I’ve quietly been working away over the last year learning to dance on an aerial rope. It’s a fabulous feeling and I eagerly continue my studies, but just for the fun of it I’m posting a little video of my progress in my most recent class with my fabulous teacher Kiebpoli Calnek. She teaches in NY and I highly recommend her to anyone interested in trying it out.
…Is the title of my most recent venture- a ritual theater piece told through movement, puppetry and song. We just performed it’s first incarnation at HERE Arts Center where I have been in residence with my collaborator and puppeteer Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith. The show was a great success- sold out both nights to audiences excited and intrigued. But it is truly a work in progress and we are looking forward to seeing where we go with it next! You can see more of the work in progress on our company’s facebook page- Aeolian Theatre and video clips put together by our fabulous videographer Rebecca Arndt on our vimeo page. These are especially exciting!
It was really wonderful to be working at the head of a fabulous ensemble of performers including Cory Antiel, Sophie Nimmannit, Matt Pearson, Lindsay and myself along with a dedicated band of musicians Rachel Menyuk, Emmanuelle Lambert-Lemoine, Zach Dunham, Kyle Jaster, and their fearless leader, our composer Akie Bermiss.
After several years away from my first theater home in the Washington area, I am very happy to be back this season to perform with the Washington Revels’ Italian Renaissance Christmas Revels at GW’s Lisner auditorium this weekend Dec 4-6 and next Dec 11-13. I am playing the part of Smeraldina, commedia servant to Leonardo DaVinci. It is a joy to be involved again in this production which has been a home to me since my mom directed the show in the early 90s and I would hang backstage until one year they threw me in a costume to replace one of the kids out sick. I then sang in the chorus as a teenager for 3 years. Now all the history comes whirling through me as I am welcomed back in a lead role, giving back to a celebration of light and community in which I so profoundly believe.
(tickets to the Revels can be purchased on the Revels website)
Thank you Bari Biern and Nick Eckert for these photos.
This Saturday night, July 18, at The Third Annual Brouhaha I will be performing Solo for Two as developed with the Mimetiks and performed at Spoke the Hub Brooklyn and The Sidwell Variety Show.
The event is a fundraiser party for my friend Matt Jones’ new album release. All are welcome, information can be found on Facebook under Third Annual’s Summer Brouhaha.
If you haven’t seen this piece yet, or you’d just like to join us for a lovely summer rooftop evening with drinks and live music and good people, this is your chance!
An exciting outdoor renegade production of this incredible classic. Emma plays Stella alongside her old highschool co-star David Gerson as Stanley Kowalski. No better neighborhood for this show than around the community garden-turned-theater on the LES where the colorful personalities of our neighbors jive seamlessly with the welcome trumpeter practicing across the street each night.
I am pleased to announce that you can now see me in the first rough cut clip of Your Mother’s Dress (working title, previously referred to in my post “Nate’s film”). Best if you choose “watch in high quality” this cut is without sound, cello music forthcoming.
After India I went on to Taiwan where I met up with U-Theatre- the company of traditional drummers I had met last summer in a workshop at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center for international artists. When I first met them I felt right away that they had something I had never seen before and I knew there was much I could learn from them. After taking a workshop with them in New York I was invited to come and visit them in Taiwan. It was an opportunity I could not pass up. I arrived in April unsure of what to expect but knowing already it was to be an experience I would never forget. I joined them half way through their 20th anniversary walking tour of the country traveling on foot anywhere between 15 and 30km a day, and watching their performances each night in the different towns. Ultimately I realized that what set these extraordinary performers apart was not merely the discipline of their bodies but as in India, the discipline of their energy. The connectedness of their whole beings and the ability to put the mind at peace so the heart can fully inhabit the body was central to their work. Aside from lessons in Tai Chi, Zen walking and KungFu, this essential concept of the discipline of energy is what I learned during this incredible adventure. And by some stroke of insight the experiences I had here came to complement and illuminate those I had in India.
For more detailed accounts of my time in Taiwan, please see my Taiwan travel blog
I was also asked to create a piece during my stay in Taipei which I based on the discoveries I made during the first month of Zen walking. I created the piece through a workshop I directed with high schoolers from U-Theater’s Performing Arts School 36. A DVD of the piece, entitled Adrift, is available upon request. Please email me for further information or enquiries.
Thanks to a graduate fellowship from my alma mater I have been able to take my theatre studies further afield, deepening my understanding across cultures. Having discovered physical theater to be my particular passion, my hope was to see other styles which are based on movement rather than text. I decided I wanted to really reach beyond what I already knew, diving into techniques and backgrounds that would seem utterly different but perhaps help me to find an essence shared by all. I should not have been surprised that the first place I found myself was a center for the study of Kuttiyattam- the world’s oldest theatre form still living today (pictured above). The center called Natanakairali is located in Kerala, India and run by internationally acclaimed actor, director, and leading Kuttiyattam scholar Mr. Gopal Venu. I was honored to be accepted as his student and began training right away. With my life revolving completely around the center I decided it would also be a very worthwhile investment to take up classes with Venu’s wife, Nirmala Paniker a renowned scholar, dancer, and teacher of Mohiniyattam- the classical dance of Kerala known for it’s grace and curving movements which are used with hand gestures to depict stories.Though most students focus in only one of the 2 fields, I found that the 2 classes complemented each other wonderfully. The girls pictured below are my young classmates preparing to go onstage for a Mohiniyattam performance.
I also traveled into villages in the Himalayas where I danced with the children and into the desert of Rajasthan where I met gypsies and folk artists and learned a bit about their local string puppetry.
For more detailed accounts of the trip, you can visit my India travel blog
I will tell you here though that what I learned was more than I could have ever expected. The technique was not only a physical challenge and cultural key, but it opened my eyes to a new discipline- the discipline of energy, the precise awakening of the intangible world through the specified control of energy. The philosophy of the work was as fascinating as the work itself- they are after all one and the same. I believe the philosophies will be just as useful now to my own work as the physical language I acquired.
As yet untitled, I just finished the shoot of a short film created by my friend Nathan Austin. A story of a girl and her father after the mother’s death. It is currently in post-production but we are hoping to have it ready to send to festivals in the fall. These are some stills from the footage and a couple of production shots of the very small cast and crew.
After graduating from Amherst College I returned to work for a semester in the costume and scene shops designing costumes, managing props and helping with all construction. I designed for two major productions while I was there. The first was The Pillowman and the second was Performance Project, a performance put together every year by the advanced choreography/composition class. Turns out, with my background in dance, designing for dance was perfect for me. With seven different pieces each requiring distinct designs to be completed in two weeks, it was certainly a challenge but I very much enjoyed the work. Here are some photos of the different pieces taken by the shop manager Bob Colby during the performance.
