Jul 10, 2014

This week Courtesy the Artists (Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade) will be in residence at The Kitchen rehearsing scenes and filming video for The Shoot, their contribution to our current exhibition based on Jules Dessin’s 1974 film The Rehearsal. Taking up intriguing connections between 1973 student protests at the Athens Polytechnic Institute and the 2011 Pepper Spray Incident at the University of California, Davis, the collaborative will present movement exercises, song, and collaborative scripts, in which gallery visitors are encouraged to take part. The Shoot takes place through Friday, July 11, from noon to 6pm. Katy Dammers: What was the impetus for starting Courtesy the Artists? Malik Gaines: Mainly moving to New York a couple of years ago. This was a more flexible way for u... Read On

Jul 3, 2014

Beginning this summer, The Kitchen staff will be presenting selections from our archives, much of which has remained entirely unseen for decades. Taking up subjects ranging from dance and music to exhibitions and talks, this continuing series will occasionally be accompanied by rare photographs and footage unearthed as we prepare to transfer these invaluable documents to the Getty Archive for their preservation. Please check in often to see what gems we uncover!    In 1981, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker traveled outside of Europe for the first time to study dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where the twenty-one-year-old choreographer quickly became fascinated by minimalist music and dance’s blatant rejection of narrative, the dominant choreographic st... Read On

Jun 17, 2014

This evening Jen Rosenblit participates in the season’s final Kitchen L.A.B., an appearance coming on the heels of her work a natural dance, which was presented at The Kitchen from May 29 to May 31. Performed by Addys Gonzalez, Justin Cabrillos, Effie Bowen, Hilary Clark, and Jen Rosenblit herself, the fifty-five minute piece probed the idea of the “natural” by exploring the overlay of language on bodies, a panoply of references, and the notion of autonomy within choreography. Such spatial interrogations were extended designer Sam Roeck’s set for the work, which featured a white stage ground and porch placed in the middle of the audience seating nearest the stage. KD: How would you say the porch impacted the audience’s experience of your work? JR: There’s an uneven relationship among... Read On

Apr 25, 2014

Part 2: Verb Dance K: Let’s talk about Verb Dance, the piece you did the first weekend. Can you tell me a little bit about how the verbs acted as directives for the dancers? Would you call them dancers? Or would it be performers? R: In Verb Dance we’re working with two highly skilled dancers and their initial task was to not allow movement to become dance in some way.  K: What is movement versus dance?  R: I don’t know if I know. We’re in a theater space, but we didn’t want to create the illusion that the theater commands in some ways. So through many different actions we wanted to be very literal about our presence. This is a black box was the first realization. This is a riser system, this riser system cannot be removed, and it is in fact what largely lodges the sp... Read On

Apr 25, 2014

During their exhibition Timelining, which closed on Saturday April 19, I had the opportunity to talk with Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, the artistic partnership known as Gerard & Kelly, about their work at The Kitchen. In our discussion about time, memory, and movement Brennan and Ryan explained how placing two performers in Timelining beside each other serves as a metaphor for much of their work and personal practices. (K = Katy, B = Brennan, R = Ryan) Part One: Timelining K: Can you describe the score that you worked with for Timelining? I know that you came up with it together, as a score for your own partnership. Can you talk about how it evolved to what you then gave to the various partnerships that are involved in the exhibition? R: Timelining is a performance score to... Read On