5. Dada Gert
Dada Gert embraces Valeska Gert’s performance aesthetic, creative genius, and historic context as a
frame for Beserra’s choreographic research around three central investigations: 1) bringing the
dynamics of intimacy, confrontation and vulnerability of solo performance to ensemble work; 2)
embracing the inherent opportunities and challenges of the maker/performer role; and 3) the generation
and development of an expressionist movement vocabulary, with a particular emphasis on the roles of
the pelvis, spine, head, hands, face and voice in expressive articulation. Embracing Gert’s process and
aesthetic, Striding Lion’s company of dance theater artists and collaborators immerse themselves in the
ordinary and ugly truths of Berlin in the 1920s– the sounds of traffic, the latest dance-hall fascination, a
prostitute on the street corner – and emerge with a performance that both entices and scolds. With
jerks and twists, contorted faces and mimetic gestures, grunts and sighs, whispered confessions and
violently sounded shrieks, Striding Lion’s multi-talented dance theater artists embody the essence of
Gert’s compositions - transforming personal, subjective experiences of the social and political moment
into raucous and provocative entertainment.
-From Press Release, May 2013
6. 2007, 2008, 2012 JENKINS FARM, MIDLAND, NC
Jenkins Farm Project
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
–Emily Dickinson, “Time and Eternity”
10. Choreographer’s
Note
Jenkins Farm Project
This performance, like the real Jenkins Farm, exists in the
liminal space between the present and the past, the real and
the imagined, the remembered and the forgotten, the
homebound and the displaced. Born of the truths and fictions
of rural North Carolina from 1923 to the present, The Jenkins
Farm Project is an incomplete canvas reflecting the
questions and contradictions that surround our perceptions of
home, family history, inclusion, and isolation. While I have
taken pains to maintain the integrity of the historical context
of the piece, it should be understood as a creative work and
not as a historical document.
11. The Real Jenkins
FarmThe Real Jenkins Farm
Anne Jenkins Arnoult, my grandmother, was born on the Jenkins family farm in 1923. By the time
she was sixteen, six more children had joined Annie Lee and her older brother Horace in the little
white house near Midland, North Carolina. All but the youngest were born in the small corner
room just off the front door, while the other children picked cotton in the back field kept expressly
for the purpose of occupying them for a full day or more when the need arose.
When the baby, Patricia, was born, the others began to move away. Horace and Bill went to war.
Annie Lee married an Air Force Pilot. Helen went to college and married a preacher. Glenn and
Jeannette were diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent away to Broughton Hospital. Joyce got a
job and moved into town.
Never having made the transition from mules to tractors, the farm began a long slow descent. The
fields that could not be sold were leased to other farmers, while those that could not be leased
were taken over by magnolia trees and underbrush. Jeannette returned to the little white house
where she was born and took care of her daddy and momma until their deaths. The population
boom occurred somewhere else, and the county refused to run a water line so far out in the
middle of nowhere. Jeannette, who now lives alone on the farm, keeps the house pristinely
painted.
12. Example Source Material for Jenkins Farm
Project
“Human Betterment League of North
Carolina”
“Human Betterment League of North
Carolina”
14. “This is not a story.”On March 6, 1836, at the end of a 13 day siege, 182 Texian and Tejano
defenders of the Alamo Mission fell at the hands of 1,500 Mexican troops
under the command of President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna,
the self-proclaimed “Napoleon of the West.” The dramatic sacrifice of
the Alamo defenders in the face of certain death and the mythic cruelties
attributed to Santa Anna inspired the famous battle cry “Remember the
Alamo.” Countless films and television series, amusement park rides and
children’s toys, graphic novels and pop-songs have taken the battle cry to
heart. Collectively these technicolor artifacts have constructed the myth and
legend of the Alamo and transformed a Roman Catholic mission into the
most popular tourist site in Texas.
175 years after the event, the image and icon of the Alamo is the new
battleground. A vibrant Alamo counter-culture spans visual, virtual, and print
media, showcasing the zombie-inspired website “Dismember the Alamo”
and the infamous last line, “Forget the Alamo,” in John Sayle’s film Lone
Star. Newspapers document the battles over how to teach the Alamo to
Texas schoolchildren, while historians and critics debate the racist binaries
implied by the pervasive good vs. bad, light-skinned vs. dark, morality tale
framing of the event. While these disagreements fester, the Daughters of the
Texas Republic are attempting to trademark the words “The Alamo,” while
allowing the roof of the building, itself, to fall into disrepair.Remember the… (Alamo) brings the American popular obsession with
the “history” and “heroes” of the legendary, 13 day siege into intimate
relief. You, the audience, construct your experience of the performance
by choosing where and how you’ll witness and engage in each
moment.
Throughout the event, you are invited to touch the sets, walk through
the
action, move close to the performers to hear what’s being whispered,
or pull
back to get a panoramic view. You are invited to experiment with
seeing
through, above, below, or behind the action.
Your viewing is what has given these icons and images their power
throughout history. Embrace your role as a meaning-maker in this
work.
Immerse yourself in the fragmented theatrical moments. Engage
yourself in
the questions that arise. Take a deep breath and suspend any
expectation of
linear narrative. This is not a story.
20. Did You See
the Gorilla?
Selective Attention
Studies by Daniel Simon &
Christopher Chabris
http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html
21. Behind Slip
This particular experiment, exploring the practice of "seeing but not seeing" and the brain business behind that
process, serves as the jumping off point for Arnoult’s playful meditation on human fallibility. Choreographed to
music by the Chicago rock band Fluid Minds, "Slip" plays with perception versus reality, with seeing and being
seen. While tossing and leaping through space in Striding Lion’s signature athletic style, the sextet of dancers
recite details of science experiments, toss basketballs, don gorilla suits and surf on doors. Each image
addresses a new question provoked by the last. How do our brains choose what to attend to and what to
ignore? How can a person disappear from sight, while still standing right in front of you? How do we miss the
obvious, not seeing the gorilla standing right in front of us and allowing ourselves to be deceived, maybe even
willingly? Following a tangential map, “Slip” moves from the science of perception to the experience of lying
and being lied to.
Created collaboratively with the dancer/performers through an organic studio process that combines Arnoult’s
movement phrases with performance material generated by the dancers through physical prompts,
compositional structures and serendipitous accidents, “Slip” responds to everyday human obsession...to the
daily battle of the ego to know and be known, to stand out, to be heard, and to avoid being forgotten.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3322642/Did-you-see-the-gorilla.html
24. ENGAGING AUDIENCE MEMBERS FROM THE MOMENT THEY BEGIN
THEIR JOURNEY TO THE THEATER THROUGH AN INTERACTIVE APP
THAT TRACES THE SAGA OF A DIFFERENT, ROUTE-SPECIFIC
SUBSET OF CHARACTERS THROUGH SHORT 2:30-3 MINUTE DANCE
ON CAMERA PIECES, THE EVENING LENGTH AMERICAN ME
FOCUSES STRIDING LION’S SIGNATURE THEATRICALITY AND
ATHLETICISM ON THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF "I" VERSUS "WE,"
IN PARTICULARLY AMERICAN TERMS. CONCEIVED BY ANNIE
ARNOULT IN COLLABORATION WITH NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR ELI FINKEL, THIS ROMP THROUGH THE
ANNALS OF AMERICAN IDENTITY LOOKS AT THE SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY OF “I” VERSUS “WE” WITH HUMOR, POIGNANCY,
AND WIT.
