Wednesday, April 6th, 2022 - 8pm
ISSUE Project Room presenting at Flamboyán Theater at The Clemente
107 Suffolk Street New York, NY 10002
$20 Advance / $25 at the door / $15 ISSUE Members
Wednesday, April 6th, ISSUE presents an evening of pioneering work from choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and composer David Behrman. Highlighting the artists’ work interpreted and presented by a new generation of artists, the evening features choreographer and performer Brittany Bailey performing Remembering and Disremembering Trio A (1966 - 2020), with excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me.”
The program also features David Behrman’s Open Space with Brass, performed by Ed Bear and an ensemble under the direction of Chris McIntyre. The piece was originally commissioned for the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Park Avenue Armory in December, 2011.
Remembering and Disremembering Trio A (1966 - 2020), with excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me,” is choreographed by Yvonne Rainer and performed by Brittany Bailey. Rainer choreographed Trio A in 1966, and performed it for the camera in 1978. Written for a solo performer, it incorporates no music and features a seamless flow of everyday movements like toe tapping, walking, and kneeling. In an interview with Lyn Blumenthal, Rainer describes “[It] would be about a kind of pacing where a pose is never struck [...] There would be no dramatic changes, like leaps. There was a kind of folky step that had a rhythm to it, and I worked a long time to get the syncopation out of it.” Trio A positioned Rainer as a leader among the dancers, composers, and visual artists who were involved in the Judson Dance Theater (which she co-founded in 1962), an avant-garde collaborative that ushered in an era of contemporary dance through stripped-down choreography and casual and spontaneous performances.
David Behrman’s Open Space with Brass follows in the tradition of electroacoustic sound supported throughout the history of Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The piece also refers to the antiphonal music that Giovanni Gabrieli created for the Basilica di San Marco in Venice at the turn of the 17th Century. Gabrieli’s work made such specific use of the cathedral’s acoustics that groups of brass instruments situated in opposing choir lofts could be heard with clarity at distant points. Interactive music software, originally made for the site-specific 15-channel sound system that was in use at the Park Avenue Armory, linked the acoustic and electronic elements of Open Space: a 6-piece ensemble of trumpets and trombones filling the enormous Armory Drill Hall space with live and digitally processed sound. Behrman has recently reorganized elements of this software to be more accessible for other musicians to play. Ed Bear, who returns to ISSUE after an ambitious re-staging of John Cage's Variations VII in 2016, manipulates the software, while trombonist Chris McIntyre leads an ensemble of cello (TBD), bass clarinet (Madison Greenstone), and trumpet (Alexandria Smith).
The evening will conclude with a Q&A with Yvonne Rainer, Britanny Bailey, David Behrman, and Ed Bear moderated by Chris McIntyre. They will discuss the history, transition, and legacy of their work as well as the process of teaching, learning, and presenting the pieces.
Choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer trained with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham as a dancer, and was a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962. She sought to blur the lines between performers and non-performers, and incorporated gestures and pedestrian movements, as well as classical dance steps and theatricality into her choreography. Her body of work has spanned multiple disciplines and movements including dance, film, minimalism, conceptual art, and postmodernism. In 1972, Rainer transitioned to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer and dancer from 1960 to 1975. After making seven experimental feature-length films, she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation (“After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”). Her dances and films have been seen throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia in concert halls and museum retrospectives. Her publications include “Feelings Are Facts: a Life,” "Work: 1961-73," "The Films of Yvonne Rainer," "A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts,” “Moving and Being Moved,” and “Poetry.”
Brittany Bailey has trained with Merce Cunningham as well as whirled with the dervishes of the Mevlevi Order. Bailey has performed at MoMA with Yvonne Rainer in the exhibition, Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) and in Marina Abramović’s retrospective, The Artist is Present (2010). In 2011, Bailey was a member of the Michael Clark Company for performances at the Tate Modern. Bailey currently studies at Columbia University.
David Behrman is a composer and artist active since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions for performance in concerts. Most of his pieces feature exible structures and the use of technology in personal ways; compositions rely on interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. He had a long association with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as composer and performer, created music for several of the Company’s repertory pieces, and was a member of the Company’s Music Committee during its last years. Behrman has received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, the D.A.A.D., the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Henry Cowell Foundation. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2016. Audio recordings of his works are on the XI, Lovely Music, Pogus, New World, WERGO, Black Truffle and Alga Marghen labels.
Ed Bear is an American interdisciplinary artist, musician, and engineer. Their work with robotics, sound, video, transmission, and collective improvisation recalibrates social relationships with material technology and waste. As an educator and designer committed to an equitable, open source world, they research material reuse as social practice. Bear has been awarded several competitive residences, fellowships and grants. They completed artist/technology residencies at Pioneer Works (2019), Harvest Works (2017), Signal Culture (2017), Until 11 (2016), Wave Farm (2015), LMCC Swing Space (2012), Free 103.9 AIRtime Fellow (2010) and received a Roulette Emerging Composer Commission (2008). They have shown work at various galleries and institutions internationally. Bear has toured extensively in North America and Europe as a performer and teacher, working with organizations including: The London School of Economics, IXDA, Museo Tamayo, The Mattress Factory, The Montreal Pop Festival, Moogfest, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Their music is available on Peira, Azul Discographica, Ever/Never, Roar Tapes, and several other record labels. In 2009 and 2010, Bear received NSF and other funds to study e-waste streams as educational resources, software defined radio, and novel energy harvesting, utilizing ionic polymer metal composites. As a research specialist at the Lighting Research Center (2012-2013), funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, they developed control solutions for emerging solid-state lighting systems. Until 2019, they worked with littleBits, Inc. developing gender-neutral, modular electronics for education. Bear recently founded Kin Circuits, a platform to elevate maintenance, care, repair, and reuse in the face of unsustainable consumption and alienating technologies.
Christopher McIntyre leads a varied career in music as a solo and ensemble performer, composer, and curator/producer. He performs on trombone and synthesizer in a variety of settings, from chamber music to open improvisation. Current projects include leading TILT Brass and 7X7 Trombone Band, and collaborative efforts such as UllU duo (w/ David Shively), Either/Or, and Ne(x)tworks. His playing is heard on recordings released by the Tzadik, New World, Mode, POTTR, and Non-Site labels. In his composing, McIntyre experiments with improvisative strategies, serialized rhythmic and formal cycles, and symmetrical pitch construction. He has contributed work to the repertoire of TILT, Ne(x)tworks, UllU, 7X7 Trombone Band (for choreographer Yoshiko Chuma), Flexible Orchestra, and B3+ brass trio. Beyond performing and creating music, McIntyre is also active as a curator and concert producer, with independent projects at venues including The Kitchen, Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room, and The Stone (June 2007), and as Artistic Director of the MATA Festival (07-10).
Founded in 2003, ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering nonprofit performance center, presenting projects by interdisciplinary artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue in the broader community. ISSUE serves as a leading cultural incubator, facilitating the commission and premiere of innovative new works.
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center Inc. (The Clemente) is a Puerto Rican/Latino cultural institution that has demonstrated a broad-minded cultural vision and a collaborative philosophy. While The Clemente’s mission is focused on the cultivation, presentation, and preservation of Puerto Rican and Latino culture, it is equally determined to operate in a multi-cultural and inclusive manner, housing and promoting artists and performance events that fully reflect the cultural diversity of the Lower East Side and the city as a whole.
For visitors requiring accessible access for performance, guests are invited to call Security at 646.358.7305 for assistance entering through the ground floor level via 114 Norfolk Street. There is no elevator in the building presently; plans to increase accessibility of The Clemente for everyone are in progress.