Jan 25, 2016

Quicksand furthers Robert Ashley’s distinct and innovative investigation of the American language in a musical setting. Using his signature blend of speech and song, it tells the story of a composer who has been coerced by a Government Agency (the “Company”) to serve as a low-level “courier” (or spy). Traveling with his wife to an unnamed South Asian country run by a military dictatorship, he becomes involved with plans to overthrow the government through his close friendship with two tour guides. With the assistance of four American mercenaries, the composer participates in the capture and imprisonment of the country’s leaders, and the destruction of the torture operation by which the dictatorship has maintained its power. The novel Quicksand was published by Burning Books in 2011, an... Read On

Jan 4, 2016

Big Dance Theater has had a profound impact on the New York performing arts scene since its establishment in 1991, challenging the boundaries of the form and pioneering a new level of hybridity. Co-Artistic Directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar have used the medium of dance to explore the relations between the various art forms, referring to histories of performance, film, literature, and music. Rather than accepting the limitations implicit in the categories of dance and theater, the company has instead chosen to embrace both, feeling out a style that is simultaneously highly-choreographed drama and theatricalized dance. To watch a Big Dance performance is to enter a dream-like world in which seemingly disparate languages, sounds, costumes, sets, and motions are interwoven in an intr... Read On

Dec 18, 2015

Please consider making a contribution here today to make innovative programs possible at The Kitchen as we celebrate our 45th anniversary. And view artists' projects below that your support made possible in 2015! Dear Friends,  As artists give a new shape to art, so it is that we try at The Kitchen to give new shape to an organization that might house it--and in a city and time vastly changed from our beginnings in a Soho loft. In fact, time and again we hand our entire building over to artists, from Ralph Lemon and Chantal Akerman to Trajal Harrell and Tina Satter. And often our entire team, from curators and technicians to the box office, is involved in dialogues with artists attempting to develop a new chapter not only for their own work, but also for the ways in which th... Read On

Dec 15, 2015

Harold Budd took a moment in the airport on the way to New York to speak with Assistant Curator and Archive Manager Katy Dammers about his performance tonight as part of our Synth Nights series. Tonight Budd’s performance with Jane Maru and Bradford Ellis draws on poems from a new volume titled Aurora’s Tears that will be released by Heavenly Monkey Press in February 2016. Katy Dammers: Much of the poetry in the show comes from Aurora’s Tears to be published by Heavenly Monkey Press. What themes are you exploring in that book?Harold Budd: I spent the last year and a half as an invalid because I had broken my hip and my ribs in an auto accident. So writing was my only outlet. I started getting in a dream state and began writing again. It started out very simply: I was going to m... Read On

Dec 10, 2015

Sophia Cleary and Samara Davis, creators of Penis, spoke with Curatorial Fellow Alessandra Gomez in anticipation of their upcoming performance as part of Synth Nights featuring Champagne Jerry, Tami Tamaki, and Penis. Alessandra: Can you provide a brief summary describing the creation of Penis? Penis: The day after I got some bad news, Sophia came over and spent the day with me. We watched the Punk Singer and decided we wanted to start a band. The idea was kind of a joke—we didn’t know how to play any instruments and weren’t sure if we’d ever actually follow-through with it. Our friend, Neal Medlyn, suggested we call the band “Fecal Penis.” It somehow didn’t feel right, but at the suggestion of our best friend Joseph Teeling, we dropped the “Fecal” and became “Penis.” We operated a... Read On