Walker Art Center and The Great Northern present
ANNIE DORSEN:
YESTERDAY TOMORROW
Thursday-Saturday, July 21-23, 2022
8:00 pm
McGuire Theater
Concept/Direction: Annie Dorsen
Music Direction: Joanna Bailie
Computer Programming: Pierre Godard
Sound Design: Greg Beller
Additional Sound Design: Ian Douglas-Moore
Video Programming: Ryan Holsopple
Lighting Design: Bruno Pocheron and Ruth Waldeyer
Sound Supervision: Ian Douglas-Moore
Technical Direction: Ruth Waldeyer
Management/Production: Natasha Katerinopoulos
Performers: Hai-Ting Chinn, Emily Eagen, and Jeffrey Gavett
About Yesterday Tomorrow
Yesterday Tomorrow is a collaboration between human artists and algorithms. Inspired by a kind of machine learning model known as evolutionary computation, Yesterday Tomorrow gives a unique experience of the complexity and unpredictability of the present tense contrasted with the known past and the imagined future.
Beginning with the Beatles' “Yesterday,” algorithms slowly transform that song into “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie. Each night, the spatial and musical path from the past to the future is different; neither the singers, the creative team, nor the audience knows the route we will take.
The piece creates a disorienting series of alternations: between human and machine, between sound and sense, between the recognizable and the utterly unfamiliar. Finally, it's a piece about the passage of time, about progress and regress, about the loss of one world and the optimistic creation of another.
The Obvious Past and The Specious Present // An Interview with Annie Dorsen
"Chance is not only playful and exploratory—it's also a little scary, and sometimes cruel," says Dorsen in a recent conversation with Philip Bither, the Walker's Director and Senior Curator of Performing Arts at the Walker. Read the full interview on The Great Northern's blog and stay after the show on Friday night for a Q&A with Dorsen, moderated by Bither.
Mack Lecture: Conversation with Annie Dorsen
In January 2021, Dorsen discussed her practice as part of the Walker's annual Mack Lecture series; the full video is available to view online. Discover how Dorsen explores the intersection of algorithms and live performance with academic and AI researcher, Zachary Chase Lipton. This conversation will be moderated by Simon Adler, a producer on WNYC’s Radiolab.
About the Artists
ANNIE DORSEN (Concept/Direction) is a director and writer whose works explore the intersection of algorithmic art and live performance. Her most recent project, INFINITE SUN, is an algorithmic sound installation commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial 14. Previous performance projects, including THE GREAT OUTDOORS (2017), YESTERDAY TOMORROW (2015), A PIECE OF WORK (2013) and HELLO HI THERE (2010), have been widely presented in the US and internationally. The script for A PIECE OF WORK was published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and she has contributed essays for The Drama Review, Theatre Magazine, Etcetera, Frakcija, and Performing Arts Journal (PAJ). She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical PASSING STRANGE which she also directed. Dorsen has received a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2018 Spalding Gray Award, a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award, and the 2014 Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theatre.
Mezzo-soprano HAI-TING CHINN's (Performer) eclectic career spans music from medieval to new, and a range of theatrical styles from performance-practice to wildly experimental. She was featured in The Wooster Group’s La Didone, Einstein on the Beach (Philip Glass/Robert Wilson) and in several monodramas written for her, as well as standard operatic, oratorio, and concert repertoire. Hai-Ting is the creator of Science Fair: An Opera With Experiments, and of Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space, based on the words of women astronauts (with Trio Triumphatrix). www.hai-ting.com
When not working as an audio engineer, IAN DOUGLAS-MOORE (Sound Supervision) makes music using guitar, electronic tones, and field recordings to examine the textures of layered resonant sounds as they engage with acoustic space. Treating an acoustic guitar as a tone generator, his recent performances blur the boundaries between electronic and acoustic music. Current collaborators include percussionist/singer Aaron Snyder, percussionist Leo Suarez, saxophonist Paul Roth, and sound artist Pär Thörn; and he plays in composer David First's Western Enisphere ensemble. These musical experiences inform his audio work, sound designing pieces by Annie Dorsen, Lauren Bakst, and others.
EMILY EAGEN (Performer) is a versatile singer, songwriter, and teacher, specializing in new music and early music. Her performance highlights include singing with The M6: Meredith Monk Music, Third Generation, in Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer with the Bang on a Can Ensemble, with the vocal quartet Moira Smiley and VOCO, and as a soloist at the Amherst Early Music Festival. Emily is a teaching artist and songwriter for Carnegie Hall's community engagement programs, where she helped develop the Lullaby Project for expectant and new mothers. She co-wrote Nooma (2019), an opera for babies produced at Carnegie Hall, and co-wrote songs for the album A Colorful World by Falu, which won a Grammy for Best Children’s Album of 2021. Emily is the host and co-creator of Carnegie Hall’s new video series, Sing with Carnegie Hall. Emily has a special interest in American vernacular music, where she combines singing, guitar, ukulele, and her skills as a two-time International Whistling Champion.
JEFFREY GAVETT (Performer), called a “brilliantly agile singer” by the New York Times, has performed with a broad array of artists, including Alarm Will Sound, ICE, Meredith Monk, Roomful of Teeth, SEM Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, and Talea Ensemble. He directs Ekmeles vocal ensemble, and as a founding member of loadbang premiered over 450 pieces from 2008-2022. As a recording artist he appears on Bridge Records, Kairos, NEOS, New Amsterdam, and New Focus Recordings, including music written for him by Chaya Czernowin, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, and Charles Wuorinen. He also conducted and music directed for Roomful of Teeth’s CD The Colorado. Theatrical appearances include Rudolf Komorous’s Nonomiya and Petr Kotik’s Master-Pieces at New Opera Days Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Annie Dorsen’s Yesterday Tomorrow at the Holland Festival, in France, and Croatia, and Matt Marks’s Mata Hari on the 2017 Prototype Festival. Mr. Gavett holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music.
RYAN HOLSOPPLE (Video Programming) develops and programs interactive systems for live theater and dance. Collaborations include work with Bill Morrison, Annie Dorsen, Mallory Catlett, Susan Marshall, Ellie Ga, Radiohole, Lauren Bakst, and many others. Ryan is a Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Visual Design, This Was the End, directed by Mallory Catlett. Ryan was awarded a Best Of New York Award by the Village Voice for 31 Down’s Canal Street Station, an interactive payphone murder mystery set in the New York Subway system.
NATASHA KATERINOPOULOS (Management/Production) works as a performing arts producer and nonprofit director. She has collaborated with Annie Dorsen, Maria Hassabi, Hamid Rahmanian and Jonah Bokaer for multidisciplinary projects presented internationally. Venues include BAM Next Wave, Performance Space New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Performa 19, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Winspear Opera House, CAP UCLA, Centre George Pompidou, Vienna Secession, Kaaitheater, SNF Nostos, and Sharjah Biennial 14. Natasha is currently Managing Director at The Center at West Park, and has previously held managerial positions with Chez Bushwick and the Martha Graham Dance Company. She holds a BA in Theater Studies from the University of Patras and an MA in Arts Politics, from NYU Tisch.
RUTH WALDEYER (Technical Direction) works as a lighting designer, radio author and thai boxing teacher. She has created light design for numerous performances and dance pieces and is a founding member of Gangplank - a group of light/sound/video designers, musicians, and choreographers that investigate the intersections of technology and dramaturgy in the practice of making stage work. Together with a collective, she runs ausland/Berlin: Territory for art and collateral damage. She produces radio pieces with Christina Ertl, Uli Ertl and Kim Scheunemann and with Radio F* and SissiFM – your feminist radio magazine on rebootFM. Waldeyer studied Performing Arts at HBK Braunschweig with Anzu Furukawa and Marina Abramovic.
Special Thanks
Annie Dorsen, Natasha Katerinopoulos, and the performers and crew of Yesterday Tomorrow would like to thank Philip Bither for his continued support and commitment to presenting the piece since 2018; and Molly Hanse, Julie Voigt, and Doug Benidt for the excellent collaboration through two postponements due to Covid-19.
Yesterday Tomorrow is a co-production of Holland Festival; Black Box Teater (Oslo); Performance Space 122 (New York); La Villette – Résidences d’Artistes 2015; TANDEM – Scène nationale Arras Douai; Théâtre de Gennevilliers with Festival d’Automne à Paris; Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne; and Théâtre Garonne, Scène européenne, Toulouse. Made possible, in part, by The MAP Fund, with the assistance of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support provided through fiscal sponsorship and a residency at Mount Tremper Arts; and a residency at Abrons Arts Center.
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