MARTHA (THE SEARCHERS)

a ballet by Julia K. Gleich created in collaboration with Elana Herzog

with a prelude performance by konverjdans

and a screening of “Onward” a film by Rachel Farmer

Fri, Oct 27 at 7:30pm Sat, Oct 27 at 7:30pm Sun, Oct 29 at 4pm

James & Martha Duffy Performance Space Mark Morris Dance Center

3 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn

presented by norte maar | produced by Jason Andrew

— THE PROGRAM —

konverjdans

(Listening) Through Walls

Choreography by Tiffany Mangulabnan in collaboration with Jordan Miller and Amy Saunder

Music by Hank Mason

Danced by Tiffany Mangulabnan, Jordan Miller, Amy Saunder

ONWARD

a film by Rachel Farmer

— Pause —

Gleich Dances

MARTHA (THE SEARCHERS)

MARTHA (THE SEARCHERS)

a ballet by Julia K. Gleich created in collaboration with Elana Herzog

lighting by

Davison Scandrett

featuring the music of Joseph Koykkar

and a selection of popular tunes from American history

danced by Michelle Buckley, Courtney Cochran, Duane Gosa,

Cassidy Hall, Cortney Key, Tiffany Mangulabnan, Jordan Miller, Amy Saunder

* * *

“It was Martha who would not quit, and she had a will that could jump

and blaze like a grass fire.” –Alan LeMay, The Searchers

“These people had a kind of courage that may be the finest gift of man: the courage of those who simply keep on and on, doing the next thing, far beyond all reasonable

endurance, seldom thinking of themselves as martyred, and never thinking of themselves as brave.”

–Alan LeMay, The Searchers

The President of the Republic of Texas in 1838, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar when a Comanche chief asked him to set a boundary on white settlement answered in frustration:

“If I could build a wall from the Red River to the Rio Grande, so high that no Indian could scale it, the white people would go crazy

trying to devise a means to get beyond it.” – S.C. Gwynne in Empire of the Summer Moon

PROGRAM NOTES ABOUT THE SEARCHERS In The Searchers (1956), John Ford created complex representations of social issues on Western frontiers. He explored interactions between whites and Indians, immigrants and Hispanics, men and women, and interethnic relations. The Searchers was made and released during the early days of the Civil Rights movement.

Ford’s film was based on a novel of the same title by Alan LeMay. The story dealt with the return of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a veteran of the Confederate army, to his brother’s farm in Texas in 1868. Living on the farm is his brother Aaron, Aaron’s wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), their three children Lucy, Ben and Debbie, and their adopted son, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who was rescued as an infant by Ethan after his parents were massacred by Indians. Soon after Ethan’s return home, he, together with Martin, joins the Texas Rangers to pursue what appear to be cattle rustlers. When they find the cattle dead, Ethan realizes that they have been lured from their homes by Comanche Indians, who are on a killing raid. When Ethan returns to his brother’s house, he finds it destroyed, Aaron, Martha, and Ben killed, and their two daughters taken captive. The search then begins for the two girls. Lucy is soon discovered: she has been raped and killed. Ethan and Martin then continue with their increasingly obsessive search for Debbie, which lasts approximately seven years. Martin soon realizes that Ethan is searching not to rescue Debbie (played by Lana Wood as a child, and Natalie Wood as an adult), but to kill her. So Pauley has to stay with Ethan in order to protect Debbie from him. He encounters resistance even from Laurie, the woman he loves. She challenges him as he’s about to embark on the last journey to “rescue” Debbie. “...fetch what home? The leavin’s of Comanche bucks…?” Captivity was commonly considered “the fate worse than death” for a woman. [spoiler alert] In the end they find Debbie, now an adult and a wife of the Comanche chief Scar (Henry Brandon). Martin rescues her before a raid on the Indian encampment, and Ethan – relenting – finally takes her back to the Jorgensen family, friends of the Edwards’s and a symbol of society and civilization on the frontier. Ethan himself disappears back into the desert. This seemingly happy ending leaves a series of questions about Ethan’s redemption. Perhaps it is hopeful. I’d like to think so. JULIA’S TAKE - From history to the novel to the film to the dance Martha's death takes place at 20:23 in John Ford’s movie. And she’s dead by Chapter 4 in the Alan LeMay novel. I find her to be a complex character with movements and gestures that are iconic to me. In Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, which premiered in 1942, fourteen years before The Searchers, the character of the Cowgirl performs one of Martha’s similar gestures. John Ford made silent films and it may be the unspoken aspects of Martha (performed by Dorothy Jordan who was a dancer), the way Ford revealed her relationship with Ethan without words, that attracted me to her.

The name Martha conjures up a grown woman, sturdy and productive. Then I think of all the Marthas in history and literature, Martha Graham, Martha Washington, Marthas in the Handmaid’s Tale (cooks), Calamity Jane (given name: Martha Jane Canary). And most of all, Martha Sherman, whose death at the hands of the Comanches in 1860 was a tipping point in the violence and inevitable genocide of the Comanches. “[Her death] was the consequence of the unprecedented invasion of Comancheria by white settlers that had taken place at the end of the 1850s.” Says S.C. Gwynne in Empire of the Summer Moon. And this is an interesting parallel with the idea of Giselle, whose somewhat naive view of the world puts her into a love triangle and into direct conflict with royalty and she dies of unrequited love yet her identity carries on in the Debbie character, Martha’s daughter, the young captive who really represents Martha, which drives the narrative (a presence in death, like the Willis from Giselle?). The ballet actually began a year ago when I was in the studio exploring the iconic death scenes in Classical Ballets with

dancer, Michelle Buckley in London. Ultimately I wanted to seek a notable female character from the American West. Next I discovered The Searchers. And then I met Elana and suddenly the imagery all came together.

So I continued my research around this movie, the West, and the captivity narratives - truth and fiction. The stories and history are so painfully complex and sometimes naive and often violent. From the identity of the Comanches, to the naive Texicans (as they called themselves) “It just so happens we be Texicans; Texican is nothing but a human man way out on a limb” (spoken by Mrs. Jorgensen), to the role of women in the so-called frontier and the harsh terrain of the land. There is so much more here to respond to creatively than I can contain in one ballet. The Gwynne book has given me tremendous insight into the history of the Comanches, giving this nation a depth I had not known previously, and making the history of Native Americans in the West much more complex than the cliché of the crying Indian Chief on the roadside. All these competing themes suddenly became for me a reflection of today - and not just in the US, because my experience with world events for the past 14 years has been through the lens of London. I guess what was clear to me is that John Ford was trying to reveal the ugliness of racism and the John Wayne character is mostly a despicable man, but also a product of violence perhaps? There is also some debate about the real person upon which the story of The Searchers is based. Is the man who would not quit James Parker (a man of questionable morality) who “rescued” Cynthia Ann Parker, or is it Britt Johnson a former slave who in 1864 searched for his own family? So the clichés of Western movies live alongside darker themes and I was intrigued by this contrast - romantic tragedy, next to (somewhat dorky) romantic comedy. Not at all what I always thought of in westerns. ABOUT THE MUSIC Martha features a mix of music. The selection reflects my intentions. At the core is a musical selection by Joseph Koykkar, a composer I have known for over 10 years and whose score, which has an American sound within it, allows for the action to be transported in and out of the pure dance realm. I’m sure many will recognize The Yellow Rose of Texas. It’s a song with a controversial origin, a perfect example of how the past gets rewritten and songs and culture are appropriated. I don’t have answers about this song, but on the one hand it is attributed to a blackface minstrel show and on the other to a Tennessee soldier pining for a mixed-race woman named Emily from Texas. And Deep in the Heart of Texas “could not be played during the Second World War on [BBC] programmes that might be heard by factory workers, who might neglect their lathes to join in the song's clapping routine.”

According to rock & roll lore, a young Buddy Holly saw The Searchers in Texas in 1956 with several of his friends, also known as The Crickets. They were so impressed by Duke’s delivery of the line “That’ll be the day” (four times in the movie) that they decided to use it as a song title. This was the first song recorded by a young Merseyside band called The Quarrymen, shortly before they changed their name to The Beatles. ABOUT THE SET Collaborating artist Elana Herzog captures the palette of the Southwest and John Ford’s cinematography. With the use of fabric remnants that suggest landscapes contrasting with the symbols of domesticity—aprons, blankets, carpets and rugs, Herzog designs a confusion of contexts, bringing the domestic into the theatre with hints of scale of vast landscape. She creates worlds in which all the identities of Martha can be viewed—all just as rough, tough, and textured as the West once was. Herzog’s fractures of fabric speak to the fracturing of Martha’s life. Texture is an important element in Herzog’s work in general and this creates the ruggedness of the scene.

Each set piece has been titled after the rock formations in Monument Valley like The Mittens, Three Sisters. The set peace John Ford Point, which is placed on the left is named after the famous spot where Ford filmed The Searchers and also references text from LeMay’s book at the moment when Martin and Amos discover the ransacked homestead where they would discover Martha’s mangled corpse: “Even at the distance he could see that the light came through a broken door, hanging skew-jawed on a single hinge.”

ABOUT GLEICH DANCES Founded in 1992 by choreographer Julia K Gleich, Gleich Dances, is most known in artistic circles for its collaborations and shared programs that merge dance, music, and the visual arts. Thriving in a subgenre of alternative spaces, The Company has performed in the UK and US including seasons and appearances at: Conway Hall, London (‘15), The Broadway Theatre, London (‘13), Roehampton University (‘10), The Place (‘06), Bonnie Bird Theatre, London (‘04, ‘05); The Brooklyn Museum (‘14), Centre for Performance Research, Brooklyn (‘11, ‘12), Dance at Socrates (‘14, ‘15, ‘16, ‘17), National Academy Museum (‘12), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville (‘11), Bushwick Starr (‘09), Fete de Danse (‘04,’05,’06,’07, ‘14), Joyce SoHo, New York (‘01, ‘03) with critical notice in The New York Times, Village Voice, New Criterion and Brooklyn Rail among others. At its core, The Company pursues the presentation of Gleich’s love of the art of dance in all its guises with her studio research on vectors and her scholarly interest in re-contextualizing ballet. (www.gleichdances.org)

ABOUT JULIA K. GLEICH (Founding Artistic Director) Julia K. Gleich is an esteemed dance and choreography teacher and scholar. She has held faculty positions at several universities in the US. Recent teaching includes positions at Trinity LABAN, London Studio Centre, Design for Dance Program collaborations for Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design. She also served as External Examiner at Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Master teacher at Hikone Dance Intensive, Japan, and Resident Choreographer at Brooklyn Ballet. Recent awards and grants include Arts Council England, Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Utah College of Fine Arts, in addition to OneDanceUK Choreographer Observership for English National Ballet. Her conceptual dance films have been exhibited in NYC, and Singapore. She is an advocate for women in ballet, producing annual CounterPointe performances in NY and London. In 2004, she co-founded Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts with curator Jason Andrew. (www.gleichdances.org)

ABOUT ELANA HERZOG (Visual Artist) Elana Herzog lives and works in New York City. She is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow. Solo and two person exhibitions include the Sharjah Art Museum, UAE, Studio 10, The Boiler (Pierogi), and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut; the Johnson Museum, Cornell University; Lmak Projects, Morgan Lehman Gallery, and PPOW Gallery in New York City, and Diverseworks in Houston, Texas. De-Warped and Un-Weft, a survey of Herzog’s work since 1993, was at the Daum Museum in Missouri in 2009. She has exhibited in many group shows in the US and internationally. Herzog has been granted residencies at the Albers Foundation, Connecticut, Søndre Green, Norway, Gertrude Contemporary, Australia, the Farpath Foundation, France, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, LMCC and Dieu Donne in New York. Awards include Anonymous Was A Woman 2009,the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award 2007, NYFA Fellowships 2007,1999, Lillian Elliot 2004, Lambent Fund 2003 and Joan Mitchell 1999. (www.elanaherzog.com)

ABOUT DAVISON SCANDRETT Davison Scandrett (Lighting Designer) is a Bessie Award-winning lighting designer based in Brooklyn. He has created lighting for works by Pam Tanowitz, Merce Cunningham, Sarah Michelson, Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, Charles Atlas, Andrew Ondrejcak, Rebecca Lazier, and the Off-Broadway productions of Mike Birbiglia’s Thank God for Jokes and Neal Brennan’s 3 Mics. Production management credits include projects with Wendy Whelan, Marina Abramovic, Benjamin Millepied, Kyle Abraham, Brian Brooks, Jennifer Monson, Steve Reich, Stephin Meritt, Shara Nova, Brooklyn Rider, So Percussion, Ensemble Singnal, BalletBoyz, Lincoln Center Festival, and the Paris Opera Ballet. He served as Director of

Production for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2008-2012 and is currently the Design and Production Consultant for the Merce Cunningham Trust. ABOUT JOSEPH KOYYKAR Joseph Koykkar is a musician who is at home in a variety of music from classical to avant-garde to rock and blues. As a composer, he has had his music performed nationally and internationally for over the past 30 years. BesidesDouble Takes and Triple Plays, his music can be heard on ten additional CDs, including an all-Koykkar release on Northeastern Records in 1992. In the past ten years three of his compositions (Out Front, Panache, and Streets and Bridges) have been in contention for a Grammy in the “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” category. He has composed for a variety of media including chamber music, orchestra, music for dance, film/video scores, and electronic/computer music. In addition to composing he is a pianist and conductor. He holds degrees from Indiana University (M.Mus.) and the University of Miami (DMA) and has received grants and awards from such sources as the Pew Charitable Trust for Music, the NEA, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, the American Music Center, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the American Composers Forum. He spent two years as a composer-in-residence with the Artists-in-Schools Program in Virginia from 1978-80 and was composer-in-residence for the NOW Festival ‘96 at Capital Universityin Columbus, OH. Dedicated to the promotion of new music by state composers, Koykkar served as the President of the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers from 1990-1993, and was instrumental in shaping the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s unique Interarts and Technology Program in the 1980’s-1990’s, acting as the coordinator from 1995-2005. As a professor at UW-Madison since 1987, he teaches courses in electroacoustic music/sound design and serves as the Music Director for the Dance Department. (www.konverjdans.com) ABOUT KONVERJDANS konverjdans is a contemporary ballet company co-founded in 2016 by artistic directors Amy Saunder, Jordan Miller and Tiffany Mangulabnan, three dancer-creators who hail from Zimbabwe, the US and the Philippines, and who come together (converge) in the name of creating art in New York City. konverjdans is dedicated to celebrating the convergence of different art forms, backgrounds, and experiences by always creating dance in collaboration with other artists - musicians, filmmakers, visual artists, and others; to always performing with live music and highlighting the importance of musical collaboration in dance; and to performing in a wide variety of spaces, making dance accessible to diverse audiences. konverjdans is fiscally sponsored by Norte Maar. (www.konverjdans.com) ABOUT HANK MASON Hank Mason is a Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, and electronic musician. He moves freely between the worlds of jazz, classical, electronic, and improvised music, in addition to working as a ballet accompanist for the Mark Morris Dance Group and American Ballet Theatre. ABOUT RACHEL FARMER Rachel Farmer has long been captivated by stories of her ancestors—both her Mormon pioneer ancestors and her pioneering queer ancestors. She is a Brooklyn-based artist who hails originally from Provo, Utah; with a stop in between to earn an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She works in a variety of media, with her current series incorporating hand-built ceramic sculpture, photography and video. She was awarded a 2013–14 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, that culminated in a solo exhibition, “Ancestors“. Group exhibitions include “Beyond the Bed Covers” curated by Laura-Petrovich-Cheney (A.I.R. Gallery, NY), “Torn and Fired: new work in collage and clay” curated by Jason Andrew (Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn), “Illegitimate and Herstorical,” curated by Emily Roysdon (A.I.R. Gallery, NY), “#throwbackthursday / #flashbackfriday,” juried by Scott Chasse and Hrag Vartanian (Calico, NY), and “Land + Place + Performance,” curated by Laura Allred Hurtado (Granary Art Center, UT). Her work is included in the Feminist Art Base (digital archive, Brooklyn Museum) and she was a resident artist, through the Artist Studios Program, at the Museum of Arts & Design (2016). Her first solo museum project, an installation titled “Ancestors Traversing Quilts”, debuted at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, summer 2017. (www.rachelfarmer.com)

PERFORMERS MICHELLE BUCKLEY hails from Fredericksburg, Virginia, where she studied under the mentorship of Lisa Avery as well as with the School of the Richmond Ballet. She then moved to London to attend London Studio Centre where she completed her BA Honours, touring with the graduate ballet company, Images of Dance, in works choreographed by Harold King, Renato Peroni and Arthur Pita. It was during this time Michelle first started working with Julia Gleich of Gleich Dances and the Norte Maar arts organization; since 2007 she has enjoyed performing with Gleich in New York and London in leading roles for such works as Speak Easy Secrets, In The Use of Others…, and The Brodmann Areas. In 2014, she began dancing for Symeon Kyriakopoulos and his company the Crossword Ballet, which fuses martial arts with classical ballet; this has helped her obtain skills in weaponry. Holding film credits, costume commissions, and previously modeling in London Fashion Week, Michelle has also had the opportunity to sing in productions under the direction of Peter Knapp and his orchestra. This past Summer she toured to Moscow, Singapore and London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre in Voices of the Amazon, the latest production from Sisters Grimm with choreography by Helen Pickett and narration provided by Jeremy Irons. Michelle is thrilled to return to the States to join Gleich Dances and Norte Maar once again for the premiere of Martha. COURTNEY COCHRAN was born in Sacramento, California and began her dance career at the age of 5. She spent her early ballet training at Deane Dance Center and was a member of their pre-professional company Crockett Deane Ballet. With CDB, she was chosen as an emerging choreographer at Regional Dance America's festival. Courtney attended Dominican University of California as part of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Bachelor of Fine Arts Program. She then went on to spend two years in Dance Theatre of Harlem's Professional Training Program under the direction of Robert Garland. Courtney has been a company member with Brooklyn Ballet since 2015 and is currently pursuing choreography. DUANE GOSA, a Chicago native, received his BFA in Dance from The University of Akron in 2008. Upon graduation, Duane moved to New York City to join the contemporary dance company, Jennifer Muller/The Works. Here he had the opportunity perform many lead roles with the company, teach master classes and assist with reconstructing Jennifer’s works across the US, Brazil, China, and Mexico. Since moving to NYC, Duane has had the pleasure of working with dance artists and companies of all disciplines. Most significantly as a dancer in New York City Opera’s production of Esther at Lincoln Center, as a cast member in the the Taiwanese tour of Tim Rice and Elton John’s Broadway musical AIDA, and with the contemporary cabaret company, The Love Show, in a host of nightlife events and theatrical productions including their seasonal production of Nutcracker: Rated R which recently toured to Tokyo. Duane first danced for Julia Gleich in the summer of 2013. Subsequently, that same year he joined Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo and is still performing with them across the globe. CASSIDY HALL began her training at Pioneer Valley Ballet in Northampton, Massachusetts with Thomas Vacanti and Maryanne Kodzis. She attended summer courses at American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, School of American Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet on scholarship. She continued her training at the School of American Ballet before joining Pennsylvania Ballet II, where she performed in works by Balanchine, Wheeldon, Petipa and Neenan. Cassidy now dances for The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Norte Maar and freelance companies across New York City. She will also be attending Columbia University in the spring of 2018. CORTNEY KEY is a native of Charlotte, NC. She studied under the instruction of Susan Thorsland and Kim Hotchner at The Northwest School of the Performing Arts middle and high school. Ms. Key graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with an Arts Certificate in contemporary dance performance. While at UNCSA, she had the honor of apprenticing with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and FrancescaHarper project. Ms. Key has also had the privilege of performing choreography by Janet Wong, Antonio Brown of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Thang Dao Danse Theater, George Faison, Alfred Gallman, David Robertson and Juel D. Lane of Camille A. Brown & Dancers. She had the pleasure of working with Arthur Mitchell for his legacy celebration at Columbia University earlier this month. Ms. Key is looking forward to what the future will bring and thanks her loved ones and educators for their infinite support.

TIFFANY MANGULABNAN was born in Manila, Philippines. She studied ballet mainly at the Philippine Ballet Theatre Conservatoire, and performed with the Philippine Ballet Theatre for several years. She was a Principal Dancer with the company from 2010-2012, dancing the lead roles in ballets like 'Swan Lake' and others. In 2012 she moved to New York City and danced as a soloist with BalletNext for four years. She has been freelancing in New York since 2016, dancing as part of companies such as Emery LeCrone DANCE, Gleich Dances, Claudia Schreier & Company, Pigeonwing Dance, Terra Firma Dance Theatre, and Brookoff Dance Repertory Ensemble. In 2016 she co-founded the contemporary ballet company konverjdans with her co-directors Amy Saunder and Jordan Miller. JORDAN MILLER moved to New York to study at the School of American Ballet in 2011. She joined the New York City Ballet two years later, and performed as an apprentice for several seasons. As a freelance dancer, Jordan has danced professionally with renowned companies such as The Pennsylvania Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, The Ashley Bouder Project, Claudia Schreier & Company, BalletNext, Gleich Dances and Brookoff Dance Repertory Ensemble. In 2016, Jordan co-founded konverjdans, a contemporary ballet company that celebrates the convergence of different backgrounds and experiences by creating work in collaboration with artists from both musical and visual realms. AMY SAUNDER was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and moved to the United States when she was eleven years old. She trained at North Carolina School of the Arts under the tutelage of Ethan Stiefel, and continued her dance training at Charlotte Ballet and Richmond Ballet. Amy has danced professionally with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Eugene Ballet, Ballet Next, Ballet NY, Eglevsky Ballet, and as a guest artist with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. She is currently freelancing in New York City and is the co-director of konverjdans, a contemporary ballet company based in Brooklyn.

Special thanks to:

Quentin Langley Norman Jabaut

William Redbird, Wil Cowboy at Navajo Spirit Tours, Lynn Parkerson and Brooklyn Ballet, Denver Art Museum, Chiara Favaretti, Trinity LABAN Conservatoire of Music and Dance for space donations, Saúl

Ulerio for early envisioning of the work, Larry Greenberg at Studio 10, Lise Uytterhoeven, and Kyle and Nikhil for their joy in hard work!

konverjdans would like to thank their patrons on patreon.com/konverjdans

Mark Morris Dance Center Production Team

Elise Gaugert, Operations Manager and Production Coordinator Bree McCormack, Production Manager Becky Nussbaum, Production Assistant

Annie Woller, Rental Program Manager and House Manager Tiffany McCue, House Manager

Norte Maar Production Team

Michelle Buckley, Costume assistance Nikhil Tahal & Kyle Fuller, Stage Hands and Front of House

Board of Norte Maar

Melissa Trasky, President Jason Andrew, Co-Founder / Director

Julia Gleich, Co-Founder Leslie Kerby

Maggie Waterhouse Junior Board: Claire Schiff

norte maar 88 Pine Street

Brooklyn www.nortemaar.org