Dancer Magazine's Managing Editor Performs Tomorrow

Wendy Garofoli | Nov 11, 2008 | 0

A still from No Where Can Be Here Now

Managing Editor Laura Diffenderfer is a multi-talented woman who wears many hats. Not only does she run the editorial department for the magazine, but she also continues to perform as a dancer. Tomorrow, she'll be performing in an experimental theater piece called "No Where Can Be Here Now" at the Chocolate Factory in New York City. Keep your eyes peeled for a first-person account of her experience later on this blog!

Read on to find out more about the show, including time, location, and the meaning behind the movement.

From the press release:

COMING SOON:
Judith M. Smith / Mile of String - No Where Can Be Here Now
November 12 - 15 Wednesday - Saturday @ 8pm. $15

No Where Can Be Here Now combines theater, dance, installation and sport, weaving together three disparate sources of inspiration: the music of free jazz composer Ornette Coleman, the building cuts of visual artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and Free Running and Parkour (which transform the urban environment into an obstacle course). Riffing on and juxtaposing Coleman's musical ideas-from his early recordings of the late '50s and early '60s, in particular-and Matta-Clark's "anarchitectural" acts, the piece frames movement and text (adapted by Smith from interviews and a range of found sources) using a dream structure or a jazz structure.

Within this loose narrative, we meet a Matta-Clark figure at the point of his most vertiginous building cuts, and a Coleman-like figure at the moment he debuts his singular, wild sound (crafted on a plastic horn, a virtual toy). The layering of No Where...'s various elements (text, dance, sport) attempts to place the forms in conversation together even as they comment on, or laugh at, what the other is playing, talking back to one another using their instruments. Indeed, the piece toys with the line between text and music, using Coleman's recordings as a language and composing a play-text as though it were music.

With Matta-Clark's architecture-based sculpture and the sport of Parkour serving as sources of inspiration, the space itself is also part of the raw material of the piece. Its adventurous movement style and visual design will incorporate both levels of The Chocolate Factory and rely heavily on light to invoke the experience of being inside a Matta-Clark building cut. No Where... seeks out a place where dramaturgical structure becomes an athletic act, generating an intense playfulness that echoes the play of ideas (both musical and architectural).

Conceived and directed by Judith M . Smith, No Where... features music by Ornette Coleman, lighting design by Jeanete Oi-Suk Yew, visual design by Keith Larson, and performances by Laura Diffenderfer, Corinne Donly, Kobun Kaluza, Diana Konopka, and Joshua Rowe. An early draft of No Where…, entitled Chasing a Line by Its Own Tale, was developed through the assistance of a six-month Mabou Mines/Suite artist residency.

For more information, go to The Chocolate Factory.

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Modern, Teacher, Enthusiast, Performance, Dancer Magazine, experimental theater (all tags)