I recently worked w/New York-based dance company, Palissimo, using some of my Offsets material from earlier this year.
While I finish making the final edits to the composition I contributed to this performance (will post the audio separately, soon), here are the details for the world premiere of Halt!. Special thanks go to: Pavel, for the opportunity to collaborate; Michelle, for your inspiration and voice; the students of ELS in Washington, DC, for lending their voices; Dominic, for creating the original music together and for allowing me the creative freedom to expand upon our work.
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Dance theater company Palissimo gets out of the theater and into the streets this fall with the free site-specific performance installation Halt! at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal in Manhattan.
Choreographed by Pavel Zustiak, the company artistic director and winner of a Princess Grace Award for choreography, Halt! is a performance-driving installation commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council through The September 11th Fund, and coordinated through the New York City Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program under its Arterventions initiative.
Halt! will be performed by Palissimo inside the Staten Island Ferry’s Lower Manhattan terminal from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, from October 26-30.
Amidst turnstiles and commuters, three stellar performers present a dance performance in accompaniment with a playful and compelling audiovisual component that offers an intentional contrast to the bustling energy of life in lower Manhattan. Halt! draws passers-by into a theatrical arena, reframing their daily commute and inviting them to reconnect with space, time and with each other – an exotic proposition given the virtual reality of today’s online “meeting places.” Halt! features the talents of New York dancers Gina Bashour, Lindsey Dietz Marchant and Jeffrey Jacobs, performing among and engaging with members of the moving public.
Halt!’s set design was created by longtime Palissimo collaborator Nick Vaughan, with sound design also by Zustiak, Benjamin Dauer, Christian Frederickson, Thiago Tiberio and Kevin Keller. The installation includes a “Sound Bar” of headsets that viewers can tune into multiple soundtracks to score the performance and shape how they experience the show. Halt! is an oasis of private contemplations amidst a sea of strangers connected through shared public space.
Photos © Jose Aragon, Richard Termine, Jakub Szyma, Steven Schrieber
