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Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance 2nd Annual Spot for Dance Festival; Sept. 20

by Michelle Tabnick
September 4, 2019
West Side of Broadway between 100th & 101st Streets
230 W 101st St, New York, NY 10025
For International #ParkingDay and #GlobalClimateStrike
Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
in conjunction with Community Board 7/Manhattan
presents
The 2nd Annual Spot for Dance Festival
A Movement Site Activation and Community Zone
Friday, September 20, 2019 from 2-7pm

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, in conjunction with Community Board 7/Manhattan presents the 2nd Annual Spot for Dance Festival, a Movement Site Activation and Community Zone, on the occasion of both International Parking Day and the Global Climate Strike on  Friday, September 20, 2019 from 2-7pm. The location is four curbside parking spaces on the West Side of Broadway between 100th & 101st Streets. All programs are free. For more information visit: timelapsedance.com/events/parkingday2019.

Parking Day is an annual global event where citizens, artists, and activists transform curbside parking spots into public space. By drawing attention to the allocation of city land to private car storage—a hidden-in-plain sight subsidy for CO2-emitting vehicles—Parking Day helps the public creatively imagine a more sustainable and vibrant future.
 
Global Climate Strike is a widespread demand for action to address the urgency of the climate catastrophe. Climate Strike events are aimed to disrupt our disastrous "business as usual" mentality and to serve as a wake-up call for transformational action.
 
Community Zone 100/101. In the space of a single parking spot, Community Board 7/Manhattan volunteers provide a vital gathering hub for neighbors and visitors to share information about sustainable urban design, recycling, tree planting, and climate education resources. The zone features engagement activities for children as well as awareness building and climate mobilization networking for adults.
 
Spot for Dance activates a streetscape that is normally occupied by static vehicles with living, breathing, bodies, awakening a range of sensations and movement experiences. The festival features performances by host company Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance as well as the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, choreographers Aviva Geismar and Nicole McClam. There will be free public workshops led by master teachers Daria Fain (Qigong) and Naomi Goldberg/Dances for a Variable Population. Performance and workshop themes explore climate change, social justice, age/ability, and gender/racial identity. Understanding the intersectionality of the climate crisis is critical to a stated goal of the Climate Strike of "raising awareness in their communities and pushing for solutions to the climate crisis that have justice and equity at their heart."
 
Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance's work focuses on the dynamic relationship of the moving body and the world we inhabit. In a new site-specific dance, Grid, with a score by composer/musician Glen Fittin, seven dancers tumble parallel to the rushing traffic of Broadway. Within this concrete sliver of a streetscape, the choreography melds images of a ghostly wilderness with the present-day urban ecology. Sperling also continues her collaboration with cellist Scott Johnson creating a sonic site-specific improvisation that playfully interweaves the cello's plaintive wails with passing sirens. Lastly, the company reshapes excerpts from Wind Rose, Sperling's breath-filled collaboration with acclaimed environmental composer Matthew Burtner. This work visualizes local and global wind patterns which are being dramatically altered along with climate change. The Time Lapse Dancers are Frances Barker, Morgan Bontz, Carly Cerasuolo, Anika Hunter, Andrea Pugliese, Deuana Robinson, and Indah Walsh.
 
The Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble (STDE) presents excerpts from the great 20th century choreographer Anna Sokolow who brilliantly brought social consciousness to her work. The company performs excerpts from three masterworks. "Rooms" portrays the psychic isolation and unfulfilled desires of people living in the big city. From Three Poems, STDE presents a quartet for four women alluding to the timeless archetype of sirens. Lastly, the ensemble revives a suite of three solos from the 1930s and 40s that still resonate powerfully today: Lament for the Death of the Bullfighter; Ballad (in a popular style); and Kaddish. 
 
Aviva Geismar performs a new solo work-in-progress Trembling between Poles, addressing the fear and anxiety of the individual caused by our current geopolitical crises. Nicole McClam shares her solo, It's All Good Hair, which makes space for a conversation between a black woman and her hair. The piece examines American history, pop culture, and personal narratives to explore how black women are socialized to value Eurocentric beauty standards. 
 
Spot for Dance also offers participatory experiences for people of all ages and abilities. Fain teaches Qigong workshop, sharing a series of movements to create fluidity in the body and re-energize the mind. Dances for a Variable Population, led by founder and artistic director Naomi Goldberg Haas, present "A taste of MOVEMENT SPEAKS®," the signature program promoting strong and creative movement for adults of all ages and abilities to improve mobility, balance, strength, connection, joy, and creative mastery. The event closes with a Solidarity Action Jam in which the artists, volunteers and the dance together in celebration and solidarity with the climate movement.
 
SCHEDULE
2:00-7:00pm   Community Zone Open Hours
2:00-2:30pm   Community Zone/Climate Networking
2:30-3:00pm   Qigong Workshop
3:00-3:30pm   Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
3:30-3:45pm   Sokolow Ensemble
3:45-3:55pm   Aviva Geismar
3:55-4:05pm   Nicole McClam
4:05-4:30pm   Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
4:30-5:15pm   Dances for a Variable Population
5:15-5:30pm   Sokolow Ensemble
5:30-5:40pm   Aviva Geismar
5:40-5:50pm   Nicole McClam
5:50-6:30pm   Jody Sperling Time Lapse Dance
6:30-7:00pm   Climate Strike Solidarity Action Jam
 
BIOGRAPHIES
                                                        
A dancer-choreographer from NYC, Jody Sperling is the Founder/Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance. She has created 40+ works including many furthering the legacy of modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller (1862-1928). Considered the preeminent Fuller stylist, Sperling expanded the genre into the 21st century, deploying it in the context of contemporary performance forms. She was nominated for a 2017 World Choreography Award for her work on the French feature film "The Dancer" (premiere 2016 Cannes Film Festival) inspired by Fuller's life. Years of working in Fuller's idiom, which involves kinesphere-expanding costumes, has influenced Sperling's awareness of the body's relationship with the larger environment. In 2014, she participated in a polar science mission to the Arctic as the first, and to date only, choreographer-in-residence aboard a US Coast Guard icebreaker. During the expedition, she danced on Arctic sea ice and made the short dance film "Ice Floe," winner of a Creative Climate Award. Following that experience, Sperling has focused on developing programs that engage creatively with climate. 
 
Time Lapse Dance (TLD), is an all-women dance company founded by Jody Sperling in 2000. The company's mission is to forge dynamic connections between dance and movements in culture, history, science, visual arts, and music. Since inception, TLD has presented fifteen seasons in Sperling's native NYC and toured to performing arts centers nationally and internationally. Along with performances, TLD offers outreach on arts/climate, family programs, workshops, and masterclasses. TLD has received commissions from Marlboro College/Vermont Performance Lab, University of Wyoming/NEA American Masterpieces, and the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics. 

Glen Fittin (Composer, Grid) is an Adjunct Professor and Dance Musician at Montclair State University. He began his work as a Dance musician at Rutgers University where he later recorded his CD entitled, Circulation with Michael Toal. He has worked with choreographers Brit Falcon, Larry Keigwin, Robert Battle, Michael Foley, Sean Curran, Donald McKayle, Gabe Masson, Aya Shibahara and David Dorfman among others. Glen is the recipient of Meet the Composer and Center for American Music grants for his scores for dance. Focusing on the use of Voice, Piano, Electronics and unusual percussion. His recordings include works by Glen Velez (Rhythm Color Exotica Ellipsis Arts 1996), Bernie Worrell, Tigger Benford, John Tchai, Joseph Jarman, Annea Lockwood, Dez Cadena, Richard Barone, Tony Visconti, Valerie Naranjo, Montego Joe, Women of the Calabash, The Rhythm Monsters, Marafanyi, Mbiradind and many others. Glen has taught and performed at the Montclair State University MFA program, Hofstra university, Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, Korea Drum Festival, Seoul Dance and Music Improv. Festival, Rethimno Renaissance Festival Crete. Kaatsbaan Dunham Master class (Tivoli NY). His theater credits include The Lion King on Broadway and Shrek the Musical. TV credits include Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His current projects include Duo music with bassist Scott Hogan, fusion group One More Once, and his solo project entitled 400 Volts.
 
Matthew Burtner (Composer, Wind Rose) (www.matthewburtner.com) is an Alaskan-born composer and sound artist who creates music from materials and data of climate change, particularly related to the Arctic. Burtner spent his childhood in the far north of Alaska and this profoundly shaped his musical language. He is the leading expert on the eco-acoustics of snow and ice, and has worked extensively with systems of climatology applied to music. First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International competition, and an NEA Art Works and IDEA Award winner, Burtner's music has received honors and prizes from Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany) and The Russolo (Italy) international competitions. His concert music has been performed in festivals and venues throughout the world, and commissioned by ensembles such as NOISE (USA), Integrales (Germany), Peak FreQuency (USA), MiN (Norway), Musikene (Spain), Spiza (Greece), CrossSound (Alaska), and others. He teaches composition and computer music at the University of Virginia, and directs the environmental arts non-profit organization, EcoSono (www.ecosono.org).

N. Scott Johnson (Cellist) is an architect, artist and musician whose work explores public space, performance and memory. In 2016, Johnson founded XDEA Architects, an interdisciplinary design studio based in New York. Prior to XDEA, Johnson was a Principal with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, working on projects such as The Shed, Museum of Modern Art expansion and the High Line. As a cellist and composer, Johnson explores the concepts of breath and harmonics to activate the vast space between 12 traditional tones, inspired by jam sessions with filmmaker Barbara Hammer while developing various realizations of Hammer's Evidentiary Bodies. His visual score of Hammer's film, Nude Walk, written and performed for the Whitney Museum of American Art installation was published by Inpatient Press in 2018. Together, Johnson and Hammer presented 5 screenings of Evidentiary Bodies at the Berlin Film Festival in 2018, where Johnson wrote and performed Duet for Cello and Film to accompany the film score, the only live performance at the festival. As an architect, Johnson collaborated with Hammer to design a white box immersive version of the film, currently on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) was born in Hartford, Connecticut and began her training at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Martha Graham and Louis Horst. In the 1930's she was a member of the Graham Dance Company and assisted Mr. Horst in his dance composition classes. During this period, in addition to her association with the WPA dance unit, she formed her own company and began choreographing and performing solo concerts and ensemble works Ms. Sokolow's interest in humanity led her to create works of dramatic contemporary imagery showing both the lyric and stark aspects of the human experience. Her vast range of repertory includes drama, comedy, and lyricism with her commentaries on humanity and social justice threaded into each of her works. In a 1965 Dance Magazine article she wrote that there were no "final solutions to today's problems," but that she "could simply provoke an audience into awareness." Ms. Sokolow's works are performed by the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, and are in the repertories of numerous other companies around the world. Anna Sokolow passed away in her home in New York City on March 29, 2000 at the age of 90.

Samantha Geracht (Artistic Director of Anna Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble) After performing with Anna Sokolow's Players' Project for eleven years, and as a founding member of Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble since 2004, Ms. Geracht was appointed artistic director of Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble in January of 2017. Ms. Geracht has toured and taught Sokolow internationally, and reconstructs Sokolow repertory on professional companies and in college and university dance programs. She has reconstructed Sokolow work at a variety of dance programs including The Boston Conservatory, Franklin and Marshall, Barnard College, Morris County Community College, Centre de Danse Nationale de Paris, Kanopy Dance company, Ellen Robbins Dance as well as worked with various soloists including Jennifer Conely, Kim Jones, and Sandra Kauffman.Ms. Geracht has also performed the Humphrey/Weidman repertory with Deborah Carr Theatre Dance Ensemble, and with Gail Corbin since 1993. She regularly works with Rae Ballard's Thoughts in Motion, and she has also performed with Jim May, as a guest artist with David Parker and The Bang Group as well as in her own choreography. In 2016 she choreographed Shadowbox Theatre's The Earth and Me, a climate change puppet/dance opera for school aged children.

Aviva Geismar is a choreographer, dance educator and the Artistic Director of Drastic Action, a NYC-based contemporary dance company. Drastic Action uses dance to create connections across lines of difference. Through education programs and performances, the company offers individuals opportunities for serious reflection, self-expression and empowerment. In 2016 Drastic Action's project, Dis/Location (Fort Tryon), explored the immigrant experience in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Washington Heights with a site-specific performance and workshops in a neighborhood middle school. From 2006-2010, Drastic Action developed two cultural exchange programs with Germany in partnership with the Battery Dance Company. These projects, "Dances for the Blue House" and "Dancing to Connect," focused on tolerance within the context and legacy of the Holocaust, particularly relevant content in the stratified Germany of that time. Geismar's dances have been performed in prominent venues including Inside/Out at Jacob's Pillow, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, Wilhelma -Theater (Stuttgart) and Haus der Berliner Festspiele, and she has received support from LMCC, NYC-DCA, Bay and Paul Foundations, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Jody and John Arnhold Foundation and others. 
 
Nicole Y. McClam, CMA, MFA enjoys exploring the awesomeness of dance with her students at Queensborough Community College and bouncing to and fro as a founding member of B3W Performance Group based in Queens, NY. Her work has been presented in Wahington, DC, Baltimore, MD, Brooklyn and Potsdam NY, and Lubbock, TX. A DC native, she was a long-time member of Deborah Riley Dance Projects. prior to that, she apprenticed with the Pennsylvania Dance Theater for their 2000-2001 season where she had the pleasure of performing works by Ben Munisteri and Claire Porter. She received her MFA in Dance while also pursuing her studies in the Laban Certification Program at the University of Maryland, a BFA in Dance Performance and a BA in Chemistry from East Carolina University.
 
Daria Fain has 35 years of experience in studying Chinese energetic and is a Universal Healing Tao (UHT) instructor since 2001. UHT is a system developed by Grand Master Mantak Chia.
 
Founded in 2005 by Naomi Goldberg Haas, Dances for a Variable Population (DVP) promotes strong and creative movement among adults of all ages and abilities. DVP's programming includes: a multigenerational performance company that engages community members as participants and audiences; Movement Speaks® and Dances for Seniors, free, community-based programs for older adults in four boroughs of NYC; performance and choreographic opportunities for older professional dance artists. DVP's site-related performances have been presented in some of New York City's most iconic public spaces, including The New York Botanical Garden, Times Square, Washington Square Park, and the High Line. Artistic Director Goldberg Haas has worked in concert dance, theatre, opera and film; performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet; and was recently awarded LMCC's President's Award for the Performing Arts and serves of the Age Friendly Media, Arts and Culture Working Group as appointed by the Mayor. dvpnyc.org


The 2nd Annual Spot for Dance Festival is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by LMCC. LMCC serves, connects and makes space for artists and community.
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