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The Philippa Kaye Company presents its 2005 season at the Merce Cunningham Studio with an evening worthy of the space's rich history of innovative dance and technological invention. The company's second annual program includes three dances: two premieres, Surface and Case of You Still, and an update of last year's meditation-Ritual for a Non-repeating Universe (Again), all choreographed by Philippa Kaye. All three are highly nuanced works, enhanced by various media-from digital projections to crayon-scribbled plastic panels.

Mesmerizing, bizarre, and ultimately joyful, Surface considers the infinite complications that arise the closer one looks : the permeability and turbulence which comprise our boundaries. Dancers Megan Boyd, Lindsay Forsythe, and Philippa Kaye slide across a landscape of fabric and video-created by Daniel Vatsky, to the groovy textures of jazz trio, Medeski Martin & Wood. Initially the scene is as clearly defined as a Russian Constructivist image, however, the connections made rapidly tangle into Gordian puzzles.

In the program's only solo, Case of You Still, Philippa Kaye performs a bittersweet love dance to the Joni Mitchell song "Case of You."

In Ritual for a Non-repeating Universe (Again), an exploration of Chaos Theory and the phenomena of unpredictable systems, five dancers (Richard Ayres, Megan Boyd, Tiffany Cunningham, Philippa Kaye, and Jamie Lee Hall) pitch their sensitive bodies into the rigors of momentum, making quick and unalterable decisions as their limbs swing and fall, while a computer program designed by judsoN (Judson Wright) tracks their motion and translates it into digital animation. In occasional doomed efforts for control, the dancers attempt to orchestrate the proceedings or each other, but moments of equilibrium arrive magically when they surrender. Langdon C. Crawford uses his laptop compositions to respond to changes in the moment. The dance is highlighted by costumes by Heather Bowie.

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MAY 2006
Box office information: 212. 545. 5322

May 3rd [Wed] at 8:30 PM and May 4th [Thurs] at 8:30 PM Baryshnikov Arts Center, Studio 4A 37 Arts, 450 West 37th St.
Admission is sliding scale, pay what you will, $5-25

"Constant Hum of the Chambered Nautilus" will premiere in the acoustical clarity of the Baryshnikov Arts Center on May 3rd and 4th, 2006. This ambitious and humor-filled dance in five sections choreographed by Philippa Kaye, investigates the artifice of sound production and of listening in our culture of multiple electronic devices and sound sources. The piece brings attention to the power and sensitivity of the human instrument itself.

In one section, composer Langdon C. Crawford and four dancers play with a mysterious shell-like object that emits bizarre sounds, gradually revealed to be a theremin* (contained on a rolling set piece by architect Illya Azaroff). A separate group of dancers commutes through the first listening to i-pods, oblivious, deep in their own soundscape.

The piece is thirty-five minutes long and is performed without intermission.

"Constant Hum of the Chambered Nautilus" features Tiffany Cunningham, Langdon C. Crawford, Laurel Dugan, Lindsay Forsythe, Chelsea Glassman, Fito Guevara, Rachel Lehrer, and Dawn Poirier. Light design by Kryssy Wright and costume design by Renee Kurtz.

*One of the first electronic instruments, the theremin produces sound that can be likened to a wavering female voice. In popular culture it is known mainly as the spooky sound in 1950ies B sci-fi flicks, and for its part in the Beach Boys song "Good Vibrations". In "Constant Hum of the Chambered Nautilus", Langdon C. Crawford uses the theremin as a controller to play sounds composed with a computer.



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2007



PHILIPPA KAYE COMPANY Spring Concert with BIODANCE

Press information: 718. 399. 2317 Box office information: 212. 545. 5322

April 25th [Wed] and 26th [Thurs] at 8PM and May 1st [Tues], 2nd [Wed], and 3rd [Thurs] at 8PM

University Settlement 184 Eldridge St. (at Rivington)
Admission is sliding scale—pay what you will, $12-$25


A celebration of light and curious metamorphosis fills University Settlement’s airy Speyer Hall. The program includes new dance works by Philippa Kaye Zoo Parts and Landing Strip, Surface (2005), and in the first week, a work by out-of-town guest artist Missy Pfohl Smith.

Zoo Parts is a series of courtship dances and other interactions exploring the kinds of animals that lurk, bound, and flutter inside us. These studies are a prelude to Anthropo Morphism, an environmental piece that PKC will create in and around the exhibits of the Prospect Park Zoo in July, 2007. Zoo Parts performers are Toby Billowitz (water buffalo, squid), Azahara Ubera Beidma (domesticated cat, hummingbird, goldfish), Christopher Daftsios (baboon, pelican), Mika Lior (lion, horned owl, sea lion), and Pauliina Silvennoinen (sloth, wolf, inchworm).

Philippa Kaye performs the premiere Landing Strip, a solo that juxtaposes the absurdity and ingenuity of the human animal in regards to flying, with the absurdity and wonder of birds.

The first week’s guest artist is Missy Pfohl Smith with her six-member company, BIODANCE, based in Rochester, NY. (Smith and Kaye were grad-school buddies and have collaborated since.) In the collaborative work, Encounters, Smith and photographer Bruno Chalifour create a moving landscape of still natural images projected onto the bodies of the dancers to O'Neill Haynes’ original music for saxophone, trombone, bass, electric violin and viola. The work metaphorically explores how various plants share the same space, grow, and establish physical relationships between them, sometimes symbiotically living off each other, sometimes growing either in spite, or at the expense of each other.

The program concludes with Philippa Kaye’s mesmerizing Surface, pictured above. Dancers Lauren Engleman, Gena Mann (April 25, 26), Philippa Kaye (May 1, 2, 3), and Storme Sundberg slide across a landscape of fabric and video—created by Daniel Vatsky, to the invigorating textures of jazz trio, Medeski Martin & Wood.

About PKC Philippa Kaye Company uses scientific research and methods to create innovative multimedia dance performances celebrating the epic, wonderful, and absurd physical forces that shape human experience. Since its inception in 2003 PKC has produced six original multimedia dance works, produced three full-evening concerts, and has been presented by many New York City venues, including Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, SWEAT (DeBaun Auditorium), Dance Conversations at the Flea, , Dancenow/NYC Downtown Festival, Sarah Lawrence College, Movement Research, and Spoke the Hub.. The realities of physical science (chaos theory, the wonder of fractals, electromagnetism, sound waves) are typically at the conceptual heart of the works.

Bios

Artistic Director and Choreographer Philippa Kaye’s influences and experiences as a performer and as a choreographer have been wide-ranging. She has worked as a dancer with choreographers in San Francisco and New York, notably, Scott Wells, Sara Rudner, Laura Staton, and Pat Birch. She collaborates as a speaking actor in Democracy In America, Part I, directed by Annie Dorsen. She received a BA in Studio Art from U.C. Santa Cruz in 1992, and an MFA in Choreography from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002. Previous to PKC inception, Philippa’s dances were presented by generous organizations such as Dixon Place, Dancing in the Streets, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Smithsonian Institution, Performance Mix, The 92nd St. Y, and the D.C. International Improvisation Festival. She is a native New Yorker often mistaken for a Californian.

Daniel Vatsky is an intermedia artist, filmmaker, and film archivist. His projects range from transcontinental multi-user installations to entirely analog performances using slide projectors and found objects. Daniel is a founding member of the performance groups Screen Memory, V4, and Kijk & Luister, and is the resident video artist for The Psychasthenia Society, an ongoing monthly event for laptop stories and music. His visuals have accompanied such artists as N.E.R.D, Ken Lishi, Miss Kitten, and David Lee Myers at such places as PS122, the Apple store, The Kitchen, the new MOMA, and in many film festivals. He is also a core member of SHARE, a weekly NYC electronic jam and performance exchange.

Missy Pfohl Smith, is the Founder and Artistic Director of BIODANCE, a contemporary dance company dedicated to the creation and performance of innovative choreography, often exploring human interaction and the environment through collaboration with multimedia artists and dancers. Missy's choreography has been presented throughout New York City and state and in MA, NH, OH and VT. Recently her work has been featured in Rochester’s ImageMovementSound Festivals and ArtWalk. She has received grants for her choreography and educational dance residencies. She performed with Randy James Dance Works as a founding company member from 1993-2003, and with Paul Mosley from 1997-2004. She currently teaches in the Dance Departments at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and SUNY Brockport and has also performed and taught at various schools, universities and festivals in the United States and in Poland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia & Japan. Missy received her MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. [biodance@frontiernet.net]

Bruno Chalifour is an educator, fine-art photographer, and art critic. After working as the editor of Afterimage and teaching in the graduate program at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, he decided to go freelance, collaborate with several photography magazines internationally, teach workshops, develop several fine-art photography projects, and finalized his PhD dissertation on contemporary American landscape photography. His fine art photographs are in several private and public collections in France and the USA..