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WORLD PREMIERE
ABOUT THE WORK
Open Machine is the latest world premiere from acclaimed choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener. Projected images, audiovisual description, and virtual renderings respond in real time to the dancers, as human and technological pathways converge into a choreography that imagines an artificial intelligence lovingly programmed by experimental dance. Blurring the lines between body, brain, and machine, this genre-defying work creates a constantly shifting, multi-sensory world of performance. Expanding on their earlier experiments with dance for screen in works like TESSERACT (2017), Mitchell and Riener collaborate with a cast of eleven dancers to explore improvisation, memory, and responsive decision-making. The performers move with both precision and abandon as they navigate choreographic systems that mirror—and disrupt—the spatial and social structures that shape our lives.
The evening is propelled by a sweeping, mechanical sound score by electronic musician Mas Ysa, with media design by Jesse Stiles and lighting by Davison Scandrett. Featuring performers Morgan Amirah Burns, Savannah Gaillard, Jennifer Gonzalez, Michael Greenberg, Claude (CJ) Johnson, Catherine Kirk, Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell, Chaery Moon, Kalliope Piersol, and Silas Riener, Open Machine merges the organic and the digital into a vivid reimagining of live performance.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener are New York-based dance artists. Their work involves the building of collaborative worlds through improvisational techniques, digital technologies, and material construction. They met as dancers in the Merce Cunningham Dance company and since 2010 they have created over 25 multidisciplinary dance works including site-responsive installations, concert dances, gallery performances and dances for film in venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barbican Centre, REDCAT, The Walker Art Center, and MoMA/PS1. Throughout they have maintained a commitment to queer culture and aesthetics. Their partnership intentionally blurs authorship and maintains a deep commitment to collaboration with a diverse community of dancers, performers, artists and cultural institutions. rashaunsilasdance.com
Rashaun Mitchell is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2012 NY Dance and Performance Award (Bessies) for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer.” His work has been presented by New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, Baryshnikov Arts Center, REDCAT, ICA Boston and Summer Stages Dance, La Mama Moves Festival, Mount Tremper Arts, Skirball Center at NYU, the Museum of Arts and Design, The Lab, ODC, and at various site-specific locations. Other awards include a 2007 Princess Grace Award: Dance Fellowship, a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Art “Grant to Artist,” and a 2011 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) for “Sustained achievement in the work of Merce Cunningham 2004-2012.” Mitchell is a Cunningham Trustee and licensed stager of the repertory. Since graduating with a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, he has collaborated with many artists, including Anne Carson, Stephin Merrit, Carla Fernandez, Charles Atlas, Xavier Cha, Davison Scandrett, Mas Ysa/ Thomas Arsenault, Jodi Melnick, Sara Mearns, Moriah Evans, Phillip Greenlief and Claudia LaRocco. Mitchell teaches workshops and classes throughout the country. He has staged work at CalArts and Connecticut College and has been on faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, and NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Silas Riener is a graduate of Princeton University and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2007-2012. He has performed with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, Rebecca Lazier, Tere O’Connor, Wally Cardona, and Kota Yamazaki. His own work has been curated at EMPAC, The Chocolate Factory, LMCC’s River to River Festival, The Serpentine Pavillion, and Danspace Project. His ongoing collaboration with artist Martha Friedman has resulted in works at Andrea Rosen Gallery 2, The Henry Museum, Locust Projects Miami, and Jessica Silverman Gallery.
SUPPORT
This project is made possible in part with support from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Harkness Foundation for Dance.
NYU Skirball’s programs are made possible in part with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the Howard Gilman Foundation; Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels; Culture Ireland; The Shubert Foundation; Collins Building Services; General Delegation of the Government of Flanders to the USA; Goethe Institut New York; Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; New England Foundation for the Arts; Harkness Foundation for Dance; and Marta Heflin Foundation; as well as our valued donors through memberships, commissioning, and Allies for Arts Access Fund support.