Walker Art Center Presents
OUT THERE 2024
Big Dance Theater
The Mood Room
Thursday–Saturday, February 8–10, 2024
8:00 pm
McGuire Theater
The Mood Room
Created/Choreographed by
ANNIE-B PARSON
Music by
HOLLY HERNDON
Based upon the play Five Sisters (1982) by GUY DE COINTET with additional text from ANTON CHEKHOV’s Three Sisters (1901)
Created in collaboration with and performed by
ELIZABETH DEMENT, THEDA HAMMEL, JENNIE MARYTAI LIU, KATE MORAN, DEVIKA V. WICKREMESINGHE
Set Design
LAUREN MACHEN
Lighting Design
JOE LEVASSEUR
Sound Design and Re-Composition
MARK DEGLI ANTONI
Associate Sound Designers
MICHAEL HERNANDEZ
KEENAN HURLEY
Video Design
KEITH SKRETCH
Lead Costume Design
SAMANTHA McELRATH
Costume Co-Design
BAILLE YOUNKMAN
Production Manager
ALEXANDRA VÁSQUEZ DHEMING
Stage Manager
RACHEL DENISE APRIL
Tour Representation
ArKtype / THOMAS O. KRIEGSMANN
Executive Director/Producer
SARA PEREIRA DA SILVA
Additional Performer/Man
AARON ROBINSON
Rehearsal Assistant
OLIVIA PALACIOS
The performance runs approximately 55 minutes without intermission.
The generative creative process for this production included Brittany Engel-Adams, Tina Satter, and Michelle Sui.
The Mood Room by Annie-B Parson / Big Dance Theater © premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2021. Original cast: Elizabeth DeMent, Theda Hammel, Kate Moran, Myssi Robinson, and Michelle Sui.
Accessibility Notes
Sensory Note: The theater will be scented tonight. The scent is a bergamot essential oil, which is generally considered safe, non-toxic, and non-irritating (especially when diffused). Like any plant, there is always the risk of an allergic reaction (specifically for those sensitive to bergapten). Please ask an usher if you require a mask.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
Program Note
Sometimes you find an artistic soul mate in the simple act of opening a book. This is what happened to me when Tim Griffin handed me the late 20th century “plays” by French visual artist Guy de Cointet suggesting we stage them. But they are not really plays—they are visual events with texts that bask in the hot mess of the non-narrative posing as narrative—a state I would call living!
Here is where de Cointet and I intersect: an atmosphere of codes, and non-re-sults permeate the writing, and his sense of reality is devoted to detours, departures, non-sequiturs, tonal shifts, and the unconfirmed. He quotes without reference, he is a-historic, is liberated from achieving resolution, and his authorial voice is intentionally cracking. His theater is equally grounded in text and the visual field without any hierarchy for language; and the physical objects in the texts have no stable meaning throughout the play.
No one changes; no one learns anything.
With an outsider’s eye, Guy de Cointet lived and observed Los Angeles during the dawn of Reaganism, and his plays, forty years later, read to me as both prophetic and dystopian. His work acutely yet lightly describes the disfiguring and enduring damage of the Reagan era, when we were urged to shop and spend, disregarding anyone outside our own zip-code, when our civic awareness and participation crumbled.
The Mood Room works specifically from de Cointet’s (1982) text Five Sisters, without any reference to his original staging or visual design. His original title Five Sisters nods to Chekhov’s Three Sisters with a joyous disrespect, but also with a recognition of the despair and the relational complexity in the Chekhov text. Guy de Cointet’s “writing”, an intuitive collage of Herman Melville, Percy Shelley, soap operas, and advertisements, describes five sisters returning to their family home in LA, sisters who embody this early “me” generation, and the first stirrings of the Wellness Movement. Additionally, rather than using music as landscape, Holly Herndon’s music serves as a protagonist. With 95 entrances and exits in the original text, it reads as almost vaudevillian, with the mood room itself as the ultimate internal exit.
– Annie-B Parson
Special Thanks
First, thank you to the dancers and creative team for bringing the most precious gift of their artistic beings to the work. Thank you to Tim Griffin, who first brought the writings of Guy de Cointet to us and intuitively suggested we make something from them. Thank you to Philip Bither for his deep understanding of the artistic process, his patience and long standing support. Thanks to Adam Shore for introducing us to HH. Thank you to Sara Pereira da Silva for her tireless, imaginative, gracious, and whip-smart shepherding of this project which would not have happened without her. Gratitude to many others for their generosity and support, including: Elizabeth Orr, Ilana Khanin, Hugues Cointet, Josh Lehrer, Julie Voigt, Susan Marshall, Lili Chopra, Ed McKeaney, Anne Delaney, Craig T. Peterson, Janet Wong, Jay Wegman, and Shervin Abachi. And thank you to Paul Lazar over and over again.
Historical Note
Five Sisters (1982) was originally a collaboration between de Cointet and Light & Space artist, Eric Orr (1939-1998) who created the lighting, set, and part of the sound. The lighting and the set that Orr developed for Five Sisters was an extension of many of the formal and philosophical concerns of Orr's artistic practice. This included working with the lighting as if it was a performer, the "fifth sister," and the use of immersive color fields like his paintings. The original piece was performed in the Los Angeles area including The Temporary Contemporary Museum and the Lhasa Club.
Learn More
Friday's performance will be followed by a Q&A with Annie-B Parsons by Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Henriette Huldisch.
Learn more about Guy De Cointet in Tim Griffin's article on the Walker Reader: What is in the Text? Guy de Cointet and Big Dance Theater (walkerart.org)
Artist Bios
Choreographer ANNIE-B PARSON is the artistic director of OBIE and BESSIE award-winning Big Dance Theater, which she co-founded in 1991 with Molly Hickok and Paul Lazar. Outside of her company, some of the artists she has worked with include David Byrne, David Bowie, Lorde, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Anne Carson, Esperanza Spalding, Suzan-Lori Parks, Laurie Anderson, Salt n Pepa, and Jonathan Demme. Additionally Parson has created two large scale works for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and for the Sadlers Wells Company of Elders. Parson choreographed and did musical staging for David Byrne’s Tony Award winning American Utopia, a world tour that ran on Broadway, and was made into a film by Spike Lee. She choreographed Byrne’s musical Here Lies Love, on Broadway, as well as his tours with Brian Eno, and with St. Vincent. She also choreographed two concert tours for St. Vincent, and is presently working with her on an unannounced project. Parson recently choreographed two operas: Candide at the Lyon Opera, and The Hours at The Met starring Rene Fleming, which will be remounted this spring. Parson’s writing has been published in The Atlantic, and The Paris Review; her recent book The Choreography of Everyday Life is published by Verso Press. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Bessie Awards, The Jacobs Pillow Dance Award, the USA Artist Award, The Doris Duke Artist Award, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, two Lucille Lortel nominations, and an Olivier nomination. She has been honored by Danspace, and by PS122. With Thomas F. DeFrantz, she is co-editing a book entitled: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study. Upcoming is a project with Khruangbin.
MARK DEGLI ANTONI (Sound Designer) is a New York based film composer, performer and sound artist. He is a co-founder of the Warner Bros band Soul Coughing. Additionally, he has performed and recorded with David Byrne, Low, John Scofield, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, among others. He has performed in over 30 countries, appeared on television including David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, Conan O'Brien, and Howard Stern. Film scores include films by Werner Herzog, Matt Ruskin, Wallace Shawn, Roger Ross Williams, Maya Daisy Hawke, with premieres at Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Telluride, BFI, IDFA, and world wide theatrical releases.Sound design and VR works include collaborations with Christian Marclay, Gabo Arora,Sarah Meyohas, Leigh Ledare, and Netta Yerushalmy.He is a Fellow of the Sundance Institute. This is his first time working with Annie-B Parson's Big Dance Theater.
ELIZABETH DEMENT (Performer) has worked as a dancer and associate choreographer for Big Dance Theater, Liz Gerring Dance Company, The Metropolitan Opera, Peridance Ensemble, Stephen Petronio, Jodi Melnick, Patrick Corbin, Dance Heginbotham, David Byrne, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Jónsi, LORDE, St. VIncent and Alex Da Corte. Elizabeth was born in Ukiah, California, is a graduate of the Juilliard School, and received a Bessie Award for outstanding performance.
RACHEL DENISE APRIL (They/Them) (Production Stage Manager) is a Guyanese-American Stage Manager, who has studied Theatrical Design and Stage Management at the City College of New York. Select Credits include: Bernarda’s Daughters (The New Group), Evanston Salt Costs Climbing (The New Group), soft (MCC) Chicken and Biscuits (Queens Theatre), The Baby Monitor (Different Translation), Retreat Workshop (National Black Theatre), The Big Green Theater Festival (SuperHero Playhouse) The Hole (Zhailon Levingston), Neptune (Timothy DuWhite), The Genesis Plays (The In[heir]itance Project), Anaïs Nin Goes to Hell (MTWorks), and The Fire This Time Festival 2015 (The Kraine Theater). They have worked on projects throughout the United States and internationally.
ALEXANDRA VÁSQUEZ DHEMING (Production Manager) is a Salvadoran Production Manager and Lighting Designer based in NYC. Past and current collaborators include Big Dance Theater, SLM Dances, Nélida Tirado, Calpulli Mexican Dance, Miguel Gutierrez, NYTB, Ashwini Ramaswamy, Trusty Sidekick, Les Ballets Trockaderos, Broadway Close Up, NYC Gay Men's Chorus among others. Her multidisciplinary work has been seen nationally (Lincoln Center, Jacob's Pillow, Park Avenue Armory, Guggenheim Museum, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Center for Performance Research, Works and Process, Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Boston Celebrity Series, Theatreworks, Festival Flamenco Albuquerque, LA Public Libraries), and internationally (København Danser, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Cannes Film Festival, NCL Oceania Cruises).
Alex holds a BFA from SCAD, and is a Wingspace and Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas (SILV) alumna; recipient of The Playwright Realm's International Theatermakers Award (2021). Alex was a commissioned artist for the Park Avenue Armory's Sound & Color: The Future of Race in Design Symposium (2023). alexvasquezdheming.com @alxvsquezdhming
THEDA HAMMEL (Performer) is cohost of the KNFW Nymphowars Podcast with Macy Rodman. She has released three EPs (Very Great, SondHamm, and Partial Magic), all of which can be found at majortransceleb.bandcamp.com. Her 2022 short film My Trip To Spain played at the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals. Her first feature film Stress Positions premiered in Main Competition at the 2024 Sundance film festival, and will be released later this year by Neon.
HOLLY HERNDON (Music) is an American composer, musician, and sound artist based in Berlin, Germany. After studying composition at Stanford University and completing her Ph.D. at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, she pursued her international career.
MICHAEL ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ (Associate Sound Designer) is an audio engineer and designer from Miami, FL. He is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.
KEENAN HURLEY (Associate Sound Designer) writes plays and makes sound. He sound designed and performed in Sibyl Kempson’s Sasquatch Rituals (The Kitchen), co-sound designed Erin Markey’s Singlet with Jeff Aaron Bryant (The Bushwick Starr), was the Associate Sound Designer for Raja Feather Kelly's UGLY at Washington Ensemble Theatre, and with Caborca has sound designed shows in New York and in Cuba. He is a current member of the 2019-2021 Soho Rep Writer / Director Lab.
JOE LEVASSEUR (Lighting Designer) has collaborated with many dance and performance artists including: Meredith Monk, Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo, John Jasperse, Sarah Michelson, Jodi Melnick, Jennifer Monson, Neil Greenberg, and Beth Gill. He lit both Wendy Whelan's 2013 breakout Restless Creature, and her subsequent collaboration with Brian Brooks Some of a Thousand Words (2016). He has received two ‘Bessie’ awards (including one with Big Dance Theater) and a Knight of Illumination Award for his work on Meredith Monk’s Cellular Songs. When not designing, Levasseur also engages in a visual art practice. Instagram: @sirjoelevasseur / www.joelevasseur.com
LAUREN MACHEN (Scenic Designer) a Minneapolis native, studied Studio Art and Psychology at Macalester College and Textiles at Goldsmiths, University of London. For over 15 years, Lauren has designed sets for performances and album covers for grammy winning musicians, and collaborated with top brands and publications, such as Vogue, The New York Times, Miu Miu and Burberry. Machen receives accolades from her collaborative process, thorough research, and specialized use of color and form, leading her to expand her practice to include neuroarchitecture study, spatial wellbeing, mind-gut connection, and immersive spatial design. She is the Founder + Principal designer of Machen Machen Studio, which provides the highest level of services in spatial + object design, as well as experiential events, conscious to include mental health and wellness at the forefront of their work. Lauren previously partnered with Annie-B Parson in 2019 as Scenic Designer for Big Dance's "ballet dance" at NYU Skirball.
SAMANTHA McELRATH (Costume Co-Designer) is a fashion designer and consultant based in New York. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology where she studied fashion design and international trade with a focus on sustainability. In addition to co-founding her own line, GHSTS, she was part of an award-winning fashion design team, Ohne Titel. Samantha has worked across the fashion, music, and entertainment landscapes collaborating with clients such as Rihanna, Kacey Musgraves, Elena Velez, and Jennifer Lopez.
KATE MORAN (Performer) has worked over the years with such notable artists as Robert Wilson, Oriza Hirata, Pascal Rambert, Yann Gonzalez and Thierry Deperetti, among others. She recently starred in Claude Schmitz’s film L’Autre Laurens, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 and in David Perrault’s film Savage State, recently acquired by Hulu in the US. This year she will appear in Samuel Benchetrit’s new play, La Famille at the acclaimed Edouard VII theatre in Paris. Fleuve Kate, a concept album she created with writer Hélène Frappat is currently touring and the film Two Roses, co-written with Rafi Pitts is in pre-production.
SARA PEREIRA DA SILVA (Producer/Executive Director) is a Portuguese Fulbright alumnus with an MA in Arts Management from American University. She was the recipient of an INOVArt grant and has been involved in dance teaching and performing arts management for more than 15 years with experience in Macau, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Washington D.C, and New York City. With Big Dance, Silva produced eight dance theater pieces that toured nationally and internationally.
JENNIE MARYTAI LIU (Performer) is an artist working across performance, video, writing, and education. She has recently received commissions and presentations from Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, New York Film Festival/Currents section, Crossroads/San Francisco Cinematheque, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Human Resources LA, The Mistake Room, Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, and Incubator Arts Center. She has been a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts, Bogliasco Foundation, Yaddo Arts Colony, EMPAC, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, and Center for Cultural Innovation. She co-founded and edited Riting.org, an experiment in writing that engages with performance being made now in LA. Funded by the Mike Kelley Foundation and in collaboration with The Box and Pieter Performance Space, she curated Knees, Schools, Urges (2022) - an exhibition and performance program engaging ten LA based artists to respond to histories of 20th century modern dance and embedded embodied histories.
DEVIKA WICKREMESINGHE (Performer) is an artist, performer, and teacher based in los angeles. they have had the immense pleasure of working with Big Dance Theater since 2019. www.devikawickremesinghe.com
BAILLE YOUNKMAN (Costume Co-Designer) is an artist, designer and educator from Columbus, Ohio. After having studied fashion design and sculpture, Baille received her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She now resides in Brooklyn, NY, creating costumes and environments for performance art. Baille's work has been shown at BRIC Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, BAM Harvey Theater, The Irondale Center, The Kitchen, Brussels BOZAR, the Joyce Theatre and most recently, Little Island. She is currently teaching fashion design and construction at the High School of Fashion Industries. www.bailleyounkman.com
Big Dance Theater
Artistic Director
ANNIE-B PARSON
Co-founders
MOLLY HICKOK & PAUL LAZAR
Executive Director
SARA PEREIRA DA SILVA
Finance and Development Manager
SARA PROCOPIO
Development Consultant
TONYA LOCKYER
Administration Management
ARTSPOOL
Website
www.bigdancetheater.org
Social Media
@BigDanceTheater (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)
Big Dance Theater is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York Theater Program, the W Trust, Virginia and Timothy Millhiser, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Out There 2024
Join us in the McGuire Theater for the rest of Out There 2024, which highlights new innovations and radical approaches to theatrical live performance. The long running, multi-month series captures the Walker’s vision to present multi-disciplinary artforms and bring forward some of the most thought-provoking and leading-edge artistic experiences being created today.
Up Next:
Honor, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra Starring Lili Taylor, February 22–24
Living Land Acknowledgement
The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
Walker Art Center Acknowledgments
Walker Art Center Producers' Council
About the Walker Art Center
Media Partner
To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2023/24 Walker Performing Arts Season.
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