Boring Angel

Boring Angel: the plastic practitioner is a multidisciplinary dance-based performance by acclaimed choreographer/performers Asher Woodworth (Portland, ME) and Hana van der Kolk (Troy, NY), featuring technical design by Ethan Kiermaier (Northampton, MA), and original costumes by Laura Andrighetti (Troy, NY). 

The new work, which premieres at SPACE, explores a world in which objects and emotions are not different kinds of things, where power moves around fluidly, and technology is a religion. Through dance, visual design, text, and sound, Boring Angel presents a shifting visual and sonic landscape where events, bodies, and minds emerge and disappear in a non-hierarchical space of multiplicity and radical empathy.  

Concept/Direction/Choreography: Asher Woodworth & Hana van der Kolk

Technical Design: Ethan Kiermaier

Costume Design: Laura Merry Andrighetti

Performers: Hana van der Kolk, Asher Woodworth, Ethan Kiermaier, Cookie Harrist, Delaney McDonough

Text: R.D. Laing, Richard Foreman, Noam Chomsky, Donna Haraway, Deborah Hay, Keith Hennessy, Judith Butler, Graham Harman, Jacques Derrida, Drake

Related Events

Masterclasses, co-presented with Moving Target Portland, at the Maine Charitable Mechanics Association.

Nov 29, 1-3pm  Hana van der Kolk @ MCMA
Dec 6, 1-3pm  Asher Woodworth @ MCMA

For more information: https://movingtargetportland.wordpress.com/class-schedule-fall-2015/

Asher Woodworth (Choreographer/Performer) is based in Portland, ME and New York City. Asher’s artistic background is in postmodern choreography, performance, and video. He works primarily with bodies and concepts, but also spirits, heat, plants, and computers. Asher is deeply influenced by the life and work of Min Tanaka, with whom he trained intensively at Body Weather Farm in Hakushu, Japan. Recently Asher has collaborated with Dean Moss in the nationally touring work johnbrown, which he created, premiered, and toured with Moss’ company over the past four years. Other recent collaborations include: Deborah Hay (“Dynamic”), Eric Conroe (i believe my apprenticeship was…) and with Hana van der Kolk on several projects including Boring Angel. Asher has shown his work through Movement Research, Danspace Project, and AUNTS, and has led workshops and performed nationally and internationally at such venues as MoMA, The Walker Art Center, Diverseworks, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Electric Lodge, CATI Dans, Body Actualized Center, and Uferstudios. He holds a BA in Dance and Philosophy from Bennington College.

Hana van der Kolk (Choreographer/Performer) makes dance-centric performances, events, videos and writing that investigate community/collaboration and how thought shapes moving, how moving shapes thought, and how being thoughtful movers might positively destabilize our notions of gender, sexuality, work, nature, and politics. Based in Los Angeles from 2005-10, working between Amsterdam, rural Tennessee and Western MA from 2010-2015, Hana now lives in Troy, NY. She has taught dance/performance internationally including at Williams College (MA), The School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam), Torteaturn (Stockholm), and Marlboro College (VT). Her projects have been presented in a variety of places including Kule (Berlin), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Cariddi Mills (North Adams, MA), The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and n/a (Oakland, CA). Hana has collaborated with numerous artists including Asher Woodworth, Coral Short, Layard Thompson, Jesse Aron Green, Emily Mast, Hana Lee Erdman, Tomislav Feller, Jason Martin, Jack Magai, and Ellen Foster. She holds an MFA in Dance from UCLA.

Ethan Kiermaier is a relational magical realist currently based in western Massachusetts where he is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  His current body of work explores the mediation of intimacy and somatic intelligence.  In his shifting roles as artist, curator, producer, technician and party starter he has worked with institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Camden International Film Festival, The San Diego Children’s Museum, The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts and AS220.  His work has been supported by the Boston Foundation, the Berwick Research Institute and Assets for Artists.

Obsessed with fashion and creating alternative identities from a young age, Laura Merry Andrighetti is a self-taught designer who’s creations focus on repurposing discarded and secondhand materials. Pulling inspiration from dreamscapes to the city streets of her current home base of Troy, NY, Laura’s clothing plays in the riffs between reality and the limitless possibilities of imagination.

Funded in part by the Moser Family Foundation as well as the New England States Touring Program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.