MARFA SOUNDING: ANNA HALPRIN

Co-Presented with Fieldwork Marfa

Friday–Sunday, May 26–28, 2017

Free and Open to the Public

Curated by Jennifer Burris Staton

With Phillip Greenlief, Nina Martin, Rashaun Mitchell, Stephen Petronio, Silas Riener, and films by Jacqueline Caux, Kevin Hayden, and Andy Abrahams Wilson

 

SCHEDULE:

Friday, May 26, Crowley Theater, 7-9.30pm (doors open at 6.30pm)

98 South Austin Street

Anna Halprin on Film

The introduction to the weekend of events by curator Jennifer Burris Staton and dancer Nina Martin followed by film screenings of Jacqueline Caux's Anna Halprin – Who Says I Have to Dance in a Theater, 2006 (50 minutes) and Anna Halprin – Out of Boundaries, 2004 (53 minutes). Documentaries featured rare archival footage of legendary choreographer Anna Halprin, whose performances engaged both city street and natural landscape. Filmmaker Jacqueline Caux explores how Halprin developed her work in direct response to the social upheavals and racial tensions of her environment, while rejecting the narrative styles and performance conventions of high Modernism. 

Event Program

 

Saturday, May 27, Crowley Theater, 11am-12pm

98 South Austin Street

Nina Martin: Dance Workshop

Community dance workshop led by Nina Martin, MFA, PhD, of the Lower Left performance collective and Associate Professor at TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance. Anna Halprin’s work begins with the belief that everyone is a dancer. In this community workshop–open to all ages and all members of the community, with no experience necessary–dancer and master educator Nina Martin led a collective, participatory exploration of Halprin’s philosophy. Guiding this workshop were the central ideas of Anna’s philosophy: movement as a way to relate to one’s environment, task operations as performance art, and dance as a political action. 

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Saturday, May 27, Building 98, 6-7pm

705 West Bonnie Street

Reception and Halprin Film Screening

All were invited to attend a cocktail reception with complimentary food and spirits and film screenings on Saturday, May 27 from 6–7pm, hosted at Building 98 with Mona Blocker Garcia. Guests were invited to tour the building to learn its history while films about Halprin were screened on a loop in Building 98’s ballroom. Building 98 is the home of the International Woman’s Foundation an organization that runs an artist residency program with rooms and galleries located in the registered National Historic Site. Founder and President of the artist refuge, Blocker Garcia, conceptualized the space during her time spent living in South America in the 1970s. Built in 1911 to serve as the bachelor officer quarters, officers club, and grand ballroom building for the United States army, the building also features oil-on-plaster murals painted by German prisoners of war interned at the camp between 1943 and 1945. Learn more at www.internationalwomansfoundation.org.

 

Saturday, May 27, Crowley Theater, 8-9.30pm

Crowley Theater, 98 South Austin Street

Stephen Petronio: Performance and Conversation

A dancer who has worked intimately with Halprin, Stephen Petronio, founder of the Stephen Petronio Company and an alumnus of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, performed her choreography on Saturday, May 27, at 8pm in the Crowley Theater. Following the performance Marfa Live Arts screened two short films and then Petronion will engage the audience in an open conversation. The selected films showcase Halprin’s choreography among redwood trees (Andy Abrahams Wilson's Anna Halprin - Embracing Earth, 1995, 23 minutes) and Petronio in conversation with fellow dancer Yvonne Rainer (Between Stephen and Yvonne, 2017, 10 minutes).

Event Program

 

Petronio’s solo performance in Marfa was part of the Stephen Petronio Company’s multi-year initiative BLOODLINES, which showcases interconnected histories of American postmodern dance through the re-staging of works by iconic choreographers who have influenced the group’s eponymous dancer. At Crowley Theater, Petronio staged The Courtesan and The Crone (1999), a work Anna Halprin developed to address her own aging body in relation to traditional Western concepts of beauty, as part of this broad-reaching exploration of influence. Simple gestures of performative femininity, flirtation, and fear transgress stereotypical gender lines in a solo dance passed from one choreographer to another.

Event Program

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Sunday, May 28, Fieldwork Marfa Antelope Hills Land, 7pm-Sunset

30°18’58.2”N / 103°59’16.9”W

Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Riener with Philip Greenlief: New Work

Performed in the open landscape at sunset with live accompaniment by saxophonist Phillip Greenlief, dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener premiere a new work inspired by architect, writer, and philosopher Claude Bragdon. Bragdon’s ideas regarding progressive architecture modeled after forms found in nature influenced his belief in the individual’s role as one in service to the group. In other words, he examined geometry and organic architecture in pursuit of a divine connection found in everyday experience. Mitchell and Riener apply these ideas to their physical improvisation practice. Through movement, they incorporate aspects of the surrounding environment as a means of connecting to the world at large.

Event Program