Celebrating its second New York City Season, San Francisco-based contemporary dance company Liss Fain Dance presents the New York premiere of The Imperfect is Our Paradise at 3LD Art & Technology Center for six performances January 13-17, 2016. An evening-length immersive installation for six dancers, The Imperfect is Our Paradise integrates text (spoken as voiceover) from William Faulkner's 1929 novel "The Sound and The Fury" into Liss Fain’s highly physical and emotionally resonant choreography and Dan Wool’s commissioned score. The jagged floor pattern of Matthew Ataky’s installation design encourages the audience to move in and out of the protrusions and indentations and around the periphery. Mary Domenico’s costumes and Frédéric Boulay’s projections create images reminiscent of Faulkner’s south. The absence of a pre-defined front, back or sides reflects the work's underlying ideas of past and present thoughts and emotions moving fluidly back and forth in time.

“The Imperfect is Our Paradise is structured around relationships,” says Fain. “The unanticipated juxtapositions of duets, solos and groups throughout the work establish the underlying questions and energy that infuse our lives with excitement, introspection, courage, sorrow and resolve in "The Sound and The Fury." The language moves like a river with strong and gentle currents, eddies, whirlpools. The past and present intertwine sometimes without any punctuation. I feel exactly like I am in the character's mind, experiencing the rawness, relentlessness of his emotions. That rawness, introspection and fearlessness became the source of the structure and the movement of The Imperfect is Our Paradise.”

About The Imperfect is Our Paradise, the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote: “Fain now has a fine, stable ensemble that beautifully realizes her strong, formally contained choreography…Dancers engage each other by elaborate partnering, entangling bodies with physical fluency and emotional intensity.”

Fain’s immersive installation works create an experience not unlike getting lost in a good if challenging book, an aesthetic choice reinforced by her decision to draw audiences up close to the performers and inside the set and the immersive sound score. For The Imperfect is Our Paradise, Antaky’s cloth panels with projections embodying facets of the rural south—including an old railroad bridge, an abandoned barn in a field—are suspended above and encircle the jagged performance space. The dance and installation and sound environments transform 3LD Art & Technology Center into a world of visceral, powerful elements.

“Imperfect communicates with its intelligence, clarity of purpose, and rich, tight choreography.”
– San Francisco Bay Guardian

ABOUT LISS FAIN DANCE

Liss Fain Dance (LFD) tours nationally and internationally with work for proscenium stages and performance installations. The company has performed and taught at festivals and venues in Poland, Germany, Belarus, Russia and the UK, as well as colleges, universities, festivals and presenting organizations in the US. In addition, LFD performs in free outreach events throughout the Bay Area.

LFD has collaborated with numerous composers, lighting and set designers, videographers, actors and technologists. In recent years the company has focused its energy in creating performance installations that bring the audience inside the set and close to the performers. Non-narrative, highly structured and emotionally resonant, her work fuses modern dance’s forceful energy with the kinetic precision of ballet. Since its founding in Boston in 1988, LFD has premiered over 45 works by Fain and collaborated with individuals and creative organizations that include MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, The Exploratorium and The Apple Multimedia Lab.

LFD was one of four US companies invited to perform at Internationale Tanzmesse NRW. The company’s site-specific work has been sponsored by Amerika Haus for a performance installation at the prestigious Beck & Eggeling Gallery in Dusseldorf, Germany; The Brower Center, Berkeley, CA; Theater Artaud, San Francisco, CA; and Mobius Theater, Boston, MA. In addition to these venues, the company has performed at and been presented by, among others: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Z Space, Powerhouse Arena, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Mill Valley Library, West Wave Dance Festival, ODC Theater, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Open Look Contemporary Dance Festival in Russia, Silesian Dance Festival, Zawirowania Festival, the US Embassy, Contemporary Dance Forum in Poland, Belaya Vezha International Theater Festival, Minsk Philharmonic Society and Grodno Drama Theater in Belarus, California State Summer School of the Arts, International Computer Music Conference, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, Downtown Dance Festival, NYC, Dance Umbrella Boston, Harvard University, University of Massachusetts, Colby College, Clark University and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.

In addition to its busy performance schedule, LFD conducts an outreach and education program to provide opportunities for middle and high school students from a broad spectrum of communities to combine dance and movement with creative writing. By working with Fain and company members, students expand their creativity, imagination, and ability to communicate and interpret both abstract and concrete ideas through movement and writing. Liss Fain Dance is currently a Galley Artist with Pentacle.

LISS FAIN DANCE | 3LD ART & TECHNOLOGY CENTER

Wednesday, January 13-Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. Saturday, January 16-Sunday, January 17 at 4:00 p.m.


Program (Duration: 45 minutes)
The Imperfect is Our Paradise (New York premiere)
Premiered: 2014 at ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA
Artistic Director and Choreographer: Liss Fain
Visual Designer: Matthew Antaky
Projection Designer: Frédéric Boulay
Costume Designer: Mary Domenico
Voice-Over: Jonathan Siegel
Composer: Dan Wool
Dancers: Jeremiah Crank, Aidan DeYoung, Katharine Hawthorne, Megan Kurashige, Shannon Kurashige and Sarah Dionne Woods

Location

3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10006, Train: R to Rector, 4/5 to Wall Street

Tickets

$20. Tickets may be purchased online at 3LDnyc.org or phone 866.811.4111, or in person at the box office.