Performance Prospectus: A complete guide to

performance
prospectus
catherine cabeen
& company
Into the Void
APR 28 - 30, 2011
Choreographer......................Catherine Cabeen
Dancers..........................................Catherine Cabeen
Germaul Barnes
Karena Birk
Echo Gustafson
Matthew Henley
Sarah Lustbader
Costume Design....................................Michael Cepress
Stage Manager.......................................Alex Harding
Dramaturg..............................................Tonya Lockyer
Understudy.............................................Ella Mahler
Music Composition................................Kane Mathis
Tech Director..........................................Jay McAleer
Sculpture................................................Susan Robb
Project Assistant/Understudy................Chelsea Williams
Lighting Design......................................Connie Yun
Digital Media..........................................Tivon Rice
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Note from OtB.......................2
Beginner’s Guide...................3
Why Yves Klein.....................4
Bios.......................................6
Funder Credits.....................12
A NOTE FROM OTB
Catherine Cabeen is ambitious. Maybe this has something to do with having
performed with Bill T. Jones for over 8 years or maybe she is channeling Martha
Graham after having performed with the late grand dame’s company.
Whatever the case, Catherine swooped back into town 4 years ago from NYC
and established herself as an artist to be taken seriously. During that time, her
physical gifts and considerable experience could be seen in a variety of formats
around town including the NW New Works Festival and The A.W.A.R.D. Show! 2009
here at On the Boards. Simultaneously, she enrolled in graduate school at the
University of Washington where she completed her Masters in 2009 in 20th
Century Dance History and Gender Representation.
Now, she is making her first evening-length work and not only is she tackling a
wonderfully loaded personality in Yves Klein - the French visual artist who is
famous, amongst other things, for having used nude females covered in his signature
blue paint (International Klein Blue) as human paint brushes on white canvas - but
she is doing so with a large group of talented collaborators including a lighting
designer, composer/musician, video artist, costume designer, visual artist and crew
of talented dancers. We were thrilled to commission this world premiere and to be
able to help it along through our Dance Production Program with production
residencies, travel stipends and dramaturgical support.
Into the Void is a huge milepost in Catherine’s already considerable career,
marking the biggest step she has taken thus in transitioning a dancer’s knowledge
into a choreographer’s. But she is not sitting back, looking at the stage from afar.
She has crafted the kind of movement she has always wanted to perform and has
located herself front and center in the work as a dancer. As such, her challenge is
to see the entire composition while being a part of that very frame. Luckily, she has
surrounded herself with a skilled and generous crew, who have made the task just
a little bit less difficult and the project rich with many different creative textures.
Catherine also went the extra mile in making this piece, studying all aspects of
Klein and even crafting a series of lectures to talk about the Nouveau Realist
and her connection to his work. During her research for Into the Void, Catherine
met Klein’s widow at a retrospective of the artist at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis. Long bothered by the overtones of misogyny that have long haunted
Klein’s work, Catherine was able to ask one of the actual women who participated
in his Anthropométries, or body paintings, what it felt like to be a part of such a
work. She pointed at one of the paintings and responded, “That’s me! We were
having so much fun.”
Here’s hoping Catherine and company will remember this enterprise in much the
same way.
Sarah Wilke and Lane Czaplinski
beginner’s guide to
catherine cabeen
1. Catherine Cabeen danced with legendary choreographer
Bill T. Jones from 1998-2005. Jones, who was one of the recipients
of the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors (alongside Oprah and Paul
McCartney), trained Catherine to dance the roles that he had
originally created for himself. Later on Catherine began setting
Jones’ work on companies and students in addition to acting as the
Assistant Choreographer alongside Jones on the Broadway musical
Spring Awakening.
2. Cabeen also performed with the iconic Martha Graham Dance
Company. Founded in 1926 by Martha Graham, this company was a
vehicle for the choreographer’s highly stylized form of movement and
expression. In the modern dance canon, Graham’s technique remains
one of the quintessential modern techniques and is often the kind
taught to modern dance students.
Cabeen occasionally works with Richard Move who created Martha@,
a series of performances that combine Move in Graham drag dancing
and being interviewed as Martha herself. Read Cabeen’s thoughts on
performing in Martha@ here.
3. Cabeen thoroughly researches as part of her process and did a
series of lectures around the city leading up to the premiere of
Into the Void. She distilled her lectures into a short essay that you
can read in this blog post. The essay, Why Yves Klein, also gives
insight into the artist.
4. In Into the Void Cabeen is working with many collaborators from a
variety of disciplines and she’s no stranger to working outside of dance
herself. In the past she has helped create work for theater companies
like Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre and Seattle’s aerialists The Cabiri.
5. In 2010, Cabeen visited the Walker Arts Center to see the Yves Klein
retrospective. At the opening she was introduced to Klein’s widow,
Rotraut Klein-Moquay. An artist in her own right, she had actually
worked with Klein on some of his pieces and talked with Cabeen about
her experiences. Read Cabeen’s story about it here.
why yves klein
by catherine Cabeen
Into the Void is a performative, interdisciplinary collaboration inspired by
the work of Yves Klein, a post WWII Nouveau Réaliste painter. The work is
providing an opportunity for me to connect my passion for 20th century art
history to contemporary questions, aesthetics and opportunities. As an artist
and scholar I am interested in the ways that research and creativity connect
and in particular as a choreographer, how the body can be used as an
intersection for ideas.
I first saw Klein’s work when I was 11
years old and I still remember the impact
the paintings made on me. When I was
reintroduced to his work in an Art history
survey course I took during graduate
school at the University of Washington,
several aspects of his life story inspired
me to begin the research that now
supports Into the Void. What is exciting
about being a creator and a scholar is
that both research and the creative
process are journeys and when engaged
in simultaneously they ricochet off one
another and open both arenas to new
influences and surprising turns.
The movement vocabulary that you
will see in Into the Void is different than
other work I have made. It is tied
to inquiries that have helped me to
break creative habits and seek out
new ways to build physical vocabularies. Keeping the historic research I have
been doing in dialogue with my body, helps me to understand both the past
and the present more thoroughly.
Klein is a celebrated yet problematic figure in Art History. His work is
conceptual, extremely abstract, and bridges many different media, so it is
hard to categorize. Klein was a pioneer in a post-WWII conceptual shift
in art making. Visual artists at this time, in response to art’s increasing
co-modification, began to experiment with the value of experience itself as art.
Klein stated on many occasions that his paintings were but “ashes of his art,”
and the real value in the work came from the energy he infused it with, during
the process of creation.
The “unframe-able” nature of Klein’s work however brings up many familiar
issues for those of us steeped in dance scholarship, such as where does the artist
end and the art begin? If the art is not tangible how do we know it exists? And
how does one catalogue art that consists of shared experience?
Following the idea that the spark in the work is what counts, in 1962, the
year of his death, Klein conducted the sales of 7 Zones of Immaterial
Sensibility. Each zone existed only in the transaction between the buyer and
the artist. In an elaborate ritual the buyer was given a receipt for a weight of
pure gold, which being a part of nature Klein saw as the only material that
could be exchanged for the priceless immaterial sensibility that he was offering.
Half of the gold was then thrown into a natural body of water, the other half
went to Klein, and the receipt was burnt so that there was no material trace
for the transaction, and the energy of the Immaterial could flourish in the
perception of the buyer.
In other words he sold, “nothing” for gold.
The sales of Zones of Immaterial Sensibility represent a culmination of Klein’s
work, all of which was aimed at evolving the sensibility of the audience so that
they could perceive the value of the Immaterial. To collectors who were used
to investing in objects these sales of essentially nothing represented a huge leap
of faith, but as someone who creates ephemeral dances as works of art, these
rituals strike me as beautiful articulations of placing value in singular moments
of experience.
Image of a ritual transfer of a Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility to Dino Buzzati in Paris, January 26, 1962
read more @ ontheboards.org
BIOS
Catherine Cabeen, MFA, (Dancer, Choreographer, Artistic Director
of Catherine Cabeen and Company (CCC)), has received choreographic
commissions from On the Boards, Spectrum Dance Theater, the
American College Dance Festival NW, Moving People Dance
Theater, Pig Iron Theater Company, Arc Dance Company, Lehua Dance
Company, and the Cabiri, among others. Cabeen was a finalist in
The A.W.A.R.D. Show! Seattle, 2009. In the last two years Cabeen’s work
has been performed in Seattle, Bellingham, New York, Santa Fe, Taos,
Albuquerque, and Dar Es Salaam. Cabeen has received support from
the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and 4 Culture. Cabeen
founded CCC in 2009, to explore collaborative work in which the body
is used as an intersection for ideas. CCC, an associated program of
Shunpike, will next have a season at the Joyce Soho in New York,
May 12-14, 2011.
Cabeen currently performs in her own work, and with Richard Move.
She is a former member of the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance
Company (1998-2005), and was Jones’ Assistant Choreographer on
the original production of Spring Awakening at the Atlantic Theater.
She is also a former member of the Martha Graham Dance Company,
and Pearl Lang Dance Theater among others. In Seattle Cabeen has
performed in Paige Barnes Here/Now, numerous 12MM, OtB’s NWNW
festival, Acorn Dance, the Chamber Dance Company, and as a guest
artist with Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theater.
Cabeen teaches contemporary dance technique and composition,
20th century dance history, and workshops based on movement and
gender, nationally. During the summer of 2011, she will be teaching
in the first two weeks of Strictly Seattle and then an Emerging
Choreographer at Bates Dance Festival. Cabeen is also a certified yoga
instructor and frequently teaches for the Bill T Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance
Company’s Education Outreach Department.
catherinecabeen.com
Collaborating Artists:
Germaul Barnes, (Dancer) is a former principle dancer with Bill
T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, where he received the New York
Dance and Performance Award-The Bessie. Germaul Barnes is artistic
director and founder of Germaul Barnes/Viewsic Expressions Dance,
a New York based non-profit dance organization that presents
multi-media dance performances, art exhibitions and educational
residencies around the world. A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Mr. Barnes
was educated at University of the Arts-Philadelphia. The recipient of
many grants and awards, Mr. Barnes has extensive foreign experience as
dancer, teacher, choreographer and anthropologist. For more
information see ViewsicEx.org. Cabeen and Barnes have enjoyed
dancing together in varying capacities since 1998.
Karena Birk, MFA (Dancer) is delighted to be part of Catherine
Cabeen and Company. Cabeen and Birk first danced together in 1993.
A Seattle native, she recently obtained her MFA in Dance from The
Ohio State University with a focus on performance, notation, history,
and pedagogy. Her early training was at the Cornish Preparatory
Program, Richmond Ballet, and the University of Washington. Currently
also performing with Redd Legg Dance, she has danced professionally
with the Colorado Ballet, Lehua Dance Theatre, ARC Dance, and
oaklanDrive Dance Company. She has been privileged to dance works
of many inspiring choreographers, including Trisha Brown, Anna
Sokolow, Antony Tudor, George Balanchine, Fanny Elssler, Wade
Madsen, Deborah Wolf, and Hannah Wiley. She teaches modern and
ballet at Bainbridge Dance Center, and has also taught at Cornish,
Dance Fremont, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and The Ohio State
University, among others.
Michael Cepress, MFA (Costume Design) Michael Cepress holds a
BA in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and a Master of
Fine Arts degree in Fibers from the University of Washington. An intense
interest in the male wardrobe and tailoring traditions has led him to
focus on the design and production of menswear, and write extensively
on fashion’s relationship to gender and popular culture. In 2005, his debut
menswear collection was featured in the sold-out runway show “Michael
Cepress Presents An Evening of Men’s Fashion.” A subsequent event in
2006 featured a menswear collection in the runway showcase “Michael
Cepress Introduces the Modern Gentleman.” Cepress is a 2007 nominee
for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Art Award, and is seeing
attention worldwide. Reaching beyond the bounds of fashion, Cepress’
work will travel internationally throughout 2008 with the exhibition
“RRRIPP: Paper Fashion”, featured beside the likes of John Galliano,
Issey Miyake, Hussein Chalayan and Walter Van Beirendonck. His work
is also featured in an accompanying publication about paper in fashion.
Cepress lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
Echo Gustafson, (Dancer) has danced professionally around the
world with companies including the Martha Graham Dance Company,
Moving People Dance, and Pearl Lang Dance Theatre. Her choreography
has been commissioned by Moving People Dance Santa Fe and Colorado
College. She is a Gyrokinesis® and
Gyrotonic® Master Trainer.She is currently in the Teacher Training
Program for Wild Goose Qi Gong as well as the Feldenkrais Method.
As a teacher, Gustafson cultivates healthy technique informed by
Gyrotonic and Qigong Principles. As a choreographer, Gustafson is
interested in movement that demonstrates energetic connection. Cabeen
and Gustafson have been honored to dance with one another since 1996.
Matthew Henley, MFA (Dancer) is currently a Ph.D. student in
Educational Psychology: Learning Sciences at the University of
Washington. His research focuses on the role of the body in cognition
and idea expression. He also holds an M.F.A, Dance from the UW.
Before Seattle, Matthew lived and worked in NYC. He is a former
member of Sean Curran Company and Randy James Danceworks.
Cabeen and Henley have been dancing together since 2008.
Tonya Lockyer, MFA (Dramaturg) holds an MFA from The University
of Washington with a focus on contemporary performance practices
and critical theory. As a choreographer she has toured internationally
receiving awards from Arts International, The Canada Council and
The Banff Center among others. She has created over thirty commissions
for major arts centers, universities and companies and two evening-length
productions presented by On the Boards: Borderland (2001) and Consumed
(2008). Lockyer’s writing on dance is published in print journals, catalogue
essays, online, in Contact Quarterly and the book Vu du Corps: Lisa Nelson
Movement et Perception. Currently, she is on the faculty of Cornish College
of the Arts in the departments of Dance, and Humanities and Sciences.
Ms. Lockyer was recently appointed the new Executive Director of
Velocity Dance Center.
Sarah Lustbader, (Dancer) holds a BFA in Dance from Cornish
College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. Sarah is a native of Santa Fe
New Mexico, where she danced with Moving People Dance Company for
three seasons. She has had the privilege of working with many renowned
artists including Robert Battle, Donald McKayle, Corrie Befort, Deborah
Wolf, Michael Rioux, KT Niehoff, Sam Watson, and Max Stone.
Lustbader has been performing with Catherine Cabeen since 2006.
A new resident of New York City, Sarah is also dancing for JD/Dansfolk
while training to become a certified GYROTONIC® instructor.
Ella Mahler, (Understudy) is a member of Bellingham Repertory
Dance and holds a BFA from Western Washington University. She has
worked with Catherine Cabeen since 2009. Mahler has also had the
pleasure of working with choreographers Pam Kuntz, Josh Beamish,
Amelia Reeber, and Deborah Wolf. Ella is a frequent interdisciplinary
collaborator, and explores ways that movement/performance can facilitate social dialogues.
Kane Mathis (Music Composition) began his musical career at age
16 playing blues and jazz clubs in Chicago performing with legends such
as Barrelhouse Chuck and Harmonica Todd for 5 years performing
everywhere from festivals to roadhouses before going to The Lawrence
Conservatory to study Jazz and Classical guitar. Simultaneously Kane
Began making trips to The Gambia, Africa to live with a family of
hereditary musicians which he has done for the past 14 years. Kane holds
a diploma from The Tiramang Traditional music school in The Gambia
and has performed for the President of The Gambia, the American
Ambassador to The Gambia, and he has appeared on Gambian National
Radio and Television. Kane’s first album was on daily rotation on
Gambian radio. Kane is also one of the leading interpreters of Ottoman
classical music having studied at Istanbul’s I.T.U. conservatory before
beginning a 5 year apprenticeship with Oud virtuoso Münir Nurettin Beken.
Tivon Rice, MFA (Digital Media) is a PhD candidate at the University
of Washington’s Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media, and a
2011-12 Fulbright Scholar. Rice’s work critically explores representation
and communication in the context of digital technologies. Both fascinated with and wary of the speed and distances imposed by televisual media,
Rice creates systems that pair such ephemeral materials as light, video,
and sound, with tangible, physical mechanisms and forms. In these
environments, the observer/participant’s consciousness of a physical
experience confronts the normally passive function of watching televisual
media. By engaging one’s awareness of color, time, and space he creates
opportunities for dynamic, active viewing. While his practice is primarily
concerned with emerging social relationships to digital technology, Rice
draws heavily from art historical themes. In doing so, he re-examines
the conditions of surrealist and minimalist attitudes in contemporary
new-media arts. Tivon has received numerous awards including the Joan
Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, Artist Trust, and Boeing International
Fellowships, and has exhibited extensively with solo shows throughout the
northwest and group shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.
tivonrice.com
Susan Robb, MFA (Sculpture) has had solo exhibitions at Marty
Walker Gallery for CADD, in Dallas, Texas, and at the Lawrimore
Project, Volunteer Park, Platform Gallery, Consolidated Works, the Henry
Art Gallery, and Faye G Allen Center for the Visual Arts. Her work has
also been shown nationally in group exhibitions. Robb is the recipient of
the 2003 The Stranger Genius Award, and a 2002 Artist Trust Fellowship.
Chelsea Williams, (Into the Void Project Assistant & Understudy) first
worked with Catherine Cabeen & Tivon Rice in 2008 as a dancer in
their Dance & DXARTS collaboration at the University of Washington.
She has since linked up with Catherine Cabeen & Company for the
production of Into the Void. In addition to working with CCC, Chelsea
splits her time between KEXP as a DJ Assistant, Shunpike working with
the Storefronts Program, On The Boards as a regular volunteer, and
throughout Seattle collaborating with other local artists.
Connie Yun, (Lighting Designer), made her Seattle Opera debut with
Johann Strauss Jr.’s Fledermaus and has since returned to light Puccini’s
Tosca and Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro. She has also designed lighting for the
Young Artists Program’s productions of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Ravel’s Enfant et les sortilèges, Verdi’s Falstaff,
Britten’s Turn of the Screw, and Le nozze di Figaro. Other Northwest design
credits include Bad Dates at Seattle Repertory Theatre; Bizet’s Carmen,
Puccini’s Bohème, and Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma at Tacoma Opera;
Monteverdi’s Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria with Portland Opera’s Studio
Artists Program; Louis Slotin Sonata and 1984 at the Empty Space; and
Arcadia, Wild Goose Circus, and Iphigenia at Aulis at the University of
Puget Sound. Yun’s numerous national credits include Arena Stage,
Steppenwolf Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, and the
Washington, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Dallas, Arizona, and Kentucky
operas. In the 2009/10 season, she lit Verdi’s Traviata and Falstaff at
Seattle Opera, and returns this season for Massenet’s Don Quichotte.
Jay McAleer has been involved in making performance pieces for
many years, working extensively as both a technician and a designer. He
is happy to be working with Catherine Cabeen again.
Alex Harding, a graduate of the University of Washington, has been
stage managing dance for three years. She got her start on the technical
crew for dance productions for the University of Washington’s Dance
Department under Peter Bracilano and progressed to stage managing
dance performances there. She has previously worked with the Chamber
Dance Company, Seattle Dance Project and Whim W’him. She would
like to thank Catherine Cabeen for including her in this wonderful show!
Additional support for Into the Void was provided by 4 Culture.
The creation of Into the Void was made possible in part by The Joyce Theater Foundation, On the Boards and The A.W.A.R.D.
Show! 2009: Seattle grant funded by a generous contribution from The Boeing Company.
Crystallizing Space, the research and outreach phase of Into the Void conducted by Catherine Cabeen, was supported by
the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.
Additional thanks to DXARTS at the University of Washington
Catherine Cabeen and Company is an Associated Program of Shunpike
Seasonal support for OtB is provided by
This production is sponsored by
Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation
The Glenn H. Kawasaki
Foundation
Into the Void photos by Julietta Cerbantes and Phil Cabeen
ontheboards.org