DeAnna Pellecchiais a dance/performance artist committed to collaboratively creating multi-sensory works of live art. She dances with companies and choreographers who are interested in making work with dancers, including them as an integral part of the creative process. Presently she is making work with Paula Josa-Jones of Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works (principal dancer since 2001), Alissa Cardone & Ingrid Schatz of Kinodance Company (dancer since 2006), Wendy Jehlen of Anikai Dance Company (dancer since 2005), and Michael Jahoda of White Box Project. Over the past decade she has had the pleasure of making dances with many incredible choreographers including Elaine Summers, Ann Carlson, Janet Taisey Craft, Christine Bennett, Nicola Hawkins, and Leda Elliott.
CURRENT COLLABORATORS / PROJECTS
PAULA JOSA-JONES / PERFORMANCE WORKS
COMPANY BIO: Since 1985, Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works (PJJ/PW) has gained a national reputation for risk-taking, adventurous dance theater. Josa-Jones has been called "one of the country's leading choreographic conceptualists" by the Boston Globe and the Village Voice describes her work as "powerful, eccentric, and surreal". Josa-Jones creates works of total theater which combine rich imagery, virtuosic movement, evocative visual designs, and idiosyncratic use of music. The dancers do not simply dance, but are utterly transformed by the movement and characters they embody, giving a startling authenticity and depth of feeling to the dances. PJJPW has toured Russia, Europe and Mexico as well as throughout the United States. The company is committed to collaborations with artists in all disciplines, and to forging in-depth relationships with an international creative community.
DeAnna is an original cast member of RIDE, and principal dancer with PJJ/PW, having danced with the company since October of 2000. An equestrian herself, DeAnna grew up riding horses, and has now been dancing with them for the past eight years. "RIDE", premiered on Martha's Vineyard in August 2001 during a four-night run to sold-out audiences of over four-hundred. This Equestrian Dance Theater Performance is an evening-length theatrical event for horses, dancers and riders. It explores the sensuous and archetypal bond between horse and human through a powerful mix of music, dance, and aerial ballet. The cast includes eight to ten dancers and six to eight horses and riders, with live music and video projection, creating an intimate and spectacular theatrical experience.
In June, PJJ/PW created new live performance elements for RIDE during a ten-day workshop. Part of this workshop included exploration of work with aerialist Paola Styron, three horse, and dancers DeAnna Pellecchia, Dillon Paul, and Ingrid Schatz. The aerial rigging was provided by Flying by Foy, whose fifty-year credits include most Broadway performances, and who set the gold standard for theatrical flying. This concept is exciting and fresh, as there has never been a theatrical work that combined this complex and elegant aerial technology in a performance with horses.
For the past four years company members DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz have been working with Andalusian/Saddlebred, Escorial, otherwise known as 'Pony'. This well-known liberty-trained horse, does not bear rider or harness of any kind, taking cues from the dancers that are based solely on verbal commands and body language. "Pony Dances" (pictured right), a book featuring photography (by Jeff Anderson) of this collaboration is currently in the works, as is "ARENA" a dance film shot during the June workshop's open-rehearsal culmination/performance. The premiere of the full-length performance of RIDE is being projected for 2009. Check back for details.
CLICK HERE to view an excerpt from RIDE "Audience members surely had different moments...But everyone had a moment. The standing ovation at the performance's end testified to that." -Alexis Tonti, Vineyard Gazette
"How can I express the majesty of your performance, the concept and the soul-driven choreography. In The Red Pony Barn, I witnessed a miracle: the connection between horse and woman, the darkened earth beneath hooves and art. I wept when the dancer put her face to Norman's nostrils as if she were whispering to god." -Carol Dine
KINODANCE COMPANY
COMPANY BIO: Kinodance Company is an artist collaborative founded in Boston in 1999 by choreographer/dancer Alissa Cardone, filmmaker Alla Kovgan and visual artist Dedalus Wainwright out of passion for the kinetic arts, experimentation and a strong belief in the power of interdisciplinary collaborations. Since 2004, core members include choreographer/dancer Ingrid Schatz and lighting designer Kathy Couch. Among Kinodance’s creations are intermedia and expanded cinema stage performances, installations and films. Choreography of elements is the term that Kinodance invented to formally describe their art making process. In Kinodance performances, each element (dance, cinema, set, sound) is a strong, fully developed score that compliments the others — sometimes soloing, sometimes partnering, sometimes driving a tight ensemble. The outcome is multi-sensory, immersive experiences that rejuvenate the eye and perception.
Kinodance Company was selected as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to watch" in 2008 -- CLICK HERE
Light, alive in its many forms, the Film Frame, the Lumia Box, Silent Cinema with live accompaniment, and the film Blade Runner are the inspirations for "FUSE". In the 1920s and 30s, Thomas Wilfred, a Dutch-born American light artist, invented the "lumia box" - a self-contained unit with a screen that looked like a television set. This apparatus could play programmed, colorful, and dynamic light shows for days or months without repeating the same imagery. Devising compositions for his "lumia" boxes, Wilfred was able to choreograph color, volume, shape and movement trajectories of the luminescent strokes to mesmerize viewers with elegant and spectacular dances of light. The lumia box used on stage in "FUSE" is also a reference to film frame and early cinema. To structure the happenings in "the frame" (of the set, the piece, the stage) a film script was used as a starting point and a human drama was choreographed to a transformation of light and sound.
Kinodance's "clanging multi-sensory collaborations...jangle like a sock to the jaw" and have "the power to rock a bit of your world". -The Boston Globe
"At times the dancers look imprisoned; at other times they're empowered, as they effortlessly swing up, catch hold of the ceiling, flip upside down, and hang like bats. It all adds to a state of beautiful unreality...elements have been so carefully blended that what happens is mesmeric." -The Boston Globe
The performance "Denizen" is inspired by Armenian Cinema masterworks by Sergei Parajanov and Artavazd Peleshian, specifically by Peleshian's film "Seasons" (1975). It is homage to Armenia, one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Choreography in "Denizen" was developed based on gestures and feelings evoked in "Seasons" by Peleshian and films by Parajanov. In October 2006, Kinodance Company went to Armenia to some of the exact locations where the inspirational films had been shot. Choreography was adapted to the sites and filmed. New images, sounds of the spaces, set and lighting ideas were generated. Peleshian's writings on creating cyclical structures on film by re-contextualizing repeated images and actions guided the process of integrating all the elements into an expanded cinema stage performance.
During the 60-minute performance, the five dancers (Ruth Bronwen, Alissa Cardone, DeAnna Pellecchia, Ingrid Schatz and Pape N'Diaye) each inhabiting a distinct personality as denizens - mold movement, light, images, sets and sounds to orchestrate a cycle of poetic haikus to transmit the mythical and ritualistic qualities of a land and its people. "The layering of emotionally potent choreography, exotic imagery, sounds, and staging add up to a daring and dramatically theatrical experience." - The Boston Globe
"A breathtaking synthesis of live and filmed dance." - The Boston Globe
ANIKAI DANCE COMPANY
COMPANY BIO: Anikai Dance Company (ADC), founded by artistic director Wendy Jehlen, is a production of Akhra: the Dancing Grounds. Wendy Jehlen is a choreographer of Contemporary dance whose work is rooted in her life-long training in Bharata Natyam (South Indian classical dance), as well as in Capoeira, West African dance, Japanese Butoh and American Contemporary dance styles which she has studied in the US, Italy and Japan. Jehlen's choreography also incorporates her work with Deaf artists, specifically the aesthetic of American Sign Language poetry. ADC's work has been produced throughout the US, Europe, India and Japan and has received funding from the Artist Grants Program of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Ford Foundation/Arts International, the Tokyo American Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others.
"Hamsafar" (meaning “traveling companion” in Urdu and Persian) is a trio made in collaboration with performers Alissa Cardone, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz. This work-in-progress draws from the experience of living between cultures, between places, and between languages. It uses images of traveling, in groups and alone, to explore how life’s journey changes people along the way.
CLICK HERE to view "Hamsafar" (work-in-progress); opening soloist DeAnna Pellecchia.
DeAnna joined ADC in 2005 to work on the recreation of "Crane", Jehlen's twenty-minute piece for six dancers. "Crane", inspired by Japanese images of the crane and the lotus, is based on the Buddhist concept that beauty can grow out of, and thrive amongst chaos and suffering. "Crane" premiered in India in 2002 to live music performed by musicians from India, Japan, Italy and the US. DeAnna performed in the US premiere at The Dance Theater at Boston University in June, 2005.
In Islam, the Day of Alast is the day on which humanity was created. In Sufism, this moment of creation is often seen as the day on which the Sufi’s journey toward the divine began. Before this moment, there was no duality, only unity. At the instant of creation, the one became two –human and divine. From this time forward, the two have searched and longed for each other, yearning to be one again. This duet for Wendy Jehlen and DeAnna Pellecchia, depicts the time before duality, right before the moment of simultaneous creation and division.
"Haaaa" Anikai Dance Company "Haaaa" is a dance for five people, inspired by the experience of pregnancy and childbirth.It incorporates an American Sign Language poem which can be interpreted as follows:GENERATIONS-BLOOD-OCEAN-ALL-FIT-TOGETHER-CONNECT-CONNECT BACK IN TIME.This poem is layered onto movement to imply the sign for “tide”.The dance also incorporates the sign for “breath”, “gather”, and the South Indian classical dance gesture for “goddess”.
THE WHITE BOX PROJECT
The White Box Project is focused on developing new artistic collaborations and facilitating artistic research, and comes to life in a series of high caliber, fully improvised, one-of-a-kind performance-events that bring uniquely talented artists face to face with the public in unexpected locations. Spearheaded and curated by esteemed dancer and choreographer Michael Jahoda, White Box performance events are taking place in clubs, galleries, museums and other off-beat locations in Boston and Cambridge. Jahoda assembles a unique cast of characters for each event, bringing together a handful of Boston's best dance and musical talents to exploit and share their craft through the art of improvisation. The public is placed directly inside the action of these events, erasing any physical barrier between them and the performers. Everyone and everything in the room becomes an integral part of the action - influencing the course and atmosphere of the event. Dance artists include: DeAnna Pellecchia, Ingrid Schatz, Mary McCarthy, Sarah Slifer, Liz Roncka, Ann Brown Allen, and Karl Kronin among others.
"Middlesex Lounge is looking forward to hosting more of Michael Jahoda's modern dance performances. The combination of Jahoda's creative choreography and media usage within the lounge's comfortably dynamic space create an enjoyable atmosphere for everyone to watch, listen, and perform in harmony." -Abbie Waite, Program Coordinator for Middlesex Lounge
PAST COLLABORATORS / PROJECTS
ELAINE SUMMERS
BIO:Elaine Summers, legendary choreographer/dancer/filmmaker, MA, Fulbright Scholar, CAVS, was an original member of New York's Judson Dance Theatre. A 1947 graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and a former MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies Fellow, she is founder of the Xperimental Intermedia Foundation (1968) in New York City. Ms Summers, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, is recognized as a multimedia artist combining dance with all art forms, including film and video. She pioneered the first total intermedia concert integrating multiple film images, sculpture, and music at the Judson Dance Theatre in NYC (1964) with "Fantastic Gardens". She is inventor and teacher of Kinetic Awareness™, a sensory-based movement re-training modality. Her works have been reviewed in Dance, Harpers Bazaar, MS Magazine, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Medion (The Museum of the Media) and numerous other journals and newspapers.
"Crow's Nest / Solitary Geography" Elaine Summers in collaboration with Kinodance Company
"Crow's Nest/Solitary Geography", an intermedia performance installation was originally created in 1979 for the GuggenheimMuseum (New York) by legendary Judson Dance Theatre choreographer/filmmaker Elaine Summers. "Crows Nest/Solitary Geography" synthesizes landscape film images with improvisational choreography involving the audience in a discovery of the body's geography and its relation to the natural geography of landscape. The performers interact with and within the geographic spaces created by projected images of rural landscapes filmed around the United States. This project has been re-invented multiple times by a diverse cast of dancers, musicians and sculptors including Min Tanaka, Suzushi Hanayagi (dancers); Pauline Oliveros, Jon Gibson (composers); and Pepon Osorio (sculptor). Orchestrated by Kinodance Company in collaboration with Ms. Summers, the Boston re-creation premiered on May 1st, 2005, and featured a shifting line-up of local musicians and dancers including Alissa Cardone, Ingrid Schatz, DeAnna Pellecchia, Debra Bluth, Deborah Butler, Liz Ronka and Laura Quattrocchi. Original sound compositions accompanied, conducted by United States of Belt. CLICK HEREto view an excerpt of the Boston premiere of "Crow's Nest/Solitary Geography"
CHOREGRAPHER ANN CARLSON & VIDEO ARTIST MARY-ELLEN STROM
BIO: Ann Carlson is a choreographer, performer, director, and conceptual artist whose award-winning work is interdisciplinary, blending movement, text, voice, music, and visual elements. She creates solo works, choreographs ensemble works for dance companies, and works collaboratively to build large-scale, site-specific works. She has performed internationally since the late 1980s, including commissions from the Whitney Museum, Creative Time, the Walker Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Carlson was a 2003 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and a 2003 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in performance and choreography. She was awarded a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance in 1999 and was the first choreographer to receive the CalArts/Alpert Award. Among other awards, Carlson is the recipient of a prestigious three-year choreographic fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006, she was a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.
"Green Movement" A New Site-Specific Work by Choreographer Ann Carlson Performed by Alissa Cardone, Lorraine Chapman, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz
Green Movement is comprised of a series of art events that envision life on a future earth. The choreography is inspired by “Madame 710”, a video installation co-authored by Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom which offers an unlikely scenario. Encased by the white cube of a white-box gallery setting is a large, beautiful Holstein dairy cow, a dancing figure clad in a clear plastic coat stuffed with money, and blowing straw that lifts upward. The human figure (Carlson) moves in bovine contemplation; shrouded in plastic, this money-stuffed milkmaid leads her charge in a muffled, ecstatic dance of gratitude and surrender. Working to build a substantive relationship with the animal, seeking intersections and likenesses, the human ultimately cannot be released from her position of the consumer. She is performing the complexity of being inside the system.
Carlson’s four dancers Alissa Cardone, Lorraine Chapman, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz, “cloaked in capitalism” translate this “green movement” from the screen to live performance, dancing in open fields with two dairy cows. This project premiered at the Feet to Fire Festival presented by Wesleyan University. Through engagement of the arts, the festival seeks to imagine a sustainable future by becoming more aware of our environmental impact.
IPSWICH MOVING COMPANY
COMPANY BIO: Ipswich Moving Company (IMC), under the direction of Janet Taisey Craft, has been defining and refining Aerial Dance for the last fifteen years. Aerial Dance explores physical boundaries, taking dancers airborne into sculpted rope and fabric forms in an attempt to discover the delicate and exciting space between flight and gravity. For over twenty years IMC has offered professional modern dance performances in theatres, schools, outdoor spaces and galleries throughout New England. The Company participated in the Massachusetts Educational Collaborative for ten years, offering artist-in-residencies in public and private schools throughout the north shore area. Their Aerial Dance Theatre productions have been aired on British Cable TV, were a hit at the 2001 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and played to sold-out audiences in the 2003 "Spotlight on Dance" Series in the Cyclorama Theatre of the Boston Center for the Arts.
"Dreaming Head" Ipswich Moving Company
"Dreaming Head” takes inspiration from the surrealism movement, specifically the paintings of Salvatore Dali, among others. The surrealist movement originated in the late 1920’s and represented a reaction against the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided European politics and had culminated in the horrors of World War I. This Ipswich Moving Company premiere, conceptualized by director Janet Taisey Craft and assistant director Jenny Carlson defies all things rational. The Studio Theatre is transformed into a “live painting” where the dancers’ terrain includes a piano, a huge wooden table, a life-size picture frame suspended from the ceiling, and an aerial rope sculpture. In this realm the dancers reunite the unconscious world of dream and fantasy with the everyday “rational” world. “Dreaming Head” is a collaboration, choreographed and performed by Janet Taisey Craft, Jenny Carlson, Adrienne Mincz, DeAnna Pellecchia, Chrissy Reynolds and Sativa Saposnek.
DeAnna was invited to join IMC in 2004 specifically because of her aerial dance experience. Working fifteen feet off the ground, suspended by fabric slings, DeAnna worked on "Outbound", a trio of dynamic energy and "Lake", a duet exploring elements of seperate worlds, with director Janet Taisay Craft. These works premiered in IMC's 2004 "BOUNDARIES" concert. In January of 2006, the company premeired "ALIGHT" (pictured right), an original Aerial Dance Theatre Production exploring the mysteries of darkness and the renewal of light, at the Ipswich Performing Arts Center. This community based project incorporated children from the Ipswich, MA ages 7 - 10, and featured music directed by Gerald Dolan, performed live by Ipswich High School musicians and singers.
BENNETT DANCE COMPANY
COMPANY BIO: Bennett Dance Company (BDC) engages diverse audiences by presenting dance as an empowering, accessible art form through the creation of collaborative, multi-media performances, which are developed both site-specifically and for the stage. Collaboration is at the heart of the work which blends contemporary dance with visual arts, including sculpture, landscape and photography; diverse movement forms including aerial dance and martial arts; and original music composition, often performed live. The Company crafts work collectively by utilizing the strength and experience of its members. BDC's commitment to marrying dance with diverse mediums continually challenges dancers to discover a new physicality during the creative process. Through visceral, athletic movements in non-traditional settings (on stilts, tangled in nets, encased in boxes), BDC dancers enmesh themselves in unexplored environments, realizing and revealing a sense of poetry and fearlessness beyond mere technique or physicality. DeAnna was a founding member of the company; she danced with BDC from 1999-2007, during which time she was also the company's Rehearsal Director and Assistant Choreographer.
"Air & Water" Bennett Dance Company "Air & Water", described by the Boston Globe as "vivid, provocative, imaginative, and viscerally satisfying", transports dancers eighteen feet above ground and several feet under water. This evening-length performance features two collaborative works, "The Net" and "WELL". In "WELL" company members Christine Bennett, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia wheel onstage a 4-by-4-foot well designed by visual artist Michael Dowling. As it slowly spins, reddish light glinting off the metal creates flame-like flickers on the walls and ceiling. "The performers dance in and around the tub suggesting cleansing, sustenance, baptism, oblivion," (The Boston Globe) creating an elemental depiction of women as the keepers of water. "The Net" relies on the use of a large rope net (18' high x 26' wide) designed by Dutch visual artist Pieter Smit. In this piece the same trio navigates the web-like terrain using ropes as pendulums. While the netting provides a challenging landscape for the dancers to traverse, it both enables and confines, alternately ensnaring them and allowing them the vehicle to become airborne, spinning, dipping, hovering. Bennett Dance Company recently performed "The Net" at the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada in front of an audience of 4,000 under Root Society's Nightclub Dome (10:00 & Esplanade).
To view excerpts from BDC's "Air & Water" Project, visit www.bennettdancecompany.org and click on "Preview Performance"
"Time after time, they move away only to be drawn back, like flies lured to a spider's web. It is fascinating to watch" -The Boston Globe "Gravity doesn't appear to be an issue for Bennett Dance Company. They climb, embrace and intertwine on a knotted-rope net high above the stage...performing balancing feats that would have Ringling Bros.' acrobats trembling in fear. They balance precariously on the side of a copper container filled with water...without fear of slipping...And they do both in one performance, combining two movements that would exhaust an average dance company." -Jennifer Lord, Metro West Daily News
"The Water Project" Bennett Dance Company in collaboration with Medicine Wheel Productions and Forest Hills Cemetery
"The Water Project" emerges out of a seven-year collaboration between Bennett Dance Company and Medicine Wheel Productions’ Artistic Director, Michael Dowling. The production draws its themes and materials from the physical attributes of water itself, mirroring the element's ability to adapt and transform in response to its environment. "The Water Project"'s latest incarnation was featured in conjunction with Forest Hills Educational Trust's 2006 sculptural exhibition, "Dwelling: Memory, Architecture and Place". With the picturesque landscape of Forest Hills Cemetery as their stage, BDC dancers interected with Dowling's latest creations, a water-filler copper well, and a floating bridge, surfaced with hand-painted, “freshwater” tiles. Accompanied by cellist Sam Ou, dancers Christine Bennett, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia performed in this riveting, unexplored setting as they took their performance to the center of a Lake Hibiscus.
"Hinges Keep a City: Neighborhood Stories" A multi-media play featuring Bennett Dance Company presented by The Huntington Theatre Company's Education Department in association with the Boston Center for the Arts
For the development of "HINGES", Huntington educators conducted and transcribed nearly 300 pages of oral history interviews with residents from the South End, Fenway, Mission Hill, and Lower Roxbury. These transcripts were turned over to a team of artists who focused in on the most compelling themes and flushed out a narrative storyline. The artistic team included playwright Kirsten Greenidge, theatre director Judy Braha, visual artist Chandra Dieppa Ortiz, composer Hugh Hinton, and Bennett Dance Company, led by dancer/choreographer Christine Bennett, and dancer/assistant choreographer DeAnna Pellecchia. "HINGES" wove together the memories, transitions, and legacies of people living in Boston neighborhoods during the 20th century, specifically focusing on the social and racial issues facing the community at that time. "HINGES" ran January 14- 23, 2005 at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. The play was produced by the Education and Community Outreach Department’s Storytelling for the Ages (STAGES) program. This edition of the program, funded in part by The Boston Globe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, was designed as part of the Huntington’s inaugural year-long celebration of the new Calderwood Pavilion.
"Ladder Dances" Bennett Dance Company
Inspired by the company's work with "The Net", BDC created "Ladder Dances", a more easily portable version of their aerial work which incorporates two individual rope ladders. Pictured right, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia hover, float and weave above the urban landscape of Davis Square, Somerville while suspended 16 feet above ground.
"The Copper Walkway", a solo made for DeAnna Pellecchia by director Christine Bennett, premiered at Bennett Dance Company’s 10th Anniversary Gala Performance at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street.Long-time collaborator, visual artist Michael Dowling created a cascading walkway of copper, 14 inches wide by 32 feet long, extending through the main aisle of audience. The dance is set to “Sonata for Violoncello”, a piece in five movements by contemporary composer Paul Hindemith and performed live by cellist Sam Ou. The choreography, made collaboratively by Bennett and Pellecchia, depicts a woman on a journey, navigating the long, narrow path she has chosen.
The collaborative production of "Bound" integrates an exploration of multi-layered verticality. Underneath the 50-foot high glass dome of the Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama, five 30-foot high columns created by Beth Galston form a looming and surreal environment. The dancers (Christine Bennett, Alissa Cardone, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz) are either earthbound or bound for something higher as they utilize stilts at times to reach full height in relation to their environment. To a sometimes-delicate sometimes-fierce score by Henryk Gorecki, the dancers undergo a physical and emotional metamorphosis much like the development of child to adult. In three sections, this visually striking performance challenges the viewer's perception of vertical limitations.
"The piece follows the four women as they begin on stilts, become 'grounded' without them and then ascend again. ' It's not narrative,' Bennett says, 'but each character has development. It is an abstraction of the idea that four women go through some metamorphosis on our feet. It's analogous to childhood, then adolescence and then something completely different.” -Mike Mayo, South End News
Ghosts, dreams, rooms, memories, and grandmothers are at the core of "Inner House", a collaborative piece centered in, on, and around a 6 x 6 x 8-foot yellow ochre house with silver tiled interior by visual artist, Michael Dowling. The original music composition by Grayson Hugh is a rich tapestry of acoustic instruments, voice, and text The Boston Globe has called "gorgeous." Combining a time-bending, poetic narrative with athletic physicality, dancers Christine Bennett, Alissa Cardone, Amie Laster, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz reveal the personal histories within the walls of the house.
"There were some very striking images, especially of one woman hanging upside down, half in and out of the house, as if testing the air, then another standing on the roof as if about to fly, only to fall into the arms of those below with breathtaking abandon." – Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe
Inspired by the birth of her son and his environment to that point in life, Christine Bennett again works with the element of water in "Surfacing". Here dancers Christine Bennett and DeAnna Pellecchia dive, spin, slide and hydroplane across 20-foot spans of marley-covered stage. Repetition and momentum create the rippling undercurrent that powers the dancers across the surface between air and water.
“Christine Bennett and DeAnna Pellecchia…slide while standing, sitting, and even flipping over. The dancers' expressions are intense, their repetitions almost obsessive.” – Christine Temin, The Boston Globe
For the creation of Bridge, Christine Bennett worked with a T'ai Chi practitioner and guest performer Leda Elliott to incorporate T'ai Chi movement into Modern Dance. The choreography "bridges" a public space with a performance space, Asian culture with American culture, and Chinese martial arts with contemporary dance. Five dancers drop like leaves from a large tree and progress through a flower garden. As they cross over a wrought iron fence and onto a brick courtyard, red fans snap and the dance accelerates. The dancers create a cultural map in their journey from the garden to the courtyard, as if they are discovering a new world.
"New Balance Climb" Bennett Dance Company Bennett Dance Company was commissioned to create an original improvisational dance score on the one-of-a-kind “New Balance Climb” at Boston’s Children’s Museum. This 3-story climbing sculpture made of brightly painted curved platforms, and encased in wire netting, rises like a fleet of magic carpets up the new glass lobby of the museum. Christine Bennett, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia with guest performers Danielle DiVito, Melissa Gendreau and Wendy Jehlen offered this hour-long performance during the Grand Re-Opening Gala Celebration, accompanied by all-live music.
NICOLA HAWKINS DANCE COMPANY
COMPANY BIO:Nicola Hawkins Dance Company (NHDC) has been performing in New England and New York to public and critical acclaim since 1993.NHDC's dances are accompanied by virtually all-live music including opera companies, country music bands, gamelan orchestras, early music ensembles, chamber orchestras, and a variety of soloists; additionally, the company has collaborated with some of Boston's most noted composers, musicians and filmmakers.NHDC continually garners praise for its artistic sensibility and invention in presenting dance works that are wide-ranging in theme and choreographic vocabulary. Concerts have become particularly notable for artful use of many media, unusual sets and original costumes.Performance venues include Boston's Symphony Hall, with vocalist/composer Bobby McFerrin, and New York's St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery. Collaborations with filmmakers have been presented at venues worldwide including New York's LincolnCenter for the Performing Arts and the American Dance Festival.
"Prayers for the Planet" Nicola Hawkins Dance Company
"Prayers for the Planet", is a multi media project created collaboratively with batik artist Mary Edna Fraser, composer Evan Ziporyn and the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. "Prayers for the Planet" is a call for peace, not as a state of stillness or passivity, but as a positive, resonating dynamic condition that requires effort and attention. Qualities found in our natural landscapes provide inspiration for the rhythms and textures that evoke peace as an organic process.
Inspired by an aerial perspective of the earth, Mary Edna Fraser's art transcribes narrative landscapes onto silk fabric using dyes in the ancient medium of batik. Hawkins has integrated Fraser's batik designs into her choreography, making them an integral element of the dance, performed by core company members DeAnna Pellecchia, Carey McKinley, Jessica Reed and Ingrid Schatz. Along with video projections of Fraser's designs, the batik fabric transforms from vessel, to shelter, to sacred dress and finally to wings for flight. Composer Evan Ziporyn, through a commission from the Fromm Foundation, has created "Thread", an accompanying score which includes flute, clarinet, viola and cello and is performed live by Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. "Prayers for the Planet" premiered on June 8th, 2005 at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, in conjunction with the World Batik Conference. The performance was funded by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Lyceum Lecture Fund and the Northeast Global Education Center at Salem State College.
"Toussaint Before the Spirits" Nicola Hawkins Dance Company In collaboration with Boston Modern Orchestra Project
DeAnna joined Nicola Hawkins Dance Company in 2002 to work on the one act dance opera, "Toussaint Before the Spirits", based on excerpts from Madison Smartt Bell's award-winning novels All Souls Rising and Master of the Crossroads. This collaborative opera choreographed by Nicola Hawkins and composed by Elena Ruehr, tells the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader and hero of Haiti's revolution towards independence, who was captured in a ruse by Napoleon's army and condemned to die without trial in a cold prison in the French Alps. "Toussaint Before the Spirits" premiered in 2003 as part of Opera Unlimited, a major festival of new contemporary opera co-produced by Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Boston Academy of Music (BAM).
"The world premiere of Ruehr's ‘Toussaint Before the Spirits’ had the audience on its feet, cheering, whistling, and applauding for the work, the composer, and the astounding performance…” -Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe
AHKRA: THE DANCING GROUNDS
COMPANY BIO:Co-founded by choreographer Wendy Jehlen, and composer Nandlal Nayak, Akhra: the dancing grounds, is a collective of performers who are bound to one another by a shared desire to explore innovative means of communication through works which stretch the boundaries of their art forms.The word "akhra" in the Nagpuri language means "the dancing grounds".It is the place where people come together to share their music, their dance, and their lives with one another. The strength of Akhra lies in the diversity of its members - Akhra combines folk and classical, modern and traditional, secular and religious, aural and visual.The group changes as new members bring their individual philosophies and training to the ensemble.With each synthesis, a language is created.Akhra communicates in a unique and constantly evolving language. Akhra's performances weave together music, dance and storytelling.In most cultures, throughout the world and throughout history, these disciplines have been and are inextricably intertwined.Akhra continues in this ancient tradition.
DeAnna joined Akhra in 2005 to work on "Hands: Rhythm Project", a multi-disciplinary performance piece bringing together musicians from Japan and India and dancers from the US. The performance includes folktales, poetry and other texts from Japan, India and the West. These texts are spoken, sung, signed (in American Sign Language) and danced, juxtaposing ideas and images from these three traditions. The artists working on this project include choreographer Wendy Jehlen, composer Nandlal Nayak, dancers Jim Banta, Alissa Cardone, Genevieve Hyacinthe, DeAnna Pellecchia & Ingrid Schatz and musicians Hibiki Toen, Atsuko Kida, Kentaro Uchida, Takashi Sakai, Norihiko Akagi & Dani Dalinian. Nandlal Nayak is a composer of Contemporary World Music, born and raised in Jharkhand, India. He is a member of the Ghasi tribe and grew up surrounded by the rich musical tradition of this people. Since 1996, he has been working and composing with musicians and dancers of many traditions in the US, Europe, Japan and his native India.
"a percussive feast...a smorgasborg of sound" – Seattle Times
LEDA ELLIOTT - MOVE
DIRECTOR'S BIO:Born in Tokyo, Japan to a Japanese mother and Irish-American father, Leda Elliott grew up in both the United States and Japan. She received her initial dance training abroad at The Ballet Arts of Carnegie Hall, studying under Aiko Ohtaki, one of the first females to teach ballet in Japan, and then at The Walnut Hill School of Performing Arts in Wellesley, MA. She began her Wushu training (Chinese Martial Arts) in 1986, and her traditional Wudang T'ai Chi training in 1996 under Master Bow Sim Mark. She has participated in several International and Regional tournaments receiving various medals for her performance abilities, including the 2000 World Wushu Festival in Shanghai where she received honors for The Best Demonstration in Women's Traditional Tai Chi, and Women's Traditional Weapons.
DeAnna began training and performing with Leda Elliott in 1999 through a collaboration between Leda and Bennett Dance Company. During this collaboration DeAnna was first introduced to various Tai Chi forms including Yang style, snake form, southern fist, northern fist, meditation and fan. In 2001, DeAnna began work on "Dreamcatcher", a full length production choreographed and directed by Leda which blends aspects of wushu, tango, dance, opera, piano and theater. Again sponsored by the BCA, this production was featured as part of their City Sound Program, taking place in the Historic Cyclorama on Tremont Street in Boston. DeAnna performed "Eternal Circle", a piece combining movements of BaGua, T'ai Chi Sleeves and modern dance and "The Awakening", a piece utilizing Wushu spear.
CLICK HERE to view an excerpt from "Dreamcatcher".
