The Northampton Arts Council works to support and nurture the arts in the city of Northampton. The Council awards grants twice each year to artists and arts groups from both state and locally-raised funds, and seeks to improve public awareness of the arts. Its' goals include maintaining and preserving the rich and diverse cultural heritage of Northampton, programming such annual events of interest to the community as First Night Northampton and Transperformance.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought presents HUT V

The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought presents HUT V

An evening of contemporary sound, movement and performance. 3 artists – 3 disciplines- 3 short sets

Saturday Nov 5, 8PM
SCDT Studios, 25 Main Street 4th floor, Northampton MA $10 - scdtnoho.com

SCDT’s director Jennifer Polins collaborates with local sound artist Jake Meginsky to curate a new performance series that combines local and international artists of different genres in a performance event. This month HUT V features Jason Robinson – Music, Wendy Woodson - Performance and Barbie Diewald - Dance. Join HUT for an afterparty with DJ at sevenstrong. This season is funded by the Northampton Arts Council.

Jason Robinson- The music of American saxophonist and scholar Jason Robinson ("rugged and scintillating," New York Times) thrives in the fertile overlaps between improvisation and composition, acoustic music and electronics, tradition and experimentalism. He is a critically acclaimed distinctive voice in a new generation of creative musicians in equal dialogue with jazz, popular music, experimental music, and electronic music. Robinson's primary group is his New York-based Janus Ensemble, which ranges in size from a quintet with reedist Marty Ehrlich, guitarist Liberty Ellman, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer George Schuller, to the full nine-piece version of the group with the addition of reedist JD Parran, trombonist and tubist Bill Lowe, tubist Marcus Rojas, and drummer Ches Smith. Robinson has released 14 albums as leader or co-leader and appeared on nearly 50 albums in total. He performs regularly as a soloist (acoustically and with electronics), with his group the Janus Ensemble, and in a variety of collaborative contexts. As a scholar, Robinson’s work investigates the relationship between improvised and popular music, experimentalism, and cultural identity. He has published articles and reviews in Ethnomusicology, Jazz Perspectives, and Critical Studies in Improvisation/ Études critiques en improvisation. Robinson is an Assistant Professor of Music at Amherst College and holds a Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego.

Wendy Woodson is a writer, director, choreographer, and video artist and the Roger C. Holden Professor of Theater and Dance at Amherst College. She has created 98 works for stage and video presented in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Dance and theater works have been performed in such venues as the John F. Kennedy Center, LaMaMa Etc. NYC, LaMaMa Melbourne, the Smithsonian, Jacob's Pillow, Emerson Majestic Theater, Washington Project for the Arts, Wolf Trap, PS 122 and at many colleges and universities. Video works have been exhibited at festivals throughout the US, in Germany, Sarajevo, and at the DeCordova Museum. She has received fellowships and grants in choreography, playwriting and video from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission and the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the D.C. Commission on Arts & Humanities, among others.

Originally from Chicago, Barbie Diewald is a dancer, choreographer and dance educator. After performing extensively with Midwest Ballet Theatre and the Chicago Festival Ballet, Barbara began her own choreographic research. In her work, the formal and the sensuous commingle, giving rise to new vocabularies that are influenced by queer and feminist theory and underpinned by her ongoing study of modernist literature. Aside from her work with Barbie Diewald Choreography, she co-founded and directed TrioDance Collective in New York City alongside Emily Jeffries from 2010-2014. Her work has been presented at Movement Research at Judson Church, the 92nd Street Y, Dixon Place, The Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, The Chocolate Factory (Throw), Gibney Dance Center, Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, and National Sawdust. Diewald has developed her work with the support of the Lower Manhattan Arts Council (Manhattan Community Arts Fund), and residencies at Foundazione Bogliasco (Italy), The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (MA), Ponderosa (Germany), Dance NOW at Silo (Pennsylvania), the Putney School (Vermont), Cora Dance (Brooklyn), and The Field (Manhattan). She has recently performed in the work of Bronwen MacArthur, Stephanie Maher, Jen Polins, Katie Martin, and Merce Cunningham (through the Cunningham Trust). She was a selected choreographer for the New York Live Arts Bessie Shoneberg Choreographic Lab in 2011 (Gwen Welliver) and 2013 (Tere O’Connor). Barbie will be teaching in the dance department at Keene State College this spring, and is currently on faculty at the Pioneer Valley Ballet and the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought. She holds a BFA in Theatre from Millikin University and an MFA in Dance from Smith College, where she was a Teaching Fellow and Gretchen Moran Scholar.

The School of Contemporary Dance and Thought (SCDT) is comprised of independent and internationally experienced performance artists/movement practitioners who are also innovative teachers. The goal of SCDT is to serve as a hub for performance art of the highest quality by connecting communities on an international scale. SCDT showcases contemporary movement training and performance practices that embrace multiplicity, arouse curiosity, and emphasize personal choice. Central to the school’s mission is an abiding respect for the tradition and history of re invention and a directive to continue challenging established ideals. Scdtnoho.com


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