Movement Research memorial planned for Elaine Summers

Memorial Gathering for Elaine Summers

Saturday, February 28 (6-10pm)

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Visit elainesummersdance.com for more information about Elaine's life and work.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS!

Help is particularly needed with catering staff, clean-up and set-up, and greeting attendees. Please contact info@movementresearch.org with your availability.

Elaine Summers remembered by Movement Research

from Movement Research

Elaine Summers, 1973
(photo:Philip Hipwell)

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Elaine Summers, an original member of Judson Dance Theater and longtime friend of Movement Research.

For those of you who did not know Elaine personally, here are some bits from her bio, and we hope you will discover her and continue to enjoy her spirit and art in this world.

A memorial is being planned and details will be shared as we have them.

Elaine Summers, MA, Fulbright Fellow, MIT fellow (Center for Advanced Visual Studies) received her BA in Visual Arts in Boston, MA, and came to New York City in 1952 to study dance at Julliard. She worked and lived here ever since and became one of the founders of the by now legendary workshop that would form the Judson Dance Theatre. After her groundbreaking first large-scale intermedia concert "Fantastic Gardens" (1964) she founded the Experimental Intermedia Foundation and continued to produce work both nationally and internationally with her Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co. She received numerous awards and residencies, among others at the University of Iowa. Her work is being studied worldwide and is currently being archived at the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection of Lincoln Center Public Library, with the help of NYU Department of Cinema Studies.

Summers originated the movement approach Kinetic Awareness and has continuously explored and pioneered ways of moving with a healthy body. In 1987 she founded the Kinetic Awareness Center to continue the development and research of the Kinetic Arts & Sciences, as well as train new generations of teachers.

She worked with people as diverse as Trisha Brown, Davidson Gigliotti, Nam June Paik, James Byrne, the Wooster Group, Meredith Monk, Merian Soto, Amy Greenfield, Pauline Oliveros, and many, many others.

Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in Sanarcangelo / Italy, Australia, the UK, and Vienna. Her project, Skytime, was a web-based invitation to all the world to celebrate the sky together in any relatable medium. Its first beginnings can be seen at www.skytime.org.

www.elainesummersdance.com

Celebrate with Dianne McIntyre

Dianne McIntyre (photo by Larry Coleman)

When American Dance Guild presents its Performance Festival 2012--a tribute to distinguished dance artists Elaine Summers and Dianne McIntyre--it will offer McIntyre the chance to call together a "family" reunion in celebration of the 40th anniversary of her company, Sound in Motion. McIntyre writes,

In addition to presenting Life's Force (1979), on September 6 and September 8, with twenty dancers who have worked with her from 1972-2012, she writes, she will "gather with even more people, probably in Harlem to mingle, network, catch up, have meetings between people of different generations and document stories and memories. This gathering and documentation is important to me, because there is not much available about my history and the amazing artists--dancers and other artist collaborators--I have had the chance to work with and the influence of that work on the dance scene.

"Some of the dance artists I know right now who will be involved in this celebration are (in order of the years I met them in Sounds in Motion and later) Dorian Williams-Byrd (1972), Lonnetta Gaines (1973), Mickey Davidson (1975), Cheryl Banks-Smith (1978), Alde Lewis (1976), Francine Piggott-Butler (1976), Robin Wilson (1979), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (1980), Aziza (1983), Laceine Wedderburn (1983), Kathleen Sumler (1984), Marlies Yearby (1985), Malik Lewis (1985), Charles Wallace (1986), Shireen Dickson (1996), Telly Fowler (1999), Catherine Meredith (2006), Maria Lucas (2006), Sarah Yarrington (2011), Kalila Smith (2011), Yusha-Marie Sorzano (2012)."

For complete ADG festival information, click here.

American Dance Guild Performance Festival 2012
September 6-9

Thursday, September 6 at 8pm (followed by reception)
Friday, September 7 at 8pm
Saturday, September 8 at 8pm
Sunday, September 9 at 7pm

Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater
The Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 West 55th Street (at 9th Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

American Dance Guild seeks choreographers

Call for Choreography

ADG 2012 Performance Festival

September 6-9

@ The Ailey Theater

Honoring Elaine Summers and Dianne McIntyre

After great enthusiasm and sold out performances at our Festival in 2011, the American Dance Guild (ADG) continues its mission of serving artists and audiences. For our 2012 Performance Festival, we invite applications from contemporary dance artists of diverse backgrounds, ages and aesthetics throughout the United States and internationally.

Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater is a terrific performance space (26'x35') with an audience capacity of 275. Four different programs will be presented during the festival on Thursday through Sunday, September 6-9.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: APRIL 20

Click here for information and an application.

Out of Site at Lincoln Center

As I'd already had a very long day, I didn't stay around for Hidden Forests by Elaine Summers Dance, but I enjoyed most of 60's Snapshots, the program of Sixties-referencing dances by Gus Solomons jr (Random Funny Walks), Merián Soto (What is Love?), Yoshiko Chuma (RED CARPET 1967- ) and Summers at Lincoln Center Out of Doors at the South Plaza.

Solomons's male sextet--dressed in slouchy, hooded costumes in colors that made them evoke, in a purely abstract way, the entire produce section at Whole Foods--bounced around in nifty, diverting patterns amid the park trees and walkways to the music of Frank Zappa. The performers were Bryan Campbell, Andrew Griffin, Silas Riener, Saeed Siamak, Sydney Skybetter and Nick Strafaccia--dancing fools, indeed. Kudos to Oana Botez-Ban for the costumes and to Solomons for remembering that Zappa was a mad genius. Why don't more choreographers raid that treasure house of clever, delirious music?

Soto's What is Love? continues her "dances with branches"--deep, slow, meditative explorations. Her company of collaborating dancers--Danielle Kinne, Megan Mazarick, Shavon Norris, Jumatatu Poe and Olive Prince--is now renamed Merián Soto/Performance Practice. The ensemble, dressed in iconic Sixties hippie-wear, performed atop a platform under warm lighting that gave them--and the bare tree branches they carried, tilted and balanced--a poetic, Butoh-like cast. Soto draws sensitive viewers into a peaceful grove of awareness where time stretches into infinity.

Chuma's runway retrospective--danced up and down a long, red mat--seemed too insular and self-referential to connect with the actual site in a specific, meaningful and resonant way.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors continues this weekend with more interesting shows, including two afternoon-long La Casita gatherings--"a beloved little house, a city garden where poets and bards celebrate las palabras, the words"--on Saturday, August 25 and Sunday, August 26. Hey, don't you dare forget to celebrate my birthday on Sunday! And maybe I'll see you on Monday night for the grand finale in Damrosch Park--La India!