Fall Further IX – A Digital Screening of Dance Performances and Dance Films

4:40

Good evening everyone, and welcome to Fall Further IX, a digital screening of dance performances and dance films. My name is Quincie Hydock and on behalf of the artists, Pentacle, and myself, thank you so much for joining us tonight. As the director of Pentacle’s Administrative Support Program, I wanted to provide a brief overview of what the Administrative Support Program, or ASP for short, is.

ASP is a way for artists to pick and choose between different types of administrative services and bundle them together to use over the course of a year in a way that works best for them. ASP strives to help artists build infrastructure and also understand what business practices best support their artistic endeavors. Some of the service components that we offer through the program include: Matching artists with a mentor, pairing up an artist with an administrator on Pentacle’s staff to complete administrative tasks, internships, working sessions which are 1-on-1 lessons with an expert in the field on a topic of choice, fiscal sponsorship, access to Materials for the Arts, performance opportunities such as this one, APAP showcases, and also spring performance.

Tonight’s performance screenings will last a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes. If you’d like to take a moment to step away from your device, please feel free to do so. We’ll make sure to send you a link of all the performances and the post-show discussion after they conclude.  Once the performances conclude, we’ll take a slight pause, and then bring on the six choreographers along with our discussion moderator, Marta Renzi, who herself is a filmmaker and choreographer.

Marta will be leading the choreographers in a conversation about their work, the process, and what it’s like to create in 2020.

As you can see, captions are being provided for the speaking portions of the performances, and we will also be including ASL interpretation for the live post-show discussion.

We do have a chat box available for this evening, in case you’d like to give a shoutout to any dancers, or say hello to choreographers. Our hope is that this is a friendly place to connect to community. If you’d like to not view the chat box, then you can make your YouTube player fullscreen and it will disappear for you. 

And that is it from me. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re very excited to share this work with you. Now, sit back, relax and enjoy the show!

7:13

Hello, I am Cynthia Berkshire. Thank you for joining us tonight, and thank you to Pentacle and the other choreographers.

This evening I am showing sections from two projects. The first developed over a period of three years, it’s called VEIL: Two Sisters.  The second, Experiment for Transformation, began late March and relates to COVID.

I had a great time working with my amazing collaborators in VEIL, and that includes the 5 performers and the video design team Automatic Release.  I worked with all of them in the studio in some capacity prior. In Experiment for Transformation, you will be seeing two studies; we all were working from our bedrooms. 

A primary motivation for me with my projects is exploring and experiencing the inner world and the imagination.  Something these two projects have in common is that they both have creative movement workshops. The focus is different and it’s based on the theme of the projects.

Please feel free to contact me with any thoughts or questions, through my website or through email. I hope you will enjoy, and thank you again.  

1:12:28

“Escape from the House of Mercy” shines a light on New York City women’s history and the buried stories of those silenced and overlooked inhabitants of the workhouse formerly located at Inwood Hill park. Here, women and girls could be committed for simply dancing or walking alone at night. We presented two performances in the park with live music in June 2019.  We were ready to premiere an expanded version at Dance Base St. Mark’s, the dance access series, in April, and when that was cancelled, we paused.  This video represents a bridge from the point where we left off to the time when we can present our work in live performances. This video was edited and mostly shot by Erica Lesner, dancer and videographer. Erica had an inside view of the work by dancing in it but also had the skill and knowledge to put it together. 

1:14:05
[voice overlay during film]
Strange house you must keep and fill.
House that eats and pleads and kills.
House on legs.
House on fire.
House invested with desire.
Haunted house.
Lonely house.
House of trick and suck and drug.
Give it to me, house.
I need you, baby house.
House whose rooms are pooled with blood.
House with hands.
House of guilt.
House that other houses built.
House of lies and pride and bone.
House afraid to be alone.
House like an engine that churns and stalls.
House with skin and hair for walls.
House the seasons singe and douse.
House that believes it is not a house.

1:35:55

Hi everyone, my name is Linda Kuo and I am the director of Dancers Unlimited. DU is a bicoastal company based in Honolulu and New York City. We started in 2009 as a youth engagement program for free and donation-based classes, and 11 years later we find ourselves still holding space for creating, healing, and thriving together as a community. This year in particular we have shifted everything to our virtual platform, called DUTV. I’m really excited to present to you tonight our three new dance films that we created with our dancers from three different cities, and I also would like to thank our collaborators DJ Mainframe, and also Natalie Noboa for the original music, and also The Three NYC for their video editing work on “Forward.” 

The work is titled HUEman moveMEANT. Because we all come from different backgrounds, our company prides ourselves in our diversity and inclusivity. And the movement really helps us explore how to deconstruct internalized racism, and to decolonize by re-indigenizing within ourselves and also with each other. 

So you will see three different works that took place in Brooklyn, NY, and another one is somewhere out in the woods in New Jersey. The last piece you will see is titled “Forward” and it is a collaboration between our dancers in three different cities.

I hope you will enjoy our presentation and please continue to engage with us on our social media:  @DUNYC.HI or through our website. Thank you.