Moment Marigold Choreography by Jodi Melnick

BAM

Fis

herBrooklyn Academy of Music

Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board

William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board

Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board

Karen Brooks Hopkins, President

Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer

Season Sponsor

Time Warner Inc. is the BAM 2014 Next Wave Festival Sponsor Leadership support for dance at BAM provided by The Harkness Foundation for Dance Major support for dance at BAM provided by The SHS Foundation.

DATES: OCT 8—11 at 7:30pm

LOCATION: BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)

RUN TIME: 53min (no intermission)

#MOMENTMARIGOLD

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL

CHOREOGRAPHY Jodi Melnick

PERFORMERSJodi Melnick EmmaGrace Skove-Epes Maggie Thom

MUSIC Steven Reker

LIGHTING DESIGN Joe Levasseur

COSTUME DESIGN Reid Bartelme & Harriet Jung

Creation of Moment Marigold was made possible in part by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, ADI in Rockville Maryland, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

NOTES ON MOMENT MARIGOLD

Entering the studio and developing movement has always been the governing principle of my approach to dance making. I have always done this alone and then brought other dancers/

performers into the process later in the game. With Moment Marigold, the need for the aloneness, and loneliness, in the studio evaporated. It quickly became clear that this work needed the presence of both EmmaGrace and Maggie very early on in the process. I was working with ideas of the constant unfolding/unraveling of movement, of gnarled knots and images, motionless movement, pulled from a never-ending desire to create new physical sequences and sensations in the body.Within the plentitude of dance material we reference motifs from previous moments in the piece but not as an attempt to establish a thematic structure. These references are fleeting, used to rouse the work into the next phase of unraveling. The work is driven by our physical expressiveness; the body is the living, sensing, biological plant that we implement as our aesthetic material. The experience of the performer drives the work without it being about the persona. I question if that is possible. Once the work was well on its way to becoming what I thought it was going to be, it changed drastically as it meshed with the actual space, Joe’s lighting design, Steven’s score, and Reid and Harriet’s costume design. This is the nature of it—it is a living thing.

These thoughts/notes are just fragments of the palette I was pulling from while creating the work. I am not testing any model that supports or refutes a thesis —rather I engage with a continuous act of creating. —Jodi Melnick

Moment Marigold

Photo: Jodi Melnick by Stephanie Berger

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL

JODI MELNICKChoreographer

Jodi Melnick is a New York City-based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. Melnick is a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award recipient, a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, received a Jerome Robbins New Essential Works Grant (2010—11), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2011 Grants to Artists Award, and has been honored with two Bessie Awards for sustained achievement in dance (2001 and 2008). Her work has been presented at New York City Center, the Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts (NYLA), The Kitchen, La MaMa, Jacob’s Pillow, American Dance Festival, Martha’s Vineyard, OtherShore Dance Company, Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College, and George Washington University. She created a new solo for Taryn Griggs (2014 McKnight awardee), and has been presented internationally: in Kansai, Japan, for DanceBox; in Belfast, Ireland, opening the Dublin Dance Fes-tival in 2011; and in Tallinn, Estonia. In 2012, Melnick collaborated with Trisha Brown, creating and performing the solo One of Sixty Five Thousand Gestures. Melnick continues to perform and collaborate with choreographers such as Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick, Jon Kinzel, Susan Rethorst, and John Jasperse (creating Becky, Jodi, and

John). Melnick collaborated with artist Burt Barr (Fanfare, 2009), and has appeared in the video work of artists Charles Atlas and Jillian Peña. Melnick worked with Donna Uchizono (2005—08), creating and performing in a trio with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Hristoula Harakas, and danced with the Twyla Tharp Dance Company from 1991—94 and again in 2009. Melnick is immensely grateful to all of the artists she has worked with in the past, those aforementioned as well as Yoshiko Chuma, Nina Wiener, Irene Hultman, Dennis O’Connor, Tere O’Connor, David Neumann, Liz Roche, Lance Gries, Yves Musard, Patricia Hoffbauer, and Russell Dumas.

Currently, Melnick teaches technique and composition at Barnard College, NYU (Experimental Theater Wing), as a guest teacher at Sarah Lawrence Col-lege, and the Trevor Day School.

EMMAGRACE SKOVE-EPES Performer

EmmaGrace Skove-Epes is a dancer and choreographer born and raised in Brooklyn. Her work has been presented at the Current Sessions (NYC), AUNTS, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance Center, Gowanus Arts Exchange, HERE Arts Center, Irondale Center for Theater, Judson Memorial Church, Nothing Space, Paradise Theater, Performing Arts Conservatory of New Canaan, Theaterlab, Triskelion Arts, Westbeth, and the 92nd St Y. Skove-Epes was the recipient of a space grant at Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2012, and a space grant and residency at Gowanus Arts

Exchange/Spoke the Hub in 2011. Her past performance credits include Martha Bowers, Leslie Arlette Boyce, Noémie LaFrance, Sondra Loring, Meredith Monk, Susan Osberg, Aileen Passloff, Jesse Philips-Fein, Dana Salisbury, Maria Simpson, and Nadia Tykulsker/Spark(edit) Arts. Skove-Epes is pursuing her MFA in dance at Sarah Lawrence College.

MAGGIE THOM Performer

Maggie Thom was born and raised in New York City and received her BA from Wesleyan University. Thom has danced in five projects with Juliana F. May/MAYDANCE, performing at NYLA, the Chocolate Factory, University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, and Abrons Art Center. Since 2007, Thom has worked with Sara Rudner appearing in Dancing on View at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Thom has also danced with Vicky Shick at The Kitchen, mute/Me-gan Boyd and Luka Kito, Laurel Jen-kins Tentindo, Stacy Grossfield, Molly Poerstel, and participated in Sarah Maxfield’s improvisational score In and Out of Uniform. In May of 2012, Thom wrote a “Why I Dance” column for Dance magazine. Thom is an early childhood educator, teaches move-ment and yoga to students of all ages, and is currently on faculty at Plymouth Church School in Brooklyn Heights.

JOE LEVASSEUR Lighting Design

Joe Levasseur has collaborated with many dance and performance artists including John Jasperse, RoseAnne

Spradlin, Sarah Michelson, David Dorf-man, Jodi Melnick, Beth Gill, Maria Hassabi, Ishmael Houston-Jones, LeeSaar the Company, Anna Sperber, Megan Sprenger, and Christopher Williams. He has received two Bessie Awards for his design work, including one with Big Dance Theater for Comme Toujours Here I Stand. In 2009, his Drop Clock installation was featured in the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop. In 2010, he showed a collection of original paintings at PS 122. Ongoing projects include lighting work for Jenni-fer Monson, Big Dance Theater, Wendy Whelan, and Palissimo. Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Daniel Stearns joelevasseur.com

STEVEN REKER Music

Steven Reker is a Brooklyn-based musician and choreographer who founded the band People Get Ready in 2009. The group has presented their music and performance pieces at The Kitchen, NYLA, Death by Audio, Baryshnikov Arts Center, BAM, Skirball Center (LA), Glasslands Gallery, and many other venues and performing art centers in and outside of NY. He has worked as a musician-composer and/or dancer-choreographer with the artists Yoshiko Chuma, David Byrne, Robert Wilson, Bill T. Jones, Yasuko Yokoshi, Miranda July, and Annie-B Parson. Future projects include the staging of Richard Brautigan’s novella In Watermelon Sugar at The Kitchen in 2015. His new solo project MUSCLE MEMORY will be premiering in 2015 as well. He is so happy to be working with Jodi again.

Who’s Who

2014 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL

REID BARTELME & HARRIET JUNGCostume Design

Reid & Harriet Design is a clothing design studio in New York City founded by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung in 2011. They first met as classmates at the Fashion Institute of Technology and, in collaboration, they have designed costumes for choreographers Justin Peck, Marcelo Gomes, Andrea Miller, Emery Lecrone, Kyle Abraham, Mauro Bigonzetti, and Doug Varone. They have costumed productions at Ameri-can Ballet Theatre, New York City Bal-let, and BalletNext and have produced clothes for commissioned works at Fall for Dance, the Youth America Grand Prix, and Dancers Responding to AIDS. Current projects include new Justin Peck creations for Miami City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Along with Justin Peck, they are featured in the documentary Ballet 422 which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.

Special Thanks:

Heartfelt thanks to EmmaGrace and Maggie for your unwavering commitment, inspired dancing, and humor.

Thank you, Joe and Steven.

Thank you, Reid and Harriet.

Thank you to Joe Melillo and the entire staff and crew at BAM Fisher.

Thank you to Adrienne Willis, Ruth Moe, Jason Wells, and the entire staff at the American Dance Institute (ADI) for incubating this work. More heartfelt thanks to Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick, Doris Reyes, Jon Kinzel, Burt Barr, Trisha Brown, Sarah Mi-chelson, Laurie Roth, Dean Villarini, Katie Glasner, and the creative space at Barnard College.

Photo by Maggie Picard, Courtesy of ADI