Beasts and Plots

World Premiere

Beasts and Plots investigates what happens when Welliver’s figurative and nonfigurative worlds collide. Inspired by Matt Mullican’s Glen, Oskar Schlemmer’s seminars on linear figures, Rebecca Horn’s performance films and Paul Klee’s portrait works, Beasts and Plots is a semi-narrative work that explores the outline of a woman’s body, a death and the idea of a unicorn.

Apr 4 at 6:30 Come Early Conversation: Circles, Lines, Dogs with Ted Byfield (Associate Director of the Center for Transformative Media at the New School and Assistant Professor in the School of Art Media and Technology at Parsons the New School of Design)

Apr 5 Stay Late Discussion: Beasts and Plots with Kyle deCamp (performer, collaborator and creator of cross-media works, produced in NYC and abroad)

Sign up for Gwen's Shared Practice, Apr 6, 1:30-3:30pm, $15.

Concept and Direction: Gwen Welliver
Choreography and Performance: Julia Burrer, Beth Gill, Kayvon Pourazar, Stuart Singer and Gwen Welliver
Sound Composition and Live Performance: Jake Meginsky with Bill Nace
Costumes: Reid Bartelme
Lights: Tricia Toliver
Installation: Chris Hennelly
Creative Consultant: Kyle deCamp

Ford Foundation Live Gallery Installation

Selfie, 2013
Gwen Welliver
Mixed-media “selfies”

During the process of making the dance Beasts and Plots, I developed and practiced movement scores in two mediums: dance and drawing. Some of these scores I considered self portraits, in that they demanded a translation of my anatomy, gender, age or fantasies from one medium to the other. Selfie is made from sixty such works on paper.

Beasts and Plots is commissioned by New York Live Arts and made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jerome Foundation and by contributors to the Dance Theater Workshop Commissioning Fund at New York Live Arts. The creation of Beasts and Plots was also supported through a residency partnership with the Museum of Art and Design (MAD). Beasts and Plots is made possible in part with the public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.