placing the stageSite Specific and immersive work by Annie Arnoult

https://vimeo.com/119305434VIDEO PORFOLIO:

Dada Gert“Attack, tragic or comic climax, subsidence, nothing more...” - Valeska Gert

Dada Gerthttps://vimeo.com/71254351

Dada GertSource Material: Valeska Gert (Dance satirist) & Weimar Berlin

Dada GertDada Gert embraces Valeska Gert’s performance aesthetic, creative genius, and historic context as a frame for Beserra’s choreographic research around three central investigations: 1) bringing the dynamics of intimacy, confrontation and vulnerability of solo performance to ensemble work; 2) embracing the inherent opportunities and challenges of the maker/performer role; and 3) the generation and development of an expressionist movement vocabulary, with a particular emphasis on the roles of the pelvis, spine, head, hands, face and voice in expressive articulation. Embracing Gert’s process and aesthetic, Striding Lion’s company of dance theater artists and collaborators immerse themselves in the ordinary and ugly truths of Berlin in the 1920s– the sounds of traffic, the latest dance-hall fascination, a prostitute on the street corner – and emerge with a performance that both entices and scolds. With jerks and twists, contorted faces and mimetic gestures, grunts and sighs, whispered confessions and violently sounded shrieks, Striding Lion’s multi-talented dance theater artists embody the essence of Gert’s compositions - transforming personal, subjective experiences of the social and political moment into raucous and provocative entertainment.

-From Press Release, May 2013

2007, 2008, 2012 JENKINS FARM, MIDLAND, NC

Jenkins Farm Project

One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassingMaterial place. –Emily Dickinson, “Time and Eternity”

One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassingMaterial place. –Emily Dickinson, “Time and Eternity”

Jenkins Farm Project - Placing the Stagehttps://vimeo.com/60978857

Jenkins Farm ProjectInteractive dance theater installation - Placing the stage

Jenkins Farm Project Interactive dance theater - placing the stage

Choreographer’s Note

Jenkins Farm ProjectThis performance, like the real Jenkins Farm, exists in the liminal space between the present and the past, the real and the imagined, the remembered and the forgotten, the homebound and the displaced. Born of the truths and fictions of rural North Carolina from 1923 to the present, The Jenkins Farm Project is an incomplete canvas reflecting the questions and contradictions that surround our perceptions of home, family history, inclusion, and isolation.  While I have taken pains to maintain the integrity of the historical context of the piece, it should be understood as a creative work and not as a historical document.

The Real Jenkins Farm

The Real Jenkins FarmAnne Jenkins Arnoult, my grandmother, was born on the Jenkins family farm in 1923.  By the time she was sixteen, six more children had joined Annie Lee and her older brother Horace in the little white house near Midland, North Carolina.  All but the youngest were born in the small corner room just off the front door, while the other children picked cotton in the back field kept expressly for the purpose of occupying them for a full day or more when the need arose.  

When the baby, Patricia, was born, the others began to move away.  Horace and Bill went to war. Annie Lee married an Air Force Pilot. Helen went to college and married a preacher.  Glenn and Jeannette were diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent away to Broughton Hospital. Joyce got a job and moved into town.

Never having made the transition from mules to tractors, the farm began a long slow descent. The fields that could not be sold were leased to other farmers, while those that could not be leased were taken over by magnolia trees and underbrush. Jeannette returned to the little white house where she was born and took care of her daddy and momma until their deaths. The population boom occurred somewhere else, and the county refused to run a water line so far out in the middle of nowhere.  Jeannette, who now lives alone on the farm, keeps the house pristinely painted.

Example Source Material for Jenkins Farm Project“Human Betterment League of North Carolina”

Remember the... (alamo)

https://vimeo.com/39117060

“This is not a story.”On March 6, 1836, at the end of a 13 day siege, 182 Texian and Tejanodefenders of the Alamo Mission fell at the hands of 1,500 Mexican troopsunder the command of President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna,the self-proclaimed “Napoleon of the West.” The dramatic sacrifice ofthe Alamo defenders in the face of certain death and the mythic crueltiesattributed to Santa Anna inspired the famous battle cry “Remember theAlamo.” Countless films and television series, amusement park rides andchildren’s toys, graphic novels and pop-songs have taken the battle cry toheart. Collectively these technicolor artifacts have constructed the myth andlegend of the Alamo and transformed a Roman Catholic mission into themost popular tourist site in Texas.

175 years after the event, the image and icon of the Alamo is the newbattleground. A vibrant Alamo counter-culture spans visual, virtual, and printmedia, showcasing the zombie-inspired website “Dismember the Alamo”and the infamous last line, “Forget the Alamo,” in John Sayle’s film LoneStar. Newspapers document the battles over how to teach the Alamo toTexas schoolchildren, while historians and critics debate the racist binariesimplied by the pervasive good vs. bad, light-skinned vs. dark, morality taleframing of the event. While these disagreements fester, the Daughters of theTexas Republic are attempting to trademark the words “The Alamo,” whileallowing the roof of the building, itself, to fall into disrepair.

Remember the… (Alamo) brings the American popular obsession withthe “history” and “heroes” of the legendary, 13 day siege into intimaterelief. You, the audience, construct your experience of the

performanceby choosing where and how you’ll witness and engage in each

moment.Throughout the event, you are invited to touch the sets, walk through

theaction, move close to the performers to hear what’s being whispered,

or pullback to get a panoramic view. You are invited to experiment with

seeingthrough, above, below, or behind the action.

Your viewing is what has given these icons and images their powerthroughout history. Embrace your role as a meaning-maker in this

work.Immerse yourself in the fragmented theatrical moments. Engage

yourself inthe questions that arise. Take a deep breath and suspend any

expectation oflinear narrative. This is not a story.

Remember the... (alamo)

NOVEMBER 3, 2013 150TH BIRTHDAY OF EVANSTON, IL

SLIPA basketball wielding meditation on the human struggle to be noticed

SLIP Davis Street Metra Stop, Evanston, ILNovember 3, 2013

SlipA basketball wielding meditation on the human struggle to be noticed

SlipA basketball wielding meditation on the human struggle to be noticed

Did You See the Gorilla? Selective AttentionStudies by Daniel Simon & Christopher Chabris

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html

Behind Slip

This particular experiment, exploring the practice of "seeing but not seeing" and the brain business behind that process, serves as the jumping off point for Arnoult’s playful meditation on human fallibility. Choreographed to music by the Chicago rock band Fluid Minds, "Slip" plays with perception versus reality, with seeing and being seen. While tossing and leaping through space in Striding Lion’s signature athletic style, the sextet of dancers recite details of science experiments, toss basketballs, don gorilla suits and surf on doors. Each image addresses a new question provoked by the last. How do our brains choose what to attend to and what to ignore? How can a person disappear from sight, while still standing right in front of you? How do we miss the obvious, not seeing the gorilla standing right in front of us and allowing ourselves to be deceived, maybe even willingly? Following a tangential map, “Slip” moves from the science of perception to the experience of lying and being lied to.

Created collaboratively with the dancer/performers through an organic studio process that combines Arnoult’s movement phrases with performance material generated by the dancers through physical prompts, compositional structures and serendipitous accidents, “Slip” responds to everyday human obsession...to the daily battle of the ego to know and be known, to stand out, to be heard, and to avoid being forgotten.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3322642/Did-you-see-the-gorilla.html

American meConceived in collaboration with eli finkel, phD

https://vimeo.com/92096058

ENGAGING AUDIENCE MEMBERS FROM THE MOMENT THEY BEGIN THEIR JOURNEY TO THE THEATER

THROUGH AN INTERACTIVE APP THAT TRACES THE SAGA OF A DIFFERENT, ROUTE-SPECIFIC SUBSET OF

CHARACTERS THROUGH SHORT 2:30-3 MINUTE DANCE ON CAMERA PIECES, THE EVENING LENGTH

AMERICAN ME FOCUSES STRIDING LION’S SIGNATURE THEATRICALITY AND ATHLETICISM ON THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF "I" VERSUS "WE," IN PARTICULARLY AMERICAN TERMS. CONCEIVED BY

ANNIE ARNOULT IN COLLABORATION WITH NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PSYCHOLOGY

PROFESSOR ELI FINKEL, THIS ROMP THROUGH THE ANNALS OF AMERICAN IDENTITY LOOKS AT THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF “I” VERSUS “WE” WITH

HUMOR, POIGNANCY, AND WIT.

ENGAGING AUDIENCE MEMBERS FROM THE MOMENT THEY BEGIN THEIR JOURNEY TO THE THEATER

THROUGH AN INTERACTIVE APP THAT TRACES THE SAGA OF A DIFFERENT, ROUTE-SPECIFIC SUBSET OF

CHARACTERS THROUGH SHORT 2:30-3 MINUTE DANCE ON CAMERA PIECES, THE EVENING LENGTH

AMERICAN ME FOCUSES STRIDING LION’S SIGNATURE THEATRICALITY AND ATHLETICISM ON THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF "I" VERSUS "WE," IN PARTICULARLY AMERICAN TERMS. CONCEIVED BY

ANNIE ARNOULT IN COLLABORATION WITH NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PSYCHOLOGY

PROFESSOR ELI FINKEL, THIS ROMP THROUGH THE ANNALS OF AMERICAN IDENTITY LOOKS AT THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF “I” VERSUS “WE” WITH

HUMOR, POIGNANCY, AND WIT.