Watch the full performance of Novel Formats #1: A Dialogue- produced by JAM TD & Senior Producer, Chico Eastridge / Videography & editing Chico Eastridge, with Kate Barber / Audio engineer Cedar O'Dowd
Many of my projects are investigations in collaboration and improvisation. The series, Novel Formats #1-7, is a set of seven performance events, each prompted by the desire to rethink the understanding of and experience with improvisation as a form of performance and explore the boundaries between real time decision making and overt theatricality. Each will have a different cast of collaborators from the fields of dance, music, visual art, theater, and the written word.
Each installment asks the question: what happens when we come together in different social configurations, each with its own possibilities for improvisation and contact? Improvisation asks us to notice what we’re doing in the moment, to question learned and internalized value systems. We think our senses are right and true but so much is learned, habitual. Novel Formats aims to interrupt these patterns through novelty, risk, and real time human connection.
Novel Formats #2: (The) Set Up uses the dynamic of three as its defining structure to explore synthesis, harmony, and discord within the construct of an interdisciplinary performing ensemble.
Sunday October 6, 2024
6:30pm
$5-$10 suggested donation
To RSVP / More info: JAM - Junction Arts Media
5 S. Main St. WRJ, VT
With
Ellen Smith Ahern, dancer
Julian Barnett, dancer
Rachel Bernsen - dancer/director/instigator
Kyoko Kitamura, vocalizer, keyboards
Mac Waters, electronics, violist
Rachel Kauder Nalebuff - dramaturgical support
Sara Juli, Surala Consulting - development support
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Previous events in this series:
Novel Formats #1: A Dialogue
Feb 3, 2024
JAM - Junction Arts Media, WRJ, VT
With Rachel Bernsen, instigator/director/dancer
Taylor Ho Bynum, cornetist, multi-instrumentalist
Kyoko Kitamura, vocalist
Lindsay Packer, visual artist
Tomeka Reid, cellist
Ellen Ahern Smith, dancer
An audience member shared their experience:
It has been a very long time since I saw such excellence in collaborative, attentive improvisation. Not a moment dropped out. And a good intimate space for the audience who became part of the moment. ...my gratitude [to] all of your partners for this marvelous, luscious, creative experience. Being present with people who are paying such close attention, listening to each other, shifting the molecules in the space, slowing down the pace is revolutionary, needed.
-Hannah Dennison, choreographer and founding director of Cradle to Grave Arts, Inc.
photo by Kate Barber at JAM of L to R Kyoko Kitamura, Rachel Bernsen, Ellen Ahern Smith