 

DESCENT reimagines the story of Greek mythical figures Venus and Andromeda as an interracial love story with choreography that conjures the aesthetics of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture Toilet of Venus and Andromeda. Performing in wheelchairs, dancers Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson traverse a stage built with hills and curves. The duo climb to the summit of a ramp where they precariously balance on its edge and let gravity take over as they barrel back down, moving together and apart. Through emotional peaks and valleys, DESCENT explores themes of disability, race, and beauty to reveal how mobility is fundamental to participation in civic life. The performance at EMPAC featured a live broadcast. 

A newly commissioned ensemble performance for EMPAC’s 10YEARS celebration, Sudden Rise explores the interplay between the live and the pre-recorded. Moving fluidly between voice, movement, and image, Moved by the Motion resists the structural hierarchies inherent within and between artistic disciplines and reflects the spirit of the continually shifting improvisational ensemble.

Moved by the Motion is an ongoing, iterative performance project initiated by Wu Tsang and boychild in 2013 that features a shifting group of collaborators including Patrick Belaga, Josh Johnson, and Asma Maroof, among others. The ensemble explores different modes of storytelling through an improvisational structure. Each performance is a series of translations between text, movement, film, theater, and music.

The world premiere of Yara Travieso’s immersive theatrical experience designed for the EMPAC Concert Hall. Commissioned for 10YEARS, the new work uses monumental staging, experiential cinema, and sound to ignite the ceiling, side galleries, balcony, and stage of the Concert Hall with a sprawling live performance meant to stretch the parameters of the hall and expectations of its audience. The performance invites the audience to experience the scale of the hall and the women that will encompass it—the expansiveness of the performance giving way to the infiniteness of Travieso's female protagonists. Travieso will expand on the venue’s unique capabilities for music and opera, creating a rich theatrical world for the audience to explore and share in making it “breathe.” 

Yara Travieso is an American director, choreographer, and maker of worlds. She creates films, stage works, immersive installations, and live experiences centered around female protagonists.  Travieso will develop the work over summer 2018 along with composer and sound designer Sam Crawford and set designer Seth Reiser.

Theater maker Yara Travieso was in residence to create an immersive theatrical experience designed for the EMPAC Concert Hall. Inspired by the idea of transforming the hall into a living, breathing female form, Travieso used monumental staging, experiential cinema, and sound to ignite the ceiling, side galleries, balcony, and stage. Expanding on the venue’s unique capabilities for music and opera, Travieso undertook a film shoot while in residence to create material that was later projected inside the hall, creating a rich theatrical world for the audience to explore and share in making it “breathe.” 

Yara Travieso is an American director, choreographer, and maker of worlds. She creates films, stage works, immersive installations, and live experiences centered around female protagonists. Travieso developed the work over summer 2018 along with composer and sound designer Sam Crawford and lighting designer Seth Reiser.

The US premiere of Maria Hassabi’s SlowMeDown, a moving-image installation commissioned for EMPAC’s 10YEARS celebration.

Partially filmed while Hassabi and her dancers were in residence this spring, the work features material from Hassabi’s live installation, STAGING (2017), which was presented internationally in public spaces, museums, and exhibition contexts. Blending collage and post-production effects, SlowMeDown builds a hyper-real frame that augments this footage and participates in the construction of what Hassabi calls a “performative surreality."

Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus) is a New York based artist and choreographer. Her practice utilizes stillness and deceleration as techniques in choreographies that oscillate between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image, testing conventional rhythms of viewership in the process.

DESCENT reimagines the story of Greek mythical figures Venus and Andromeda as an interracial love story with choreography that conjures the aesthetics of August Rodin’s sculpture Toilet of Venus and Andromeda. Performing in wheelchairs, dancers Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson traverse a stage built with hills and curves. The duo climb to the summit of a ramp where they precariously balance on its edge and let gravity take over as they barrel back down, moving together and apart. Through emotional peaks and valleys, DESCENT explores themes of disability, race, and beauty to reveal how mobility is fundamental to participation in civic life.

Kinetic Light is a collective made up of professional disabled artists Alice Sheppard, Laurel Lawson, and Michael Maag. Sheppard is the artistic director and choreographer for Kinetic Light who performs the role of Andromeda in DESCENT. Lawson, performing the role of Venus, is a collaborator in choreography, costume and makeup design, as well as the software developer for DESCENT. Michael Maag is DESCENT’s lighting and video designer.

Accessibility Information

• 60-minute performance with 20-minute intermission
• Audio description provided (please note in the comments section of your ticket order)
• ASL interpretation provided for pre- and post-show announcements (the performance has no text)
• Entire first row dedicated to wheelchair-accessible seating

NOTE: Please share any specific access requests in the comments form of your ticket, in order to help our Front of House team prepare to welcome you.

EMPAC is an accessible venue. The lobby is accessible via the double doors facing Rensselaer’s campus with an entrance off of College Avenue. All-gender wheelchair-accessible restrooms are available on all public-access levels of the building. The main audience entrance to the theater is wheelchair accessible and located on EMPAC’s 5th floor, which can be accessed from the lobby by elevator. If you have any questions about access, please contact EMPAC Box Office Manager John Cook or call 518-276-2822 (voice only).

SCHEDULE

• 4PM — Box office opens
  Level 7 Lobby
• 6:30PM — Tactile experience and audio description demos
  Level 7 — Lobby
• 7PM — Event venue (Studio 1) opens
  Level 5
• 7:30PM — Event begins
• DESCENT Part One
• Intermission (20 minutes) — Café open
• DESCENT Part Two
• Post-show meet and greet with artists
  Level 5 — Evelyn's Café