Whitney Museum of American Art: Recent pages: Performances

Performance

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:41:44 -0400

For the exhibition, the Whitney’s fourth-floor Emily Fisher Landau Galleries are being used as a dynamic, 6,000-square-foot performance space for music, dance, theater, and other events. This is the first Biennial in which nearly a full floor of the Museum has been given over to a changing season of performances, events, and residencies.

Past Performances

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:08:17 -0400

Performances/Past

Whitney Live

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:32:40 -0400

Performances/WhitneyLive

Fun, bold, and unpredictable, the Whitney Live performance series showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge artists. Performances represent new trends, reinterpret American traditions, and resonate with the Whitney’s exhibitions and permanent collection. Whitney Live is free with Museum admission.

Artist In Residence: Colin Gee

Whitney Museum of American Art — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:25:26 -0500

Performances/ArtistInResidence

Trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and Dell’Arte School of Physical Theater in California, Colin Gee creates original works for film, performance, and opera. He was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil from 2001 to 2004 and was featured in Cirque du Soleil’s 2003 production for television, Solstrum. In 2008 Whitney Live commissioned him to create and perform Objective Suspense as part of the exhibition Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933, (the piece was inspired by Calder’s Circus).

Frequently collaborating with sibling/composer Erin Gee, he provided a libretto for a short opera, SLEEP, composed by Erin, that premiered at the Zurich Opera House in 2009. The same year his essay on performance was published in the Austrian art journal, kursiv. In 2007, two screenplays, Across the Road and Lady Heard Voices were Official Selections for the Bare Bones International Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and his short film, Stardust, documenting the implosion of a Las Vegas hotel, premiered at a Brooklyn Arts Council film festival.

In 2005 Gee created the film/performance project, Dakota. Writing, directing, and performing the work, Colin shot Dakota as a film in 2005 with the collaboration of Las Vegas–based circus artists, and a staged excerpt, From Dakota, was developed with the support of the 92nd St. Y, Harkness Dance Center, and Diskurs’04 in Giesen, Germany. The piece was premiered at PS 122, played at Wexford Arts Center, Ireland, and 4020 Festival, Austria, and received the Best Male Performer award at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival. Other original film projects include the short Lady Heard Voices (2004) featuring Irene Hultman, shot in Adelsö, Sweden; and Hotel (2003), a docudrama on adolescent circus artists. Also in 2006, Portrait and Landscape premiered in New York at Dance Theater Workshop’s video/dance series Captured. Gee performed with the Irene Hultman Dance Company, 2000–2001, and was a member of The Flying Machine Theater Company, 1998–2001. This award-winning international ensemble was recognized as Best of the New York Fringe Festival in 1997, creating and touring original works including three Off Off Broadway premieres, as well as Petrushka at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Utopians, Archipelago, and The Escapist at Soho Rep and Galapagos Arts Space, where the company was in residence.

He has conducted workshops at Columbia University; Lincoln Center Directors Lab; London International School of Performing Arts; the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theater; Teatro San Gines; University of Arts and Communication, Santiago de Chile; University of Iowa; North Carolina School of the Arts; Diverseworks; Sushi Arts Space; University of California, San Diego; Televisa Studios, Mexico City; Mediated Bodies and Daghdha Dance Company, Limerick, Ireland.

History

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:50:37 -0500

Performances/History

The Whitney’s vibrant, long-standing history of performing arts can be traced to museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. She played a critical role in the experimental music circles of the 1920s, actively supporting such musical pioneers as Edgard Varèse, Carl Ruggles, and Carlos Salzedo, and their International Composers’ Guild. Her influence could still be felt when the Whitney first formally began presenting music in its galleries in the 1960s. Far from viewing these events as a departure from its fields of activity in the visual arts, the Museum embraced performance in its many iterations—including music, dance, theatre, multimedia, and other cross-genre work—as an integral part of its mandate to nurture and support American artists, and to commission and present new work. This pioneering approach was evident in the Museum’s initial series, which showcased experimental jazz composers and included performances by innovators such as Gil Evans, Jimmy Giuffre, and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

By the 1970s, the Whitney regularly held a full range of performing arts events in the second floor gallery of the Breuer Building. Performers included Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Aaron Copland, Steve Reich, John Cage, Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Meredith Monk, Terry Reilly, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and many others. Particularly memorable were the performances by Trisha Brown, whose dance troupe walked on the gallery walls, and Duke Ellington, whose final piano recital was captured in the recording Duke Ellington Live at the Whitney.

Current Performances

Whitney Museum of American Art — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:34:49 -0500

Performances/Current

Commissions by Whitney Live in collaboration with French Institute Alliance Française

Featuring composers Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, Tender Forever, and Du Yun

In conjunction with Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer, Whitney Live, the Museum’s performance program, initiated the Alice Guy Blaché Film Score Project in partnership with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF). Four vanguard women composers—duYun (Du Yun), Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, and Tender Forever (Mélanie Valera)—were commissioned to create scores for suites of Guy Blaché’s silent films. These scores were performed as live interactions with the films themselves on September 29 as part of the FIAF’s 2009 Crossing the Line festival. The scores were also recorded in a studio so that they could be presented in accompaniment with film screenings during the run of the exhibition at the Whitney.