NEW YORK: Roulette Presents: Composer/Choreographer Series Feat: Erica Mott, Ryan Ingebritsen, Jessica Ray, Matt Mehlan, Cassie & Danny Tunick (March 22, 23 & 24)

by Lucy Walters
(Brooklyn, New York)

What: Composer/Choreographer Series, part of DANCERoulette
When: March 22, 23 & 24, all performances at 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15/10
Info: www.roulette.org / 917.267.0368

Brooklyn, NY: Roulette presents the “Composers/Choreographer” Series, part of the acclaimed DANCERoulette. The series is designed to highlight uniquely talented artists collaborating within movement, sound, spatial design, visual cacophony, choreography, improvisation, ephemerality, and theatrical re-imagining. Performances will run from March 22 - 24th. Full program below.

Friday, March 22, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
Composer: Ryan Ingebritsen
Choreographer: Erica Mott

Victory Project
The Victory Project is an interactive duet installation between composer/electronic musician, Ryan Ingebritsen and performance/dance artist, Erica Mott. Victory Project presents a series of trans-disciplinary performances that incorporate interactive image, sound, text, movement and sculptural objects to dismantle allegories that confuse and conflate patriotism and perversity. Beginning with the inquiry into whether or not the concept of ‘victory’ is a gendered notion, the performances examine the female body as tool, symbol, bounty, and weapon during and post conflict.

Structurally the performance cultivates an interdependency between movement and sound, allowing the body to become musical instrument both dictating musical composition and moving in ways to serve the sonic score. The touring version of the Victory Project features choreography, object design and performance by Mott, sound composition and performance by Ingebritsen, interactive video design by John Boesche, light design by Todd Clark, and dramaturgy by Ginger Farley.

Saturday, March 23, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
Composer: Matt Mehlan
Choreographer: Jessica Ray

Re|preez
Re|preez, a new collaboration between Matt Mehlan & Jessica Ray exploits the disintegration of source material in recorded and live mediums. In this new project, the audience experiences a clear visual form mutate in time with live video transforming and presenting multiple viewing of the event, while the audience sees the same event from a radically different perspective. Jessica and Matt are joined by long-time collaborators Jessica Cook (performance) and Megan Byrne (lighting/production).

Jessica Ray is a Detroit/Brooklyn-based dance artist. Her work, whether as a dancer, a collaborator, or a choreographer is heavily influenced by a long standing improvisational practice. Her work and collaborations have been seen at Movement Research events, the Chocolate Factory, the Flea Theater, Food for Thought at Danspace Project, Roulette Intermedium, Rooftop Dance, and Pieter PASD. In April 2012 she was a participating artist in the first annual Bitch
Creek artist residency with fellow artists Megan Byrne, Liliana Dirks-Goodman and Laurie Berg. Jessica has been a moderator for Dance Conversations at the Flea, and was a member of The Adventure, part of Danspace Project’s Platform 2010 curated by Trajal Harrell. She has performed in the work of Nina Winthrop, Megan Byrne, Elizabeth Ward, Renée Archibald, Charlotte Gibbons, Linsey Bostwick, and Christopher Williams. She has taught improvisation at Bill Young's 100 Grand, Movement Research, CLASSCLASSCLASS, Yale's Graduate Student Organization, and Wayne State University, and holds an MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Matthew Mehlan is a musician, songwriter, composer, and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Chicago, he studied Technology in Music and Related Arts at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. Since 2003 he has been performing and recording with his band Skeletons, “…one of the few contemporary bands who can legitimately be called ‘original’.”(Xlr8r). Skeletons have toured the world and released albums on Shinkoyo (the art and music group Matthew co-founded), Ghostly International, Tomlab, Sockets, and Crammed Discs. Matt has collaborated with hip hop group Nine 11 Thesaurus on their album “Ground Zero Generals,” the international “supergroup” Congotronics Vs. Rockers (with members of Konono No. 1, Kasai Allstars, Deerhoof, Wildbirds and Peacdrums, and Juana Molina), and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra – which premiered his piece “Canvas” earlier this year.

Sunday, March 24, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
Composer: Danny Tunick
Choreographer: Cassie Terman

The 13th hour of the 26th day
In this ferocious and delicately imagined work, the duo torques the spare and essential into an unusually orchestrated physical/musical dialogue. A visually surreal travelogue of the ordinary in which physical gestures evolve into soundscapes and altered states of speech; improvisation is used to unexpected effect. Created and performed by Cassie Tunick and Danny Tunick.

Cassie Tunick is a performer, writer, and teacher. Her physical improvisations and solo shows have been seen on stages from San Francisco to New York and in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Theatrical collaborators have included the darkly imagistic Butoh troupe inkBoat, the experimental music-theater group Reflex Ensemble, and video artist David Finkelstein. Currently she performs with the Action Theater group Second Nature and is a member of Company SoGoNo. She has danced for Tracey Rhoades’ Exploding Roses, played keyboards with The Mad Scene, danced the title role in the Eric Kozial film The Duchess, and now performs vocally with the band Barbez. In New York her work has been presented at Triskelion Arts, Danspace at St. Mark’s Church, Ontological Theater, 3LD, Brooklyn Museum, Irondale Center, Dixon Place, Movement Research, and Symphony Space. She is a Senior Teacher of Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater, devoting herself to the study and development of Action Theater for the last 25 years. She holds an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa Institute and has recently finished editing a book on improvisation by Ruth Zaporah (soon to be published). She is inspired by the Brothers Quay, Israel Galván, Chernobyl, and Mihály Víg.

Danny Tunick is a veteran of an extreme array of different musical scenes in New York City and beyond. From many varieties of rock (such as Dan Kaufman’s Euro-literary-underground band Barbez, punk rock founding father Jowe Head’s band, Rebecca Moore’s haunting and fragile group Prevention of Blindness, New Zealand cult legends The Clean) to classical (he has conducted music by Pierre Boulez, Charles Wuorinen, and Zs founder Sam Hillmer, among others), to an array of music that falls between any convenient category (extreme minimalist Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings, downtown luminary Elliott Sharp’s Orchestra Carbon, the thuggish sludgish noise of Lydsod, the pagan Civil War rituals of Flaming Fire, David First’s drone-expansion unit The Western Enisphere), he has attempted to navigate around and through innumerable other musical obstacles. He has worked closely with many dancers and dance companies, including Juliette Mapp and Armitage Gone! Dance, and the theater directors John Jesurun and Rinde Eckert. He is resident composer for Tanya Calamoneri’s Company SoGoNo. His performances can be heard on over 30 record labels, including Tzadik, CRI, Opus One, Siltbreeze, EMI, New Albion, Capstone, Merge, RCA, Wiiija, Important, Mutable Music, Bridge, Happy Squid, Cantaloupe, Red Toucan, Spaced, Black Box, Rare Book Room, and Rock Against Rock.

About Roulette
Roulette – one of New York City’s premiere venues for experimental music for over 33 years - has reopened bigger and better than ever. Located in a newly renovated 1920s Art Deco concert hall in Downtown Brooklyn, the new Roulette features two levels of seating for up to 400 people (600 standing), an expanded multi-channel sound system, projection screen for film and multi-media events, state-of-the-art lighting system, modular stage, and a specially designed floor to accommodate dance. Teamed with bold new programming, the new Roulette promises to be one of the most exciting places in New York City - if not the country - to experience adventurous music and art.

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