Locally Grown Dance 2022

The Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA)
presents

Locally Grown Dance
Spring 2022

Kiplinger Theatre
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
430 College Avenue

March 9, 10, 11, 12, 2022
7:30 p.m.

Bach Solo Cello Suite #1 (circa 1986)

Choreographer: 
Repertory circa 1986 in collaboration with faculty mentor.

Dancers:  
Hayden Garniewicz, Molly Goldstein, Molly Hudson, Sarah Lynch, 
Hannah McManus, Cate Moore, Kat Petrosky,
Emma Rethy, Madeline Silva, Naomi Wang

EVENT HORIZON

Choreographer: 
Miles Yeung-Tieu

Dancers:  
Annika Currie, Annika Deutsch, Colton Edwards, Trent Edwards, 
Charlotte Hee, Anna Rose Marion

-Intermission-

Belucid

Choreographer: 
Performers in collaboration with faculty mentor.

Dancers:
Hayden Garniewicz, Hannah McManus, Madeline Silva, Naomi Wang

Goldberg Variations

Choreographer: 
Mark Haim

Rehearsal Director:
Miles Yeung-Tieu

Dancers:
March 9 and 11: Miles Yeung-Tieu

March 10 and 12: Annika Deutsch, Molly Hudson, Charlotte Hee, Anna Rose Marion, 
Hannah McManus, Naomi Wang

Pianist:
Thomas Reeves

This program has been made possible through the Cornell Council for the Arts and
a generous gift from Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf.

The vision of the Department of Performing and Media Arts is to nurture and mentor artists, performers, writers, and thinkers through the process of event programming. We recognize that all people should see their stories represented, and envision their stories as valuable.

We commit ourselves to creating spaces that actively seek to break down systems of oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and place of origin and empower all to be involved. We seek to stimulate thoughtful discussion and enact social change within our productions and our audiences. It is our goal to make our events accessible to the wider Cornell and Ithaca community, to strengthen bonds and engage inquiry, dialogue, and impact around social and cultural change.
 
In the 2021-2022 academic year we will help realize a wide range of students’ creative projects, from original plays, to solo performances, to readings, to choreographies, to acting, directorial, and curatorial projects. We are particularly happy that in addition to supporting live performances, we are now also supporting the production of several student thesis films. Enjoy the shows!

Byron Suber

Locally Grown Dance 2022 is again a program that has had excerpted previews at the end of the previous semester, but a few new things are afoot. While we have been working together live since the beginning of the Fall '21 semester, the lasting effects of the pandemic, the shutdown, and distance learning from previous semesters are still very much present in the work we are doing. 

When we first moved into virtual dance instruction and the difficult maneuver of creating original choreography through a screen, the belief that the condition of working in that way was underscored as temporary. That interruption into our creative lives worked its way into the tone of how we were creating and how we were planning for the future. We had imagined we would be out of that traumatic state and back to normal within months and as months changed into a year and then even longer, the idea and the image of a brighter future continuously shifted. 

When we finally arrived at face-to-face interaction, some restrictions were still in place, and residual effects of having lost a year and a half of the type of intimate engagement requisite in the development and pedagogy of dance are still filtering through every aspect of our work as it continues to emerge in new forms. Work that at first imagined a light at the end of a short tunnel began to be colored by ever-present edges of darkness that shifted our work psyche to contain both the hopeful lightness as well impinging heaviness of our world view.

Having lost that much time in face-to-face classes, we also missed the opportunity to bring new dancers into our group efforts. The work required to produce these pieces must be overlapping and continuous over many years, with upper-class students introducing methodologies and practices unfamiliar to arriving first-year students. This unfamiliarity to our new students was in some ways satisfied by restaging a much older work, the Bach Solo Cello Suite #1, created in 1986 within a post-modern ballet vocabulary that held an immediate appeal to those new to our environment. At the same time, the four remaining members of our group, all seniors, had the opportunity to create Belucid. This small intimate work utilized all of their skills acquired while working at Cornell and reflects their affection for one another over the last several years working together as a cohesive unit.

We are also now able once again to engage artists from outside Cornell. The work of Mark Haim and his Goldberg Variations is a gift that would otherwise have been lost to the vapor of isolation instilled by technological distances. And the work of guest artist/lecturer Miles Yeung is adding a new dimension to our project as a whole that offers new contexts in which to view dance at Cornell as a whole as it shifts with new participants at the wheel.

The effects of the past two years will continue to reverberate and will likely, in certain ways, permanently change the work we do in dance and at Cornell. This shifts the ways in which we get to an endpoint as well as how we work to maintain continuity. But we have survived this recent trauma and will continue to thrive with the dedication and passion of our students as the fuel that binds us.

- Byron Suber

Miles Yeung, EVENT HORIZON

We are in a moving-towards.

I did not think that time would ever run out. That there was ever more or less of it, for me or for you. My pleasure is in letting myself go, grieving all the me’s that keep slipping away, widening, birthing into every new now. I did not know the game, no one ever taught me those rules for something I did not sign up to play. 0 is forever imminent as my becoming echos your disappearance. 

…my eyes are dilated as I gaze into the everlasting future. 

EVENT HORIZON is a collaborative meditation on pleasure, death, and time, exploring ideas of system-as-game and pleasure politics for resistance. As a research action, EVENT HORIZON began in the fall of 2021 with the efforts of Anna Rose Marion, Annika Currie, Annika Deutsch, Charlotte Hee, Beatriz Asfora, and Kassandra Robledo. Together, we reflected on the modes in which we access pleasure and all the conversations between it, play, masochism, grief, love, and performance. This spring, Trent Edwards and Colton Edwards join us and contribute to the development of the last portion of this work.

Rebecca M. Groves writes on William Forsythe's Choreographic Objects: "Testing the limits of working structures currently in use and apprehending alternative orders of coherence, Forsythe changes the subject of choreography from the movement of bodies to the mobilization of intelligence."

This piece is a kaleidoscopic happening of our collective knowing.

The sonic portion of this work comes from Max Richter, Forest Swords, and St. Lucia - all of which provided a commonality of, what I consider to be, re-soundings. I took interest in a variety of sound aesthetics, with the hopes that the uncanniness of it all disrupts our certainty of time (which we seem to always be running out of).

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2..................

Where are we?

The costumes are created by Sarah Bernstein and Lisa Boquist. Together, we considered the aesthetics of workwear and the time/labor relationship. "Space/Time travelers," I said they were, as they mourn with Richter's eulogistic re-composition of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons: Autumn. 

But what beyond death? The dancers reappear adorned in opulence(s), exploring and embodying pleasure. They spill and splat and whack as they find moments of singularity with each-other. With another opportunity for cross referencing aesthetics, we pull from festival wear, BDSM, Euphoria, the Village People, and our own desires.

As I find myself here, with you, I can't help but know that Life is one big gay disco. We live on the edge of oblivion waiting for the sun to rise.

- Miles Yeung

Mark Haim, Goldberg Variations

In the San Francisco of Europe (Lisbon, Portugal), back in the late 1980s, I was directing a full-time modern dance company at age 28. By all standards, one would have to assume I was ecstatic. Instead, I was miserable. I dreamed of living in the middle of a desert in a small space working on a solo and inviting only a small group of treasured friends to see my progress.  After giving Lisbon three years, I packed myself up, spent my last night at the famous Sheraton hotel, and toasted that beautiful city from the penthouse bar, and returned to NYC feeling like a failure. 

With some money saved up and some residual commissions I had the luxury of languishing and did things like teaching myself to hike and taking German courses at the Goethe House. One late night after class I was walking home down a deserted street and approached a gang of pretty scary men. I played out a whole scenario of confrontation, threat, and stab wounds in my head. I was lying on the sidewalk, dying slowly, leaving my body, and thinking " I never made that solo to the Goldberg Variations!" Drama queen. The young men passed me without even seeing me and I was left with a quest. 

Anyway, I created that desert fantasy in the middle of Manhattan and three and a half years later completed the solo. It premiered at the American Dance Festival on July 15, 1997. It was 80 minutes long. There was a story that the Goldberg Variations were written to help someone fall back asleep. In the wee hours of the night this particular Count would summon his harpsichordist and ask him to play (how about that for privilege and exploitation?). I told people that my challenge was to see if I could keep everyone awake watching me on stage for 80 minutes. I knew that one way would be to keep changing up the moods, movement qualities, rhythmic relationships, and aesthetic relationships to the music. Some of variations were just "NOT ME.". I cried a lot in frustration alone in those studios; I often failed but I never gave up. And in the end, the "me" grew so much wider from the process. 

I wish I knew who those young men approaching me on that dark street were so I could thank them. We do so much for each other without even knowing. 

I'd also like to thank Byron Suber for inviting me to Cornell again.. He saw them while I was working on them in my Manhattan Desert and invited me up to Cornell in 1996 to perform what I had so far. I'd also like to thank Miles Yeung for his enduring respect and care for these solos. Thank you, dancers and production team.

- Mark Haim

Annika Currie
Annika Currie is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences studying astronomy and music. Annika grew up training mainly in jazz, lyrical, contemporary, and tap at Class Act Dance for 14 years. This is Annika’s first year performing with PMA and she looks forward to working with the department more in the future.

Annika Deutsch
Annika Deutsch is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in astronomy with a concentration in physics and minoring in dance and German. Annika began dancing at the age of 12 with Ballet Hispanico in New York City, where she studied ballet in the Cuban methodology, Flamenco, and many styles of modern dance. This is Annika's second year taking classes with the PMA department, but her first time performing in Locally Grown Dance. She is very excited to have been a part of this production and hopes to continue studying with PMA throughout her time here at Cornell!

Colton Edwards
Colton is a junior in the Dyson School studying Applied Economics and Management. A Pittsburgh-native, Colton started dancing at the age of 15, specializing in contemporary, neoclassical, and ballet. Further honing and developing his dance fundamentals, Colton attended Westinghouse Arts Academy. Colton's past notable credits include America's Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance, and Break the Floor Productions. This is Colton's first year performing with the PMA department, and he can't wait to train with them for the remainder of his undergraduate experience.

Trent Edwards
Trent Edwards is a junior in the Dyson School of Applied Economics with a concentration in strategy and environmental resource economics. Training in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, Trent has studied contemporary, modern, ballet, and jazz. Trent’s notable credits are So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Got Talent. This is Trent's first PMA performance, and he hopes you enjoy the performance.

Hayden Garniewicz
Hayden Garniewicz is a senior studying Sociology with minors in Inequality Studies and Global Health. She’s been dancing for 18+ years! Here at Cornell, she is also part of Rise Dance Group and is in Alpha Chi Omega. She’s had a wonderful time working with everyone in PMA over the last three years and is looking forward to a great show! She wants to thank her parents and family for supporting her, Byron for the opportunity, and her friends making sure she’s fed when she gets home from late rehearsals!

Molly Goldstein
Molly is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences double majoring in Government and Near Eastern Studies. Molly grew up training mainly in ballet, jazz, contemporary, and modern at the Houston Ballet Academy for 13 years. This is Molly’s first year performing with the PMA department and hopes to continue her dance training for the next four years!

Charlotte Hee
Charlotte is a sophomore in the Hotel School majoring in Hotel Administration and minoring in Dance. Charlotte grew up training in classical ballet and contemporary at Marin Ballet. This is Charlotte's first year with the PMA department, and she is looking forward to being on stage again.

Molly Hudson
Molly is a freshman in the College of Human Ecology majoring in human development. Molly grew up training mainly in musical theatre, contemporary, and ballet dance styles at Broadway Dance Center and Steps on Broadway in New York City. This is Molly’s first year performing with the PMA department and she is ecstatic to be part of this production.

Sarah Lynch
Sarah Lynch is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in music for opera performance. Her dance training mostly consisted of ballet growing up, and she attended summer intensives and workshops from the American Academy of Ballet, Burklyn Ballet Theater, and others. Sarah performed in Mini Locally Grown Dance last December, and she is very excited for her second performance with the PMA department!

Anna Rose Marion
Anna Rose is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Environment and Sustainability. Anna Rose has trained in ballet, pointe, modern, contemporary, and jazz, and she frequently choreographed for her dance company in high school. She is very excited to learn and grow as a dancer with the PMA department.

Hannah McManus
Hannah is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in psychology and minoring in dance. Hannah grew up training mainly in ballet and modern and went to Walnut Hill School for the Arts her last two years of high school to continue her dance training before coming to Cornell. This is Hannah’s fourth year performing with the PMA department and she is very excited to be a part of Locally Grown Dance.

Cate Moore
Cate is a freshman in the College of Human Ecology majoring in Human Biology, Health, and Society. She grew up in Massachusetts training mostly in ballet and has also studied during the summer with ballet companies such as Boston Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and The Washington School of Ballet. Cate is very excited to perform with the PMA department for the first time this year!

Katerina Petrosky
Kat is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in biology and society and minoring in Spanish and dance. Kat danced with the Junior Company of Mystic Ballet in Mystic, Connecticut throughout middle and high school where she trained in ballet, contemporary, and jazz. She is very grateful to continue dancing at Cornell in the PMA department and as a part of Rise Dance Group.

Emma Rethy
Emma is a Freshman in the College of Engineering, majoring in Operations Research and Engineering. Emma trained in classical ballet and modern at the Washington School of Ballet, in Washington, DC. This is Emma's second semester performing with PMA and she is so excited to be on stage!

Madeline Silva
Madeline is a senior in the College of Human Ecology studying Design + Environmental Analysis with a minor in French. She trained in ballet, tap, jazz, and contemporary for 13 years prior to coming to Cornell, including several years spent at the Armstrong School of Dance here in Ithaca. This will be her third time performing in Locally Grown Dance, and she is so grateful to have had the opportunity to continue her dancing through the PMA department!

Naomi Wang
Naomi is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Biology and minoring in Law & Society. She has been dancing for seventeen years and trained in contemporary, modern, jazz, and ballet at Inspire School of Dance in Naperville, Illinois. Here at Cornell, she is the captain of the Cornell DanceSport team. This is Naomi's second time being a part of LGD. She is very excited for the opportunity to perform on stage again and is grateful to be sharing it with so many incredible dancers!

Thomas Reeves
Thomas Reeves is a fifth-year PhD student at the Center for Applied Mathematics, researching probability and random matrix theory under Philippe Sosoe. He is funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Previously, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) in Japan. He is a passionate pianist and composer whose compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall (New York), the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), the National Portrait Gallery (London), and Richardson Auditorium (Princeton), among other venues.

Byron Suber - Faculty Mentor
Byron Suber is originally from New Orleans, LA, and moved to Ithaca in 1991 after ten years of living and working in New York City. His work there included choreography, music, theatre, costume design and performance art. His pieces have been  exhibited at La MAMA Inc., Performance Space 122, the Kitchen, DANSPACE, the American Dance Festival and The Wigstock music festival. He has received grants and awards from the Harkness Foundation, Art Matters Inc., New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Cornell Council for the Arts. He has taught at the American Dance Festival at Duke University, Dance Space and Steps, in NYC, as well as various universities in the States, France, Italy, Ireland and Spain. Since coming to Cornell he has continued to create work in dance and theatre as well as entering the realm of digital sound and visual media, for instance in collaboration with professors and students from MIT on a pair of digitally wired sneakers that produced music when the dancer moved. At Cornell, Suber teaches ballet and modern technique, yoga, dance history and criticism, dance composition, and digital media. Outside of his position in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, he completed a M.A in the History of Architecture and Urbanism in the School of Art, Architecture and Planning at Cornell.

Miles Yeung-Tieu - Faculty Choreographer
Originally from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Miles Yeung-Tieu is a dance artist currently based in Philadelphia, PA. His performance credits include Brian Sander’s JUNK, Stacey Tookey’s Still Motion, Helen Simoneau Danse, La Biennale di Venezia’s Arsenale della Danza, and the New York City production of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Miles has worked with international dance artists including Ismael Ivo (Brazil, Italy), Isabel Lewis (Germany), and Douglas Becker (Belgium) while studying and performing across Europe. Miles received his training at the University of the Arts, completing both his BFA in Modern Performance ('14) with honors and MFA in Dance ('19). He currently dances with Brooklyn-based company Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and is a collaborator with Mark Caserta's BigKid Dance.

Mark Haim - Guest Choreographer
Mark Haim has been making dances and teaching dance for 35 years.  Born in New York City, he began studying classical piano at age 6, and eventually attended the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, where, in addition to studying piano with Rosetta Goodkind, he studied theory, composition and chamber music. He was accepted to the Dance Division of The Juilliard School on an honorary scholarship, graduating with a BFA degree. There, he performed in works by Paul Taylor, Antony Tudor, Jose Limon and Anna Sokolow, and began choreographing. He received his MFA in Dance in 2006, in the first graduating class of the Hollins/ADF MFA program.

Howard Klein - Stage Manager
Howard Klein has worked for many years as a professional AEA production stage manager off-Broadway, regionally, and on tour around the USA. He is the Stage Manager for The Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. Howard has also worked in more than 300 venues in 11 countries and counting, as Production Manager and Lighting Designer of the dance company, Galumpha. He worked at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as Producing Coordinator in the Theatrical Production department and stage managed more than 30 productions for the NYU Graduate Acting Program. Other favorite credits include The Lincoln Center Institute, WP Theatre and The Cider Mill Playhouse. Howard has also taught Stage Management at SUNY Binghamton where he received his BA in Technical Theatre.

Seth Reiser - Lighting Designer 
Seth Reiser is a lighting and set designer who works in theatre, opera, dance and music.  Recent works in dance include: David Dorfman’s COME & BACK AGAIN (BAM); Yara Travieso’s Sagittarius A. (EMPAC).  Other western NY credits include The Royale at the Kitchen Theater; Our Town directed by Paul Mullins, and A Raisin in the Sun directed by Ethan McSweeney both at Chautauqua, Seth also frequently works at Geva in Rochester.  Regional theater highlights include designs for, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Theatre DC, Dallas Theatre Center, Two River Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, Trinity Repertory, Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory, The Denver Center Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth, American Repertory Theatre, and Playmakers Repertory. Seth also designs extensively for music and opera, favorite projects include, Esperanza Spaulding’s Twelve Spells American Tour directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer; Peter Eotvos’ Tri Sestri at the Ural Opera and Bolshoi Opera directed by Christopher Alden; Henze’s El Cimarrón at Festival Impulso in Mexico City directed by Robert Castro; JS Bach’s Matthew Passion (Berlin Philharmonic) at the Park Avenue Armory directed by Peter Sellars, Sufjan Stevens’ Round Up at BAM; Seth also regularly designs lighting for SF Symphony’s Sound Box concerts. Seth lives in Rochester, NY with his wife Mary and their two children Marion and Wyatt.  M.F.A. at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. sethreiserdesign.com

Sarah Bernstein - Costume Designer
Sarah Eckert Bernstein has been the Resident Costume Designer at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts since the fall of 2001. She is a Senior Lecturer in costume design and history at the Department of Performing and Media Arts. Ms. Bernstein is a graduate of the Theatre School at DePaul University (founded as the Goodman School of Drama) and the Yale School of Drama. 

PMA 1610 - Technical Production Lab:  

Sofia Aguirre, Erin Brickle, Kit Ellsworth, Hayden Garniewicz, Daniella Gonzalez, Aidan Herz, Hannah McManus, Jillian Parrino, Katrina Peterson, Saif Quraishi, Maxwell Ringer, Grayson Rosenberg, Noah Rubinstein, Bonny Wong, Vannessa Wong, Angela Yuan

Scene Shop Work-Study:  David Bascom, Arianna Louise Marie Josue, Julianna K. Lee, Charlie Wright
Props & Paint Work Study: Jessica Ritchie
Dressers:  Erin Brickle, Mine Okoloko    
Costume First Hands: Emma Kindig, Simone White, Lillian Liu
Light Board Programmer:  Thea Goldman
Sound Board Operator:  Steven Cha

Building/House Managers

 Sofia Aguirre, Mackenzie Closson, Naomi Daniel, Samantha Granja, Deepak Ilango, Anastasia Kreisel, Jack McManus, Maxwell Ringer, Matthew Saylor, Ariel Shaked, Sarah Zaragoza-Smith

PMA Production Staff

Director of Productions & Events: Pamela Lillard
Technical Director: Fritz Bernstein
Stage Manager: Howard Klein
Assistant Technical Director: Savannah Relos
Props Coordinator: Tim Ostrander
Master Electrician: Steven Blasberg
Costume Shop Supervisor: Lisa Boquist
Computer Support: Chris Christensen
Media Assistant: Randy Hendrickson
Communications & Events Coordinator: Youngsun Palmer
Communications Manager: Gary Gabisan
Box Office Manager: Julie Tibbits
Department Manager: Christopher Riley

Mark Goldberg, Cornell Council for the Arts, Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf.