the floatonesVideo about the project from our 2015 Kickstarter Campaign
About "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 Neu's longtime director Keith McDermott and a new generation of downtown performers, Jess Barbagallo, Joshua William Gelb, Larissa Velez-Jackson, and Greg Zuccolo. Keith McDermott made his Broadway debut as Alan Strang in “Equus” starring opposite Richard Burton. As an actor he has worked “uptown and down,” and toured the world in works directed by Robert Wilson. His novel, "Acqua Calda," was shortlisted for a Lambda Award and a Gay & Lesbian National Book Award, and an article on his Equus experience, "The Boy In Burton’s Shadow," has been optioned for film. For fifteen years, from 1995 until 2010, he directed the plays of Jim Neu. Jim Neu (1943-2010) wrote over 25 plays, which performed at Dixon Place, PS122, Danspace Project, Soho Rep, Westbeth Theater Center and La MaMa, etc. For more information visit: www.jimneu.com Cast bios
Jess Barbagallo has collaborated with Big Dance Theater, Julia May Jonas/Nellie Tinder, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, The Builders Association, Hoi Polloi, The Drunkard's Wife, Casey Llewellyn, Katherine Brook/Tele-Violet and Andrea Geyer. Jess is a founding member of Half Straddle, Red Terror Squad, and the Dyke Division of 2HC. Other credits include Man in a Case (Annie-B Parson/Paul Lazar/Mikhail Baryshnikov), House of Dance (Tina Satter/NYC Players), Fiabe Italiane (John Turturro), An Oresteia (Paul Lazar/Brian Kulick), and MilkMilkLemonade (Josh Conkel). Jess has been a guest artist/teacher at Brown, Princeton and New York University, is a 2014 New York Live Arts Context Notes Writer-in-Residence, and currently curates for the Little Theater performance series at Dixon Place. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.homoflix.wordpress.com Joshua William Gelb is a New York based performer, director, and librettist. Previously he has performed with Little Lord, Tele-Violet, Moe Yousuf & Allison Lyman, Designated Movement, among others, and has made appearances at Prelude, Other Forces, Incubator Arts, Dixon Place, Ars Nova, and several Target Margin Labs. www.joshuawilliamgelb.com. Larissa Velez-Jackson is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and multimedia artist. She has presented work at numerous NYC venues such as: Roulette, New Museum of Contemporary Art, (former) Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Fall Platform ’10, American Realness Festival ‘11 at Abrons Arts Center and Chocolate Factory Theater. In 2011, she launched a song-and-dance collaboration with her husband Jon Velez-Jackson called Yackez, "The World's Most Loveable Hip Hop Duo." Velez-Jackson was a Movement Research Artist in Residence '12-'13, a SPARC resident '13 with the LMCC and most recently an El Museo Del Barrio Artist in Residence ‘14. In 2012 she attended the danceWEB scholarship program of Impulstanz Int’l Dance Festival by way of the '12 Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. She will premiere a full-length Yackez commission in 2016. www.larissavelez.com Greg Zuccolo is a dancer who has been performing in New York and the world for the last twenty years. His early dance training started at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. He danced with the company for a year before moving to Belgium to appear in divertissements with Les Operettes Royale de Wallonie. While appearing in silver wigs and glittering baroque-esque costumes held great appeal for Zuccolo, he was soon compelled to move to New York and begin his agonizing queer-eer as a proper dance artist. Performing and collaborating with the likes of Stanley Love, Tere O’Connor, John Jasperse and Sarah Michelson, Greg eventually received the plaque and the five hundred dollars that always come with a Bessie Award. Greg soon returned to Europe, first on the “Ancient Roman Amphi-theatres Only Tour” with Baryshnikov’s White Oak and then for sustained work with Michael Laub and Remote Control Productions. Appearing in films by Ilya Chaiken, Matthew Barney and Nicholas Elliot as well as the plays of Tina Satter and Sibyl Kempson, Zuccolo continues to explore myriad ways of showing up. His own works include “Calvin Klein by Greg Zuccolo,” a collaboration with Hilary Clark, “Busy Nights,” a play decorated with dancing and “Too Much Too Soon:,” a one man whine/rant/dance illustrating Zuccolo’s experiences in the worlds of performance and art and dance. In March 2014, we presented a work-in-progress version of "The Floatones" at Dixon Place. Kristine Haruna Lee and Keith McDermott opened the night with an excerpt from Neu's "Immediality."
ALL PHOTOS BELOW BY VICTORIA SENDRA (March 24 2014) |
performancesMay 1-10 2015 at La MaMa The Club, NYC
details"The Floatones" 2015
Co-directed by: Catherine Galasso and Keith McDermott Starring: Jess Barbagallo Joshua William Gelb Larissa Velez-Jackson Greg Zuccolo development historyMarch 2014
Work-in-Progress presentation at Dixon Place April 2015 Development Residency at LMCC Governors Island |