Tom Pearson will perform his contemporary dance solo, Ceremony, which originally premiered in 2003, as part of this year's Thunderbird American Indian Dancers Concert and Powwow at Theater for the New City.
In addition to Ceremony, which deals with issues of identity, inheritance and reclamation, Pearson also performs in several of the traditional works on the program including a special Hoop Dance duet with Donna Ahmadi.
For more information on the full program, or for tickets, contact information, and directions click through to Theater for the New City.
PLEASE NOTE: Ceremony will only be performed on the evening programs, not the 3pm Children's Matinees. See dates, times, and ticket prices below.
More About Ceremony:
Describing the work in 2003, The New Yorker wrote: "In 'Ceremony,' the evening's standout piece, Pearson (who is part Cherokee and Muskogee) grapples with his Native American heritage. Emerging from an over-sized dream catcher, he twists abruptly, responds to the chants of a drum circle, hinges backward to the ground, and finally returns to his dream catcher sanctuary, where family photographs rain down on him." Additionally, Tobi Tobias praised the work in The Village Voice, describing it as "...a brief, ritualistic solo that combined a rapt mood with movement suggesting a fierce form of martial art." For more on Ceremony and the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers concert this month, read Eva Yaa Asantewaa's current interview with Tom Pearson on InfiniteBody.
Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue
(between 9th and 10th Streets)
New York
Friday - Sunday, January 29 - February 7, 2010
Friday - Saturday at 8pm
All Tickets $10 Adults
Children's Matinees Saturday & Sunday at 3pm
$1 Children Under 12
(Must be accompanied by paying adult)
NOTE: Ceremony will only be performed on the evening programs, not the 3pm Children's Matinees.
Video Trailer of Ceremony as performed in 2005:
January 7-10, 2009:
Tom Pearson & Zach Morris/Third Rail Projects will show two works at Dance New Amsterdam and the Skirball Center for APAP 2010.
Jan. 7: Anthem at Dance New Amsterdam: "the dance equivalent of a peaceful, ruminative discussion with a few close friends, drinks in hand" – Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times
Pictured: Tom Pearson; Photo by Paula Lobo
Thursday, January 7, 2010; 9:10pm-9:30pm
Excerpt from Anthem, a new work by Tom Pearson & Zach Morris
at Dance New Amsterdam
280 Broadway, 2nd Floor (entrance on Chambers)
More info: dnadance.org
Performances are FREE (see details below).
Anthem, by Tom Pearson and Zach Morris, is a new evening-length work-in-progress that grapples with love for the myth of modern America, from encounters with 1950’s nostalgia, Ponderosa steakhouses, Al Green, Miller High Life, heartbreak, arena rock, and that general Niagara Falls, broke-down-honeymoon feel.
The DNA showcases are free and are open to all 2010 APAP Conference attendees and exhibitors. The showcases are also open to the general public on a limited seating basis. No reservations are required but a check-in will be required at the front door. For any questions please email apap@dnadance.org
(Full program is 8:30 - 10:30 and also features showcases by Nora Chipaumire/ Souleymane Badolo/ Obo Addy, Julian Barnett Project, Alexandra Beller/Dances, Laura Peterson Choreography, and Witness Relocation)
Jan. 9-10: Undercurrents & Exchange
at the Skirball Center: "... illuminat[es] the interpersonal relationships often neglected or ignored amid our hurried daily routine." - Leah Taylor, Flavorpill
Marissa Nielsen-Pincus; photo courtesy of Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation
Saturday, Jan. 9th at 9pm
Sunday, January 10th at 8pm Undercurrents & Exchange by Tom Pearson & Zach Morris
with Marissa Nielsen-Pincus and Tara O'Con
at Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place (at Washington Square South)
SITE: Skirball Center's Grand Staircase and Lower Lobby
More info: gothamarts.org
Morris and Pearson will present a short, site-specific work created for the Skirball Center Staircase and lobby area. It will feature excerpts and highlights from previous and upcoming public art projects created for spaces such as Lincoln Center, the South Street Seaport, the US Customs House, the World Financial Center, and various other sites in NY and Hong Kong.
Tickets are $10 for the General Public and are available Online or by phone at 212-352-3101 or 866-811-4111, or in person at the Skirball Center Box Office open Tuesday - Saturday 12-6 pm.
(The full programs feature other artists, including: Battleworks, Brian Brooks Moving Company, Helios Dance Theater, Kate Weare Company, Keigwin + Company, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, Sidra Bell Dance, The Chase Brock Experience, Yanira Castro, Pavel Zustiak, ARENA Dances, BalletX, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, CityDance Ensemble , CorbinDances, Koresh Dance Company, PARADIGM, River North Chicago, ZviDance, and more. Check listings at gothamarts.org for full schedule
. Click here for more info on this showcase & to purchase tickets
About Tom Pearson & Zach Morris "... expect the unexpected." - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
Zach Morris and Tom Pearson; photo by Paul Millman
Tom Pearson and Zach Morris (Third Rail Projects, NYC) are Bessie award-winning choreographers and multi-media artists. Their collaborations draw movement and visual vocabularies from the parameters of the subject and site, and prioritize a re-framing of dance in unexpected urban/public situations and through alternative media in an effort to reconcile and reconfigure the relevance of art in the public sphere. Productions often collide the nuance of theatrical work with the immediacy of site-specificity and place high priority on live music and original compositions.
Enter an immersive world of churning gears, mechanical monstrosities, and steam-powered cyborgs in New York’s newest haunted house. Created by contemporary performance and installation artists, the Steampunk Haunted House sprawls throughout the Abron's century-old Playhouse for a terrifying, visually stunning experience.
Tours run:
Wednesday, Oct 28th & Thursday, Oct 29th
6:00pm-9:30pm
Admission: $20 (Students $10)*
Friday, October 30th & Saturday, Oct 31st
8:00pm-11:30pm
Admission $25 (Students $10)*
*No one under 8 years old admitted
LOCATION:
Henry Street Settlement/Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), New York, NY
Steampunk: an underground style and aesthetic that is rapidly becoming one of the most popular trends in entertainment, fashion, and culture. Steampunk offers a fresh, romanticized view on technology and fashion by making it retro, usually set in an alternate, anachronistic Victorian-era.
The Steampunk Haunted House is a distinctive, fine-art and entertainment event that puts a new spin on the idea of Haunted Houses by fashioning a lush, visually stunning, fiercely designed and choreographed experience.
Utilizing the architecture of the historic Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, the Steampunk Haunted House features a maze of dense and dizzying environments that wind through the beautiful theater, backstage, and down into the cavernous and dungeon-like basement of the turn of the century building. Groups of 6-10 people are incrementally admitted into this labyrinthine environment where Zach Morris, along with fellow installation/performance artists Liz Sargent and Barry Weil terrify audiences with clockwork spiders, legions of half-man/half-machine drones, and mechanized monsters and misfits. Thorough eerie parlors, laboratories, boiler rooms, and navigating dark, narrow hallways, corridors, and caverns, the audience is met with startling, stunning terrors around every turn.
Like most attractions of it’s kind, this Is roughly a twenty-minute experience.
October 22-24, 2009: Zach Morris & Donna Ahmadi perform in Dancemopolitan at Joe's Pub
"A tender duet for Mr. Morris and Ms. Ahmadi... The Dang-it Bobbys... offer lovely riffs on bluegrass, country and folk music, one form merging into the other, and the choreographers respond as eclectically." – The New York Times
425 Lafayette Street
Thurs Oct 22 at 7:30pm
Fri Oct 23 at 8:00pm
Sat Oct 24 at 9:30pm
Third Rail artists Zach Morris and Donna Ahmadi perform their duet, Not So Bad (an excerpt from the Bessie Award-winning Vanishing Point, 2008) to music by The Dang-It Bobbys. TRP artist Tara O'Conalso performs on the program in work with Tami Stronach and Beat Boxer Adam Matta. Other artists include: Julian Barnett, Christal Brown, Dixie FunLee Shulman, Dorian Nushkind-Oder, Negative 30 Dance, Christina Noel Reaves, Mary Suk, and Amy Larimer.
August 11, 2009 at 7pm:
Tom Pearson & Zach Morris
with Kris Bauman & The Dang-It Bobbys
Live at The Gantries will present excerpts from Tom Pearson & Zach Morris's Bessie Award-winning work Vanishing Point(2008), featuring original music by Kris Bauman, played live by The Dang-It Bobbys on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 7pm as part of their summer performance series in Queens. _"the dance equivalent of a peaceful, ruminative discussion with a few close
__friends, drinks in hand" – Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times
Queens, NY – The Live at the Gantries summer performance series returns with a celebrated and diverse roster including Bessie-awarded site-specific choreographers Zach Morris and Tom Pearson of Third Rail Projects and legendary street brass marchers, the Hungry March Band.
For the second straight year East River oasis Gantry Plaza State Park will host 10 free performances. The series kicks-off Sunday, June 14th with the Hungry March Band then returns on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. from June 23rd through August 26. The rich array of performers ranges from the rhythmic Latin jazz of Afrodita to the eclectic drama of Chinese Theatre Works. Read the Press Release.
A Program of New York State Parks, Queens Theatre in the Park and Queens Council on the Arts, Sponsored by Rockrose Development Corp. With support from Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, O’Connor Capital Partners, Con Edison
May & June, 2009:
Tom Pearson, Louis Mofsie, & Donna Ahmadi perform their newest collaboration, MESA 2.0, for La MaMa Moves Dance Festival and at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York.
See Performance Dates and Details Below
"Ideas of home, heritage, ceremony, and tradition, as seen through the eyes of some urban Indians from New York City visiting the American Southwest" – Native Peoples Magazine
Created and performed by Tom Pearson (Creek/Coharie), Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago), and Donna Ahmadi (Cherokee), this contemporary dance was borne from shared travels in the Southwest and examines what it means to be urban Indians, specifically New Yorkers. Ideas of home, ceremony, and tradition share the stage with the multiple sounds and images of three people walking together in two worlds.
Mesa 2.0 is supported, in part, by a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian 2008 Expressive Arts Award made possible by the Ford Foundation; by the Live Music for Dance Program of the American Music Center; and by Third Rail Projects, with support from individual and institutional donors.
At LaMaMa E.T.C.: La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival AMERICAN HYBRIDS: Mesa 2.0 by Tom Pearson, Louis Mofsie, & Donna Ahmadi
on a shared program with with Monstah Black & Nicholas Leichter
HIJACK/Kristen Van Loon & Arwen Wilder May 22-23 (Fri & Sat) at 10pm;
May 24 (Sun) at 5:30pm The Club at La MaMa
4A East 4th St. NY, NY 10003 Tickets $15/$10 Seniors & Students Purchase tickets online
Box Office:212.475.7710
Or visit LaMaMa's website for tickets and further information on festival
At the National Museum of the American Indian: NMAI Dance presents Mesa 2.0
Thursday, June 4, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 2 p.m.
FREE EVENT The George Gustav Heye Center
Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House
One Bowling Green
New York, NY 10004
212-514-3700
Visit NMAI's Website
April 4, 2009:
Zach Morris & Donna Ahmadi perform in Dance Theater Workshop's Family Matters series
April 4 at 2pm; Kids Free/Adults $20
at Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street (between 7th & 8th Aves)
Phone: (212) 691-6500
"A tender duet for Mr. Morris and Ms. Ahmadi" – The New York Times
Join Zach Morris and Donna Ahmadi, along with Kris Bauman and Luca Benedetti of The Dang-It Bobbys for Family Matters at DTW! Telling Twisted Tales will feature Not So Bad, a duet excerpted from the Bessie Award winning Vanishing Point. Along with a line-up of other great artists, this family-friendly program, curated by Keely Garfield and Peggy Peloquin, is created for families looking to introduce their children to fun, intelligent, and provocative live performance.
Tom Pearson Florida School of the Arts Residency & Performances
Performances: Florida School of the ArtsSpring Dance Gala
April 9 & 10 at 7:30pm at the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts
Call for ticket info: Box Office: (904) 276-6750
http://www.thcenter.org
Tom Pearson will be in residency, March 22 through April 10, at the Florida School of the Arts where he will teach master classes, perform, and set work on the students for their spring concert. Accompanying Tom for the performances is composer Louis Mofsie (lead singer of the Heyna Second Sons) who will play live for Pearson's solo, Ceremony, and for Lacuna, a group work that was originally commissioned for Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in 2006.
March 6, 2009:
BAMcafé
The Dang-It Bobbys CD Release Party Friday, March 6th @ 9pmat BAMcafé
30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
"The Dang-it Bobbys... offer lovely riffs on bluegrass, country and folk music, one form merging into the other, and the choreographers respond as eclectically." – The New York Times
Excerpts from the Bessie-Award winning Vanishing Point by Tom Pearson and Zach Morris (Choreography/Creation Award) and composer Kris Bauman (Composer Award) and featuring Donna Ahamdi and Tara O'Con will accompany a FREE, live, hour-and-a-half musical set by The Dang-It Bobbys (Bauman and Luca Benedetti) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as they celebrate the release of their new CD "Something in the Air."
On Monday, January 12, 2009 Tom Pearson & Zach Morris and their collaborators, will participate in New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA's) annual New York State Presenters Meeting during the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference in New York City.
New York State Presenters Network Meeting & Reception, Co-Hosted by the Presenting Program of The New York State Council on the Arts and National Museum of the American Indian.
4:30pm
(Full presenter's meeting from 3:00pm-6:00pm)
at The National Museum of the American Indian
One Bowling Green in Manhattan
** Please RSVP by January 8th **
Contact: Leanne Tintori Wells, NYSCA Presenting Program
Phone: 212-741-2227 or Email: ltwells@nysca.org.
As part of NYSCA's annual New York State Presenters Meeting, Tom Pearson, Zach Morris, and their collaborators will show excerpts from recent work, including Lacuna (2006, Lincoln Center) and Vanishing Point (2008, Danspace Project) as part of a co-presentation with NYSCA and the Museum of the American Indian.
Performance: Identity, Inheritance, and Intersection: Drawing on Culturally-Specific Experiences in Contemporary Dance Collaborations
Tom Pearson (Muscogee/Eastern Band Cherokee) discusses what it means for Native and non-Native collaborators to work together and address issues of inheritance and contemporaneity through dance, posing questions regarding cultural sensitivity, reclamation, and a furthering of form. Tom and collaborators present excerpts from his highly acclaimed works with Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago) and Donna Ahmadi (Eastern Band Cherokee) and from Vanishing Point with Zach Morris which won two 2008 Bessie Awards (for the choreographers and composer). This work has been cited specifically for its universal, yet quintessentially American contemplation of identity, legacy, and ancestry.
The excerpts will feature live music by composers Louis Mofsie and Kris Bauman, as well as performances by Tom Pearson, Zach Morris, Donna Ahmadi, Tara O'Con, and Mayuna Shimizu.
January 22-24, 2009:
TRP Affiliated Artist and collaborator Tara O'Con will present her own work at Danspace Project in January. Details below:
Danspace Project presents City/Dans Shares: Tara O'Con and Enrico D. Wey
photo by Ryutaro Mishima
CLICK HERE to listen to Eva Yaa Asantewaa's audio podcast interview with Tara at Body & Soul.
Jan 22 - 24 (Thurs-Sat) 8:30pm
Tickets available at 866-811-4111 or
https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/632305
Admission: $18.00 (members $12.00)
* Join us after the Thursday, January 22nd performance for a Rap Up discussion moderated by Sarah Maxfield.
TARA O'CON Walk It Once
Creature-like, yet quintessentially human, Carly Pansulla,Jodi Bender, and Tara O'Con move with deliberate obsession and in opposition to any logical solution that might resolve their physical predicament. With Walk It Once, O'Con uses a surreal landscape to turn conventional perceptions of the body upside down. Originally created for The Chocolate Factory Theater's multi-layered, cement and brick space in Long Island City last June, O'Con re-imagines and expands the work to inhabit the formidable architecture of St. Mark's Church.
Walk It Once features original sound composition and design by Jason Sebastian, visual media by Brian Rogers, costumes by Mary Mckenzie, and lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann.
"...a young talent, quickly developing confidence in her physical and visual ideas and assertive vision."
– Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody
Walk It Once is made possible, in part, with funds from the 2008-2009 Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative with support from the Jerome Foundation. The first iteration of Walk It Once premiered at The Chocolate Factory as part of its 2008 Visiting Artists program. The work was developed in part through a Dance Theater Workshop Fresh Tracks Creative Residency, with funding from The Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation.
Third Rail Projects is thrilled to announce that Co-Director Zach Morris has been appointed as the Artistic Editor of The Drifting Encyclopedia. Zach will be charged with creating an online volume of the encyclopedia, authoring new entries, and revising and creating artistic interpretations of pre-existing articles. The Drifting Encyclopedia was originally a reference text with sporadic printings from the mid-1940's to the mid-1950's before slipping into obscurity. Zach has previously referenced volumes of The Drfiting Encyclopedia for source material on several of his previous works (the mermaid from Hope & Anchor, for example) and is, therefore, particularly excited by this opportunity. The Drifting Encyclopedia is a compendium of questionable accounts, historical and scientific fact, and and little-known anecdotes.
November 1, 2008:
Third Rail Projects receives generous Matching Gift Challenge from The Lucky Star Foundation.Click Here to learn more and help us meet the challenge by December 31st!
September 15, 2008:
Tom Pearson featured in an article in The St. Augustine Record. Click Here
September 15, 2008:
Third Rail Artists Kris Bauman, Tom Pearson and Zach Morris receive 2008 Bessie Awards in Composer and Choreographer / Creator categories for Vanishing Point at Danspace Project.
_____ _____Tom Pearson & Zach Morris at Spiegelworld on September 15th, 2008, accepting ______their award with the cast of Vanishing Point; Bessies photos by Eva Yaa Asantewaa.
We’re thrilled to announce that choreographers Tom Pearson and Zach Morris and composer Kris Bauman were the recipients of 2008 New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards for their latest work Vanishing Point at Danspace Project.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Bessies, Roslyn Sulcas writes in today's New York Times:
“The Bessies — more formally known as the New York Dance and Performance Awards — are often described as the dance world’s equivalent of the Oscars. They’re without the golden statuettes, the lucrative movie deals and Vanity Fair covers, to be sure, but nonetheless indubitable signs of recognition.”
(CLICK HERE) to read more from The New York Times article.)
____________________
__
