2010 EARTH CELEBRATIONS HUDSON RIVER PAGEANT
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1:20 PM – RIVER ARIA: Performed by Abby Fischer
BIO: Equally expert at music from the Baroque era to contemporary work, mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer has performed with New York Collegium, the Rebel Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Boston Pops, American Opera Projects, and New York City Opera, and has given world premieres of music by Lee Hoiby, John Zorn, Elliot Carter, Nico Muhly, Bernard Rands, and the Bang on a Can artists, in venues from Lincoln Center to Jakarta, Indonesia. Ms. Fischer has performed opera roles including Dido(Purcell Dido and Aeneas), Cherubino(Mozart Le Nozze di Figaro), Mother Marie (Poulenc Dialogue of the Carmelites), and Sesto(Mozart La Clemenza di Tito). Visit her at abigailfischer.com.
1:30 PM – A HUDSON RIVER POEM: A Reading of Poetry Written in the Poets House Children’s Room
BIO: Michael Romanos is the Children’s Room Coordinator at Poets House, a 50,000 poetry library and literary center located in Battery Park City. He has an MFA in poetry from Columbia University.www.poetshouse.org.
MOVEMENT OF THE ESTUARY: Artistic Director: Rina Rinkewich, M.F.A www.returnofthesun.org, Music: “Water Play” composed and performed by Blake Rowe www.BlakeRowe.com, Dancers: Marie Carstens, Irene Clark, Meghan Frank, Katherine Freygang, Nada Khodlova, Mara Morris, Jessica Rogers, Rosita Roldan, Sharon Rowe
BIOS: Noyes Rhythm is a precise system of movement facilitated through the symbolic language of nature and myth. Designed to free the body and open its practitioners to the universal channels of expression and creativity, Noyes classes are offered in NYC and at Shepherd’s Nine in Portland, CT in July and August. Linda Rapuano Dirr is Director, Noyes New York School. www.noyesrhythm.org
2 PM – DANCE OF THE RIVER GRASS:
BIO: Jackie Dodd is an Earth-centered community choreographer whose work spans dance, ecology, and community building; she currently performs with Dana Salisbury and the No-See-Ums.backyardcampsite.wordpress.com Kristen Mangione has danced with Bill T. Jones, Nancy Zendora and Chris Ferrisas well as in her own choreography on stage, in public spaces and for the camera.www.kmandco.com Johanna Schwarzbeck has danced with Charles Dennis at PS122 and collaborated with Kristen Mangione on the site specific “Lila Garden Dances.” works in front of the camera and in nature.www.lotushealingcenter.com. Music by Didge Project & AJ Block with Katie Down (Flute).
BIO: AJ Block is a didgeridoo player whose sounds have been described as “transcendental”. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, AJ has developed a unique approach to meditative didge playing, which has elicited powerful and at times transformative response from his audiences. AJ’s group Didge Project promotes using natural vibrations for expanding human consciousness. More info at www.didgeproject.com.
2:15 PM – CHOIR RIVER SONG: Church Street School for Music and Art Choristers, under the direction of Lisa Ecklund-Flores, Executive Director, will present songs in celebration of Mother Earth featuring “Fireflies”, by Owl City. Church Street School art students will also create costumes using sustainable material to enhance the choristers’ performance.
BIO: Church Street School for Music & Art is the only not-for-profit school for the arts in Lower Manhattan serving as a community center supporting a diverse audience with affordable arts programming. Our process-oriented approach facilitates art and music education through skill building and development of technique in performance. http://www.churchstreetschool.org/
2:25 PM – SOUNDS OF THE EARTH: Performed by Marta V, Judy Sky, Leelah Holmes, and Nathan Eckenrode. Described as “a hurricane with sweet pond moments”.
2:35 PM – BOAT HOUSE DANCE WITH PADDLE BOARDERS & WIND SURFERS:
BIO: Passage is a soon-to-be fully premiered, evening-length work that explores overcoming obstacles, discovering resilience and being open to life’s possibilities. Choreographed by Amanda Selwyn, performed by Brent Carter, Christopher Coates, Michelle DuVall, Jenny Gillan, Robert Graham, Ashleigh Gurtler, Joori Jung, Natalie Mackessy, Jessica Dixon Majka, Louie Marin, Ally Sacks, and Samantha Silvers and costume design by Anna-Alisa Belous. Alice Farley, the Bessie Award winning dancer/costume designer features a choreographed dance of kayaks, canoes, and rowboats festooned with giant elemental river puppet-masks. Boat participants include: The Downtown Boathouse, Village Community Boathouse, New York Kayak Company, and The New York Harbor School
BIO: Amanda Selwyn has a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in performance studies and a B.S. from Northwestern University in theatre, women’s studies, and dance. She founded Notes in Motion Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre in 2000 www.amandaselwyndance.org. Choreographic works include: Passage, Undercurrent, Hearsay, Interiors,Disturbance, Salut, Tilt,Tidal, Shift, Siren, Contradicting Unity, Save My Spot, Hold On, Momentum, and Behind Us. She has received grants from Illinois Arts Council, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and Bronx Council for the Arts. In 2008, Amanda participated in the Choreographer’s Lab at Jacob’s Pillow. In 2009-2010, she has presented work on Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Stage, in the DUMBO Dance Festival, APAP conference showcase, and the COOL NY Dance Festival.
BIO: Alice Farley Dance Theater creates theatrical productions, dance extended through sculptural costuming, illusion, puppetry, stilts and circus skills. Outdoors they create imaginary landscapes for public spaces, a dream life for architectural and natural environments. They have performed for World Financial Center, The Whitney Museum, The Smithsonian, Lincoln Center, The Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater as well as festivals around the world. www.alicefarleydancetheater.com
2:50 PM – HUDSON & FULTON-THEATRICAL VIGNETTE: Created by Drew Vanderburg and The New York City Street Players
BIO: Drew Vanderburg is a Brooklyn based director, designer, poet, and musician. He makes art that jumps, jives, bumps, breathes, and yells. He reminds you that you are made of love. The New York City Street Players are humans who play in the streets. They stage events throughout the city to challenge society’s relationship to its surroundings, and to point out that the theater is not a place but a voice.
3 PM – OYSTER PLANTING CEREMONY: Dance Performance byValerie Green from Dance Entropy- “Rip Tide”, an adaptation of a dance inspired by all things water; from the pull of the oceans waves, to hurricanes, fish in the water, seaweed to sprinklers, and much more culminating into a oyster planting into the Hudson River.Choreography by Valerie Green. Performed byAmy Adams, Sarah Hartley, Andrea Brown, Joanie Johnson, Kristin Licata, Jennifer Painter.Costumes by Deborah Erenberg. Musical Performance by Black Sea Hotel.
BIO: Dance Entropy is a professional modern dance company founded in 1998 that abstracts the potential chaos of the body and creates order through expressive movement reflecting the world within which we live. Dance Entropy supports the vision of Artistic Director, Valerie Green to create and connect dance work on the stage and in specific sites/communities. The company is based in LIC, Queens at their home studio Green Space and has performed throughout the US and abroad. www.DanceEntropy.orgwww.GreenSpaceStudio.org
BIO: Black Sea Hotel (whose members are Joy Radish, Willa Roberts, Sarah Small and Corinna Snyder) composes their own arrangements of folk songs, calling on sources as varied as archival and field recordings, master teachers, and contemporary arrangements written for large choirs. They create their own inimitable gutsy sound, with driving, rhythmic vocals and harmonies that come together in a blend that has been called otherworldly. www.SarahSmall.com
3:15 – TAMING OF THE TRASH TRICKSTERS & RIVER CLEANSING: An entertaining dance theater performance depicting river maidens coming into life, who later face deadly poisoning by polluters, and with the help of recyclers and a special guest from the Hudson River Park Trust, their lives and nature are being restored. Produced by: Inge Ray Production Cast: IngeRay – Producer / Artistic Director / Choreographer. Dito Sudito – Partnering Collaborator. Dancers: Dito Sudito, Jule Jo Ramirez, Wil Fisher, Esther DeCew, Michael Wilson, Cindy Sibilsky.
BIO: Featuring an international group of dance talents with varying dance backgrounds – ballet, modern, folk, and belly dances, including theater actors and MA candidates of Applied Theatre, with special guest appearance, Kerry Dawson, from the Hudson River Park Trust. Choreographed by IngeRay, a Dance graduate from Smith College and certified Simonson teacher from Dance New Amsterdam, she hopes to bring awareness of environmental and socio-cultural issues through her passion in dance onstage, in music videos, weddings, and special events. Her movements are rooted in ballet, modern, jazz, multicultural and ballroom dance disciplines. For details of each performer, visitwww.IngeRay.com.http://www.ingeray.com/IngeRay/Performances.html
3:30 PM – LIVE FISH RELEASE: Stephan Said song “Isn’t There a Dream”. Music by Paul Pinto with opera singer Gelsey Bell.
BIO: Stephan Said, aka Stephan Smith, is an internationally acclaimed songwriter and activist with albums on Rounder Records, Caroline Records, and Artemis Records. An Iraqi-American with family in Baghdad and Mosul, he’s been called “the clearest voice rising out of the protest movement that rocked Seattle”. www.stephansaid.com
BIO: Paul Pinto and Gelsey Bell- California-raised Gelsey Bell and New York-native Paul Pinto have been creating experimental and theatrical music together as part of the contemporary music ensemble thingNY.www.thingNY.com, www.gelseybell.com, www.pfpinto.com
3:45 PM – HONORING OF LENAPE INDIANS, SILVER CLOUD SINGERS AND DANCERS: The Silver Cloud Singers, an intertribal Native American singing & dance troupe weaving the traditional with the contemporary of Native song & dance will perform a song and dance piece to honor the River.
BIO: The Silver Cloud Singers are an intertribal Native American singing & dance troupe weaving the traditional with the contemporary of Native song & dance. Silver Cloud has been honored to perform at the commemoration ceremonies for the Year of the Indigenous People’s at the United Nations, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, The Public Theater, The Apollo, Roseland, the Theater at Madison Square Garden, Trinity Church, The American Museum of Natural History, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the American Indian College Fund Flame of Hope Gala. Silver Cloud was also proud to open for Midnight Oil and Joan Osborne at the Ritz as part of Earth Day celebrations held in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1993. http://www.silvercloudsingers.com/
4 PM – BOAT DANCE, RIVER CLEANSING & HARMONIC CHANT CONCERT: Music by David Hykes, Contemplative music and meditation teacher. Founder, Harmonic Chant and the Harmonic Presence work. Alice Farley, the Bessie Award winning dancer/costume designer features a choreographed dance of kayaks, canoes, and rowboats festooned with giant elemental river puppet-masks. Boat participants include: The Downtown Boathouse, Village Community Boathouse, New York Kayak Company, and The New York Harbor School.
BIO: Alice Farley Dance Theater creates theatrical productions, dance extended through sculptural costuming, illusion, puppetry, stilts and circus skills. Outdoors they create imaginary landscapes for public spaces, a dream life for architectural and natural environments. They have performed for World Financial Center, The Whitney Museum, The Smithsonian, Lincoln Center, The Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater as well as festivals around the world. www.alicefarleydancetheater.com
BIO: Award-winning composer-singer and film composer David Hykes is the founder of Harmonic Chant, a vocal music of the spheres. He has collaborated with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Mind and Life Institute, exploring sacred sound, healing and meditation, and has presented and performed in countries, festivals and spiritual centers all over the world. He founded the Harmonic Choir, the western world’s preeminent overtone ensemble, in NY in 1975 and released 12 albums of music, including the best-selling overtone album of all time, “Hearing Solar Winds.” Esteemed collaborators and long-time Harmonic Choir members Timothy Hill, Seth Markel and Joel Bluestein, and percussionist extraordinaire Evry Mann will all be joining in. For more information, please visit http://www.harmonicpresence.org
DONNA HENES “URBAN SHAMAN” RIVER BLESSING: Mama Donna Henes and her Blessing Band
BIO: Mama Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, eco-ceremonialist, ritual expert, spiritual counselor, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader. She currently writes for the Huffington Post and UPI Religion and Spirituality Forum.www.donnahenes.net
PARADE BANDS:
HUNGRY MARCH BAND: Hungry March Band will be one of the Hudson River Pageant bands performing along side the pageant procession.
BIO: The Hungry March Band, NYC’s legendary street brass march band has earned a reputation for mythical revelry, having performed at a huge variety of fine venues including: MOMA, Lincoln Center, the Mermaid and Halloween Parade, as well as Earth celebrations garden pageants. Their musical repertoire consists of original compositions written by band members as well as scores selected from our multi-cultural world community. http://www.hungrymarchband.com/
GRUPO KALUNGA NEG MAWON: Grupo Kalunga Neg Mawon band, playing bamboo flutes, performing the Haitian and Dominican processional phenomenon known as “Rara” in the Republic of Ayiti (Haiti) and “Gaga” in the Dominican Republic. It originated with the Haitian maroons who escaped the hardships of enslavement and sought refuge in the mountains of the colony then known as San Domingo/Saint Dominigue.
BIO: Grupo Kalunga Neg Mawon is a musical dance ensemble that consists of members who have spent most of their lives researching and studying African culture in the Americas. Their aim is to preserve aspects of African tradition and identity existing in Quisqueya- Ayiti, known today as the Dominican Republic and The Republic of Haiti. http://www.myspace.com/grupokalunga
See last year’s performance bios:
2009 EARTH CELEBRATIONS HUDSON RIVER PAGEANT Performance Bios
Return to Hudson River Pageant Visual Artist Bios