New Work for the Desert
New Work for the Desert is New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award winning choreographer Beth Gill’s upcoming performance, which will premiere this spring at New York Live Arts. This evening length, impressionistic dance abstracts the themes of ambition, journey and love within an aesthetic world inspired by Trisha Brown’s 1987 masterpiece Newark and the natural landscape of the United States’ Southwest desert.
Collaborating artists include lighting designer Thomas Dunn and longtime composer Jon Moniaci, who received a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for his work on Gill’s Electric Midwife. Gill and Dunn are transforming New York Live Arts’ theater into a reflective white box space, which shifts through saturated color fields reminiscent of the desert’s visually dramatic transformations. Moniaci’s composition, which is performed live, further activates the visceral presence of the theater through vibration and the localization of sound. Immersed in this environment, each dancer struggles differently within the rigidity of the form, to claim gestures and unlock expression.
Mar 20 at 6:30pm Come Early Conversation: New Work for the Desert and The Dances of Beth Gill moderated by Eleanor Bauer
Mar 21 Stay Late Discussion: Under the Influence of Light John Jasperse in conversation with Beth Gill
New Work for the Desert is commissioned by New York Live Arts and made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support is given by contributors to the Dance Theater Workshop Commissioning Fund at New York Live Arts.
The work was developed, in part, through residencies at Mount Tremper Arts with support from New York State DanceForce; the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with New York Live Arts; the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in partnership with The Hatchery Project funded primarily through The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and with additional funding by the National Endowment for the Arts; and a MASS Manufacturing program residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) supported in part by The Vermont Performance Lab in partnership with The Hatchery Project.
