all other photos-Julie Lemberger
I am honored to be part of Richard Daniels’ choreography for “Dances for an IPHONE”. (www.DancesforaniPhone.com). Click on this link to read about the upcoming panels, and showings of the films and discussions, including the 92 St Y and Dance on Camera at the Walter Reade Theater in January.
Upcoming performances include Sundays at 3 at the 92 St Y -February 12.-Lexington Ave and 92 Street, the RAD Festival March 2-4 in Kalamazoo, MI; Conversations at the Flea -March 16 (White St. in Manhattan, NY) and La Guardia College Performing Arts Center in conjunction with Queens Council for the Arts, June 15 2012. Click here for performance calendar.
SUNDAYS AT THREE: Barbara Mahler – 92nd Street Y – New York, NY
www.92y.org/Uptown/Event/Sundays-At-Three-BarbaraMahler.aspx
Join Barbara Mahler and guests for dances new and slightly used, including an excerpt from her 2002 solo The Whispering Pages-short dances in white all in a row to the soulful voices of The Platters. “Guests” include choreographers Leslie Satin and David Rafael Botana, Valerie Green, Rachel Thorne Germond and Katherine Howard. Join us for an afternoon rich in aesthetic variation; a palate of form, movement and viewpoints.
RAD FESTIVAL – KALAMAZOO MI – March 1-4 2012 www.midwestradfest.org
DANCE CONVERSATIONS AT THE FLEA, NYC, ON WHITE STREET, MARCH 15, 2012
SPRING BLOOMS- Green Space, LIC, April 13, 2012 (link on right)
CHOREOGRAPHIC RESIDENCY IN GOTHENBERG, SWEDEN APRIL 16-29 International Dance Programme Gothenburg–includes open classes…..see workshop link to right
LEAP Dance Project | Queens Council on the Arts queenscouncilarts.org/leap/
Artistic and outreach support for selected Queens artists 2011-12. Funded by the Queens Council for the Arts (QCA) The support includes working space, peer group support, workshops and culminates in a performance event of new dances at La Guardia Community College in Queens, NY, June 15 2012.
Supported in part by a Harkness Space Grant at the 92 St Y and the Hunter College Alumni Consortium.
PERFORMANCE FROM CHILE, SANTIAGO AUGUST 2011
This short film is an excerpt of the completed version of “The Ground Underneath.” It was performed as the culmination of a 3 week teaching/choreographic residency in Chile with funding from the Government Cultural Foundations.
www.gam.cl/danza/barbara-mahler/
ESSENCE OF MY WORK
Movement is part of our everyday lives, and can be shaped and formed to realize a specific goal. It can be virtuous, and/or pedestrian. The two can be part of the same canvas, the same dance. Movement is the underlying and strongest structure from which I create: designs, scenes, stories, and environments. My goal is to bring to the surface underlying emotional tones that are kinesthetically experienced by the viewer as well as to design tapestries that are stark, simple and intimate. I reference the body, my body, to research and create. My structures are rigorous. I am interested in beauty and mystery, and story – telling, as I work to distill the meaning of a dance to its purest essence. My current trajectory includes but is not limited to rigorous improvisational and collaborative process in both in rehearsals and performance. I use and reference the body, using pure movement and the process of its invention and investigation to create my dances.
My interest, my passion, is the body – the limitless possibilities of the body as an expressive instrument, to carry a story, express a viewpoint, depict a character, create an environment. I have pursued the form of the solo dance for many years. I think of solo dances as being in dialogue with the spaces in which they are created and/or performed, and each particular audience. Theories of physics, as well as the writings of Deeprok Chopra, Joseph Campbell, and others ,teach us that nothing exists alone; that all things can only exist in relationship. This is the way I approach my solos./dances. They are given a new life with each new audience in each performance. Although all dances are created to realize a particular form or shape, to convey an event, fulfill a concept, solo dances are innately possessed of a spontaneity and flexibility that give rise to various interpretations and meanings. In the absence of other dancers, the solo dancer’s inner dialogue is the primary tool in creating and maintaining a relationship between performer and audience, while the dance itself creates the structure for the communication. The audience, an assortment of individual viewers, comes together in what I think of as a collective vision. The relationships thus created are with the self, the audience and the space. Although I know what my dances are, they acquire new life in each different circumstance. I mold and craft my dances in detail and design, and in paradox, aim for spontaneity and immediacy. My current trajectory includes but is not limited to rigorous improvisational and collaborative process in rehearsals and performance.
Deborah Jowitt of the Village Voice wrote the following about a concert of my work, presented by Danspace Project at St. Mark’ Church – :“Barbara Mahler roots her choreography in distillation, as if she aims to extract the essence of her ideas, making them calmer and purer. Struggle is subdued, climax minimized. She could almost lull you to sleep, were it not for the intriguing ways she blends delicacy and strength and skews familiar movements. At the end of her Raw Tenderness, she balances on one leg with the other stretched out behind her. You’d never call the pose an arabesque; her arms are pressed against her sides, and her body forms a horizontal line from the top of her head to the tip of her toe. The image is that of a seesaw in perfect, unwavering equilibrium, a woman at ease in control. Mahler, a noted teacher, views dance training as a voyage of self-discovery. The solos and a trio presented by Dancespace Project t at St. Mark’ Church also suggest journeys”.
THE GROUND UNDERNEATH – FERTiLE GROUND@ Green Space, LIC…October 2011-
taped by WALKING GUSTO-work in progress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjScprLVQwg
Excerpt from AGENDA, with Barbara Mahler and Jeremy Lavadere, taped at the Judson Church as part of the Movement Research Presenting Series 2008
A choreographer/teacher/performer of international reputation, Barbara Mahler draws upon her life experiences and artistic exposures to create moving solos of clarity and design, for herself and other artists.
JESSICA WINOGRAD in a movie created by Barbara Mahler in collaboration with the performer.
Barbara has been a recipient of the Sage Cowles Land Grant Guest Artist (University of Minnesota), a 92 St Y Harkness space grant 4 times, and was a Movement Research Artist in Residence for the 2000-01 and 2006-08 seasons. She has created work for the Hunter College Dance Company, the Skolen for Moderne Danse, Copenhagen (Denmark), Janet Oxley, with funds from the Quebec Artes Council, and for other independent artists.
Ms Mahler is an ongoing faculty of Movement Research in NYC, on the Artist Advisory Board of BAX, and a senior faculty and certified practitioner of Zero Balancing, a hands on healing bodywork modality.
Dance film, performed by and in collaboration with Cara Heerdt, filmed, choreographed and directed by me. Music – Michael Rodach, location – Long Island City, New York
| Excerpt from SHORTS, in progress performance at Judson Church, -Movement Research Presenting Series Fall 2008Below is an untitled solo, having its first performance July 2011 at Hunter College. Future plans include a re=working of the material for performances taking place in the Fall and Winter/Spring 2011-12. Music from a CD “Invocations” |
DANCE OF SCATTERINGS-
Choreographer/performer: Barbara Mahler
Sound/text: Fara Greenbaum, Anthem (The War)
Venue: Ulla’s House-December 19, 2009
- ” DANCE OF SCATTERINGS” is about the ongoing tradition of story- telling. Through the means of telling, our histories passed down through the generations. In my “world” of “Scatterings” the audience is close and all around, my family, to whom I pass along my thoughts and the events of my past and present. There is an audio tape playing- full of random thoughts and ideas, as our days often are. The past and present lose their boundaries and become merged. There is no linear story line. Instead, what is created is a sum of ideas utilizing text, and song, movement, and the intimacy of the space. The audience is close, the circle of lights provide paradox of safety, warmth, community, isolation, loss and death. ‘”Come closer into my world. Stand in my shoes”.
“A Dance of Scatterings” was created with support from the Hunter College Alumni Dance Consortium, and Green Space, LIC.
Klein Technique is grounded through the process of learning. One of its fundamental goals is learning movement without copying shape and form; to know, on a deep body understood level, the pathways to achieve the choreographer’s goal. It works the same way from the perspective of improvisational processes – the dancer is connected, grounded, with and in their own body.
As my teacher Dr. Fritz Smith often says “I wish you could see the world (of the body) through my eyes”.
Fragments/Simple Separations-photo, J. Lemberger
photo – b.mahler, v.shick
photos by Julie Lemberger
Vicky Shick in "Fragments-Simple Separations" Dancespace Project
Amy Kail in "Fragments-Simple Separations" Dancespace Project, NYC
photo by Anja Hitzenberg |
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