DANSPACE PROJECT, AND BIGMANARTS

PRESENT

SLEEPING GIANT

Artwork/Story – Daniel Duford
Direction/Choreography – Lawrence Goldhuber
Music – Tin Hat (Live)
Video Design – Janet Wong
Lighting Design – Robert Wierzel
Associate Lighting Design – Seth Reiser
Production Design – Gregory L. Bain
Costume Design – Liz Prince

Featuring:
Rhetta Aleong  Arthur Aviles  Lawrence Goldhuber
Alice Kaltman   Heidi Latsky  Brandin Steffensen  Tony Wicks

AUGUST 12-23, 2008
Massachucetts Museum of Contemporary Art
MASS MoCA
NORTH ADAMS, MACreative Residency
World Premier Performance – August 23, 2003

OCTOBER 2-5, 2008
ABRONS ARTS CENTER–
HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT, NYC
Co-presented with DANSPACE PROJECT
New York Premiere

OCTOBER 27 and NOVEMBER 1, 2008
DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP
DANCENOW (NYC) FESTIVAL

Sleeping Giant was developed, in part during the 2007-2008 Artist-in-Residence Program at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, New York City.Sleeping Giant was further developed as part of the Mass Manufacturing residency
program at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA)The creation of Sleeping Giant is made possible, in part, with funds from the Danspace Project 2008-09 Commissioning Initiative with support from the Mid-Size Presenting Organizations Initiative, implemented by the Non-profit Finance Fund and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.Sleeping Giant is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The original and live music for this evening’s performance was commissioned and
supported by The American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program.

Production support supplied by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

BIGMANARTS has received continued generous funding from The Harkness Foundation for Dance.

SLEEPING GIANT has been made possible by the following donors: Bjorn Amelan & Bill T. Jones, Pierre Apraxine, Paul & Sheila Cohen, Sean Curran, Stephanie Goldhuber, Jodi Krizer Graber, Mary Gridley, Julie Landman, Claire Leffel, Ray & Fran Osinoff, Susan & Shelly Osinoff, Alice Palmisano & David Greene, Cesar Puello, Nicolas Ramirez, Nat & Bunny Ritzer, Beatrice Scherer, Kevin Scherer & Sharrel Vice, Sid Schwager, Cindy Sherman, Jerry Spano & Danielle Violi, Jack Sparrow, Rose Storin, Diane Storin & Jerome Goldhuber, Susan & Fred Tapper, Anita Tierney, Stephen Weinroth, and Micki Wesson.

Thank you.

Special thanks also goes to Jay Wegman, Vincent Miller, Rachel Chanoff, Laurie Cearleys, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Susan Killam, Everyone at Abrons, Danspace and MASS MoCA, Laurie Uprichard, Patrick Corbin, Stephen Jones, Micki Wesson, Marcy Pianin at Mirrorball, Bob Bursey, The Foundation for Dance Promotion, The Talented Wong, Robert Wierzel, Gregory L. Bain, Seth Reiser, James Schriebl, Eric Notke, Paul Houtkooper, Hans Wendl, Tin Hat, the dancers, and especially to Daniel Duford whose work inspired this show.

NEW YORK PRESS PREVIEW

SLEEPING’S BEAUTY

Lawrence Goldhuber keeps art on its toes with Sleeping Giant
By Susan Reiter

Lawrence Goldhuber has given us pageants (a downtown “Julius Caesar” in which Lady Macbeth put in an appearance), cheeky comedy (his hilarious depiction of Gluttony) and skewed autobiography, always illuminated by sly wit and often by understated poignancy. His own cheerful, impudent presence is often an important part of his works, but while he’s appearing in Sleeping Giant, his ambitious hour-long piece that premieres this week, he’s not the major focus.

Central to this production, an allegorical dance adaptation of Daniel Duford’s 2006 installation of the same title, are twin brothers-somewhat analogous to Romulus and Remus-whose lives take diverging paths and between them, as the Superhero and the Sleeping Giant, chart this country’s rise, fall and rebirth. Duford described his creation, which was on view in a huge gym at Oregon’s Marylhurst University, as “a meditation on heroism and mythology in America.” In presenting his own take on the artist’s vision, Goldhuber is similarly not shying away from larger concerns.

“Last year, while doing some grant writing, I decided it was important to be a political artist, to address issues in my work. I still want to make an entertaining show, but it has to have a conscience,” Goldhuber says at the end of a rehearsal day. “America has become a very strange place to be living, a place that we can’t really be proud of in the world.” Recalling his time with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, where he was a notable performer for a decade, he remarks, “When I used to tour, it was great to be an American. Now, I wouldn’t even know how people feel about America.”

Sleeping Giant, which is co-presented by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center, reunites the choreographer and director with several colleagues from his days with Jones and Zane. The cast includes dancers Arthur Aviles, who portrays the Superhero, and Heidi Latsky, with whom Goldhuber toured as a duet for several years. Janet Wong, whose video design animates and manipulates Duford’s rich images, is the Jones/Zane troupe’s associate director. The artists’ work spills across the large backdrop and also floats across a scrim and a series of screens that descend periodically.

“I decided that I wanted to use as much of Daniel’s art as possible,” Goldhuber says. He and Duford met when he performed in Portland, Ore., where the artist is based, and Duford inquired about sketching him. “The show is generated from his ideas, his story.”

“All the art work is his, and the manipulation of it is Janet’s. He came and painted the giant forest backdrop, and supplied some extra graphics to her.”  Duford’s artwork includes comic panels, in which the dialogue between the now-adult brothers finds its parallel in their onstage movement, as well as vivid scenes of an early American town, highways, suburban sprawl and more, which Goldhuber incorporates into a panorama of America past and present. The Sleeping Giant installation included images covering vast walls as well as 20 tiny wooden houses on which part of the story was depicted, and large terra cotta sculptures.

An August residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art provided an invaluable opportunity to pull together the complex production, which Goldhuber has been working on for two years. “I knew all the elements, but it was important to get everybody together.”

Joining the collaboration was Tin Hat, an acoustic musical ensemble who created the vibrant, ever-shifting score (moving from blues to jazz to bluegrass to klezmer) for the work. Duford had sent Goldhuber one of their recordings because it was music he listened to while creating his installation. “I listened to several discs, and thought, this music has such a narrative built into it,” the choreographer says. Thanks to a grant he secured from the American Music Center, Tin Hat will perform the music live at Abrons.

Their distinctly American sounds resonate with the mythical American journey Goldhuber depicts in this work that is both narrative and allegory, with a nod to folk art alongside incorporation of up-to-date technology.”