Dance/Or/Performance
8:00PM
DANCE/OR/PERFORMANCE
Hadar Ahuvia and Meredith Lyons present work exploring location and forging of identity.
Hadar Ahuvia’s Joy Vey contends with a Zionist legacy by turning beloved Israeli poems, folk songs, and dances to face Zionism’s original sins. Israeli folk-dance choreographers made their work out of spiritual and ideological necessity to remake the Jewish body and nation. In Joy Vey, Ahuvia follows, but reconfigures their footsteps.
Directed by Meredith Lyons, in collaboration with performer Kellie Lynch and musician Caitlin Scholl, “The Chicken and The Egg” is a new dance work exploring what comes first in creative and life partnerships. Lyons, Lynch and Scholl expose the collision of their internal processes as artists battling their own identities being mid career women in their 30’s. “The Chicken and The Egg” questions how it is that we do what we do, and what is that we should really be doing first.
DANCE/OR/PERFORMANCE is supported by the Moser Family Foundation.
Hadar Ahuvia trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance and earned a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Ahuvia has performed for Sara Rudner, Jill Sigman, Anna Sperber, Molly Poerstel, Jon Kinzel, Stuart Shugg, Donna Uchizono, and is currently working with Tatyana Tenenbaum and Kathy Westwater. She has presented work since 2010 at NYLA, EMPAC, Dixon Place, CPR, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Danspace, Roulette, AUNTS and Catch. A DTW/NYLA 2011-2012 Fresh Track Artist, Ahuvia was resident at ChaNorth, Easporte Art Center Maine, and is 2015 Movement Research Artist in Residence.
Meredith Lyons is a dancer, educator, choreographer and administrator based in the northeast. Her physical performance technique is focused heavily in articulate movement vocabularies and anatomical principles that use the body as an instrument of perception, action and interaction. As an artist she has presented work nationally and internationally, most recently performing at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA, presenting at Colby College Museum of Art and Ten Tiny Dances in Boston, MA, and teaching the improvisational score Foreword/Afterword at the CORD/SDHS conference in Athens, Greece, ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival in Vienna, Austria and in Istanbul, Turkey. Meredith received her undergraduate dance degree from Mercyhurst University and MFA in dance from Smith College focusing on dance pedagogy and performance. She serves as the Admissions Director of Bates Dance Festival, and is on Teaching Faculty at Colby and Bates Colleges. www.meredithlyons.org
Kellie Ann Lynch, co-founder and Artistic Director of Elm City Dance Collective in New Haven, CT, has been choreographing, teaching and developing a vision for the company since its inception. Kellie has also joyfully been creating with Adele Myers and Dancers since 2008. In addition to her long-time work with these two companies, she has had the great privilege of working with Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc. for a number of years; and with all three companies she has toured across the US and abroad. In the last several years, her freelance experiences have included working with numerous choreographers in the Northeast including Saar Harari and Lee Sher, Annie Kloppenberg, Tara Burns, Lindsey Bauer, WireMonkey Dance, Jennifer Archibald, and Kyle Abraham to name a few. Kellie has received artist fellowships in choreography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism; her work has been commissioned, produced and performed throughout the Northeast. In July of 2015, Kellie attended Bates Dance Festival as an Emerging Choreographer where her work was presented and she was given time and space for choreographic research. Kellie also teaches dance and has been on faculty at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Springfield College, Connecticut College and Wesleyan University. She holds a BA in Dance from Rhode Island College and a MFA in Dance from Smith College.
Caitlin Scholl is a writer and artist originally hailing from the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University. In 2012 Caitlin co-founded The Space We Make, a multidisciplinary collective of artists that creates interactive projects and performances in non-traditional settings. Their first evening-length work premiered in August 2012 at the Upper Jay Art Center in Upper Jay, NY. Most recently, the group performed THE WHITE WHALE THE WHITE WAIL, an immersive dance-music-theater work-in-progress, at A@R in Brooklyn. The Space We Make continues to develop past and potential projects both in New York City and upstate. Caitlin’s first novel, Mocemoce, Na Vanua (The Land Abiding), was published in 2006 by IPS Press in the Fiji Islands. Makebelieve, published by UNO Press, is her second book. Her writing has appeared in Sonic Eclectic, Edna, r(e)volve, manifest animists, Adirondack Life Magazine, not enough night, and is forthcoming in The Spirit of Black Mountain College (a book anthology from Lorimer Press). Caitlin has also worked as a teacher, writer, editor, and horticulturist in Brooklyn, NY. She currently resides in Portland, Maine. http://www.caitlinscholl.com/