 photo by Ian Douglas Saturday, January 20 at 2pm Part of: “What is Distance” Festival, curated by Emily Reilly. Featuring a dance / lec-dem by Catherine Galasso, a performance lecture by Research Service, and keynote by Fred Wilson Bard Graduate Center 38 West 86th Street, NYC Tickets and more information here In December 2015, Catherine Galasso presented an evening of early works by choreographer Andy de Groat, engaging with a living history of the artist that was both personal and part of a lineage of downtown performance. The evening culminated with a new work created by Galasso titled notes on de groat, a poetic meditation on the ways in which her own process, as a choreographer and visual artist, intersects and deviates from de Groat’s aesthetic, which she has been steeped in since a young age through her father, composer Michael Galasso, de Groat’s longtime collaborator. In a rare remount for the Bard Graduate Center seminar room, notes on de groat locates personal and historical distance though the ways in which these dialogues live and breathe across time, legacy, and artistic tradition. The piece was originally commissioned by Danspace Project, and will be performed by Doug LeCours, Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal, and Meg Weeks.
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 Andy De Groat — Creative Simplicity within Visual Splendor Pieces by Andy de Groat Reconstructed by Catherine Galasso
Fridays at Noon at the 92nd Street Y Friday February 6 2015 at 12 Noon tickets: $10 BUY TICKETS Featuring live renditions of: * Rope Dance Translations (1974) * Fan Dance (1978) * swan lac (1982) * stabat (1990) * Hiroshima (2004) Performed by: Rachel I. Berman, Christine Bonansea, Ritty Burchfield, Patrick Gallagher, John Gutierrez, Makram Hamdan, John Hoobyar, Anne Lewis, Kathy Ray, Sarah Sandoval, Austin Selden, Emily Smith, Satya Stainton, Julia Vickers, Connor Voss, Buck Wanner, and Emily Wassyng. We need your help to sustain this project! I've known about Andy all my life; he and my parents met when they were all on tour with Robert Wilson's company, the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in the 1970s. Afterwards, Andy and my father, composer Michael Galasso ("In The Mood For Love"), continued to collaborate, my father composing original scores for multiple pieces of Andy's, both in New York and in France. I initiated this project because I wanted to see these dances that my father and Andy collaborated on together, most of them created before I was born. There is video documentation of the more recent works, but not of the older ones. Remaking them is about me being able to see them live, but also about giving them new life and allowing others to see them as well. This is archiving through re-performance. It’s my way of passing it on to a younger generation, in an effort to keep this dance history alive. Andy de Groat was born in 1947 in the United States into a family of Dutch, Italian, French, German and English origins. Whilst studying at the New York School of Fine Art in 1967, he met the director Robert Wilson. He joined his troupe as a dancer, then as a choreographer for all the productions from Deafman Glance in 1971, A Letter for Queen Victoria in 1974 to Einstein on the Beach in 1976, created for the Avignon Festival. In 1981, he received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation in New York for his choreographic research. He created new works in succession for red notes/cie andy de groat, including several for Jean Guizerix, Wilfride Piollet, Jean-Christophe Paré, the Choreographic Research Group of the Opera of Paris (GRCOP), the Scala in Milan, Ris et Danceries, the Ballet du Nord (Roubaix) and Wah Loo Tin Tin Co, a Montauban-based company of young performers. Today, his work totals over sixty creations that have been presented in around twenty countries and periodically goes back to questioning the repertoire and the heritage of dance. His company has worked regularly on lyrical productions since 1988, in particular on The Magic Flute (Mozart), with Robert Wilson at the Opera Bastille, Paris, The Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky), with Alfredo Arias for the Aix-en-Provence Festival of Lyric Art and at the Operas of Lyon, Gênes and Montpellier, Aida (Verdi) and Klaus Michael Grüber at the Amsterdam Opera.  Sundays on Broadway
an ongoing series created by Cathy Weis Projects Weis Acres, 537 Broadway #3 FREE November 23, 2014 at 8pm Curated by Catherine Galasso featuring work by Andy de Groat and Jim Neu A cross-generational gathering and performance event that celebrates NY performance history and the contemporary question of archiving through the re-creation of works by seminal downtown artists Andy de Groat and Jim Neu. The evening includes readings of two short scenes written Neu, a live re-performance of de Groat's Rope Dance Translations from 1974, followed by a structured improvisation between young dancers and former Andy de Groat collaborators. Jim Neu scenes performed by Jess Barbagallo, Joshua William Gelb and Keith McDermott. Andy de Groat's Rope Dance Translations performed by Rachel Berman, Christine Bonansea, Patrick Gallagher and Buck Wanner. Discussion and improvisation by former Andy de Groat collaborators (special guests to be announced.) About Sundays on Broadway: In May 2014, Cathy Weis Projects launched Sundays on Broadway, a new, ongoing series featuring performances, discos, film screenings, dinner parties and all manner of affairs on Sunday evenings. All events begin at 8pm and are free and open to the public. The series is held at WeisAcres in SoHo, New York, at 537 Broadway #3 (between Prince and Spring Streets). Photos above by Lois Greenfield and Donna Ann McAdams Make an evening-length show in an empty 4-story house? Do it in the next 3 weeks on a shoe-string budget? Bring it. The next study for Fall of the Rebel Angels will take place in a vacant four-story, wood-frame house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We're moving in with our clamp lights and our dirty sneakers. 
 I'm currently working on the remount of a Jim Neu play "The Floatones" with director Keith McDermott and a fantastic cast of downtown NYC performance-world stars: Jess Barbagallo, Joshua William Gelb, Larissa Velez-Jackson and Greg Zuccolo. We've got a work-in-progress performance coming up on March 24 at Dixon Place.
"The Floatones" is an experimental theater work in which four people form an "encounter support group” that sings about “post meaning” and being “content free” while consoling each other with idiosyncratic gestures and atonal harmonies. The play was written by the late downtown theater legend Jim Neu and premiered in 1995 at La MaMa's The Club starring Neu, Keith McDermott, Bill Rice and Mary Shultz. Catherine Galasso offers a fresh take on "The Floatones" in collaboration with a new generation of downtown performers. Keith McDermott (a director of Jim's plays for 15 years and a member of the original Floatones’ cast) is co-director and dramaturg. Galasso and McDermott will open the night with an excerpt from Neu's "Immediality." On The Cutting Edge of Legitimate: Works by Jim Neu Program includes: The Floatones ( Jess Barbagallo, Joshua William Gelb, Larissa Velez-Jackson and Greg Zuccolo ) Immediality ( Kristine Haruna Lee and Keith McDermott ) March 24, 2014 7:30pm Dixon Place 161 Chrystie Street New York, NY 10002 BUY TICKETS HERE  Fan Dance at the Centre Pompidou 1981, by Colette Masson Andy de Groat's Fan Dance was originally choreographed in 1978 for St Mark's Church and featured an original score by my father, Michael Galasso. I have had the pleasure of coordinating and running rehearsals for this 5-minute gem of a piece over the past few weeks, thanks to an invitation from a young curator, Benjamin Kimitch.
Andy de Groat's Fan Dance (1978) Fridays at Noon at 92nd Street Y FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22 AT NOON Lexington Avenue at 92nd St | Buttenwieser Hall, 2nd Floor Tickets: $5 Purchase in advance here Andy de Groat's Fan Dance from 1978, with music by Michael Galasso, will be re-performed by a multi-generational cast including some of the original cast members. The program, curated by Benjamin Kimitch, includes works by Maggie Bennett and Molly Poerstel. Total run time: 40 minutes Performers: Paisid Aramphongphan, Racy Brand, Ritty Burchfield*, Rosalie Elkinton, Edith Freyer, Patrick Gallagher, Olsi Gjeci, Makram Hamdan**, Kathy Ray*, Satya Stainton, Julia Vickers, Buck Wanner Rehearsal director: Catherine Galasso Rehearsal space donated by Abrons Art Center *original cast, Fan Dance 1978 at St. Mark's Church **member of Andy de Groat's company Red Notes from 1991-1995 |
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