December 7 - 20, 2006

December 7 & 8 - Liz Sargent Installations / Susan Hefner & Michael Evans / Joe Randazzo

December 13 & 14 - Tara O'Con / Enrico D. Wey & Lucy Yim / Yoko Myoi & Kanako Hiyama

December 19 & 20 - Red Fly Blue Bottle / Pele Bauch / Heather Christian Ensemble

First produced in 2004, Fresh Meat provides dedicated residency, technical assistance and performance opportunities to artists working in theater, dance, music, puppetry, standup comedy and multimedia. This year's artists include Pele Bauch, Christina Campanella, Heather Christian, William Cusick, Michael Evans, Stephanie Fleischmann, Susan Hefner, Kanako Hiyama, Yoko Myoi, Tara O'Con, Joe Randazzo, Liz Sargent, Enrico Wey, and Lucy Yim. Artists are invited to create new works specifically for The Chocolate Factory's unique ground floor, basement and storefront gallery spaces, or to continue development of an existing project. Artists receive dedicated rehearsal residencies of 1 week or more, access to technical equipment, and two evenings of performance. Each artist is encouraged to transform the Factory's spaces to best suit his/her performance.

Liz Sargent Installations - Revealing
Liz Sargent presents an excerpt from a new work to be presented by Danspace Project in May 2007. Revealing uses projection and two way mirror to take a look at the layers we create emotionally and physically. Featuring Direction, Installation and Costumes by Liz Sargent; "live visual art" by Sarah Kipp; and performances by Djamila Moore and Marcia Johnson.

Susan Hefner and Michael Evans - Cymbalic Logicians
Featuring 50 cymbals suspended, mounted on stands, bowed, struck, danced upon, thrown or worn as armor, Cymbalic Logicians is a structured improvisation created and performed by percussionist Michael Evans and dancer/choreographer Susan Hefner. The instruments become symbols, sculpture, and objects of theater: barriers, islands, quagmires, garments, and tender gifts. Video clips from the rehearsal process by Nelson Simon give a humorous glimpse into the performers' zany real life relationship.

Joe Randazzo
Assistant Editor at The Onion, Joe Randazzo has been doing standup comedy on and off for about six years. His greatest achievement in that arena was making several diners at a noodle restaurant complain to the management after he described, in great detail, the process of President George W. Bush being pushed through his mother's birth canal as part of an elaborate and not completely understood comedic routine. It was only performed once. He can occasionally be seen performing standup at some of the finer eating and drinking establishments below Houston Street in all of Manhattan.

Tara O'Con - Sternum
Performed inside the Chocolate Factory's dilapidated elevator shaftway, Sternum encapsulates the inherent strength that manifests within a state of raw vulnerability. Beginning with a physical struggle against the magnetic pull of gravity, Ms. O'Con achieves moments of stasis that are at once grotesque and beautiful. Over time, this resistant force transforms into the energy that propels her through space with both anxious abandon and reflective control. Created and Performed by Tara O'Con; Costumes by Mary McKenzie.

Enrico D. Wey and Lucy Yim - The Living Laboratory presents: An Approximation of Lingual Aesthetics, Pt 1a.
Part classroom demonstration, part performance, this collaboration between performer/video artist Enrico D. Wey and choreographer Lucy Yim is inspired by the life of Karl von Frisch, who won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his elucidation on the behavior of honeybees, specifically for his discovery of their communicative uses of dance (hive bees use the "round" and the "waggle" dance jointly to communicate the location of a source of food). An Approximation irreverently merges von Frisch�s scientific findings with the awkward machinations of two people who find themselves consumed by a single source of fascination - honey. Interlaced with found footage and text, a typical scholastic atmosphere soon slides off the scales as Fig.1 and Fig.2 are enveloped by a tiny, tiny obsession that puts their congruence at odds with one other. Featuring music composed by Samuel Stein.

Yoko Myoi and Kanako Hiyama - The Monkey Moo
A stylized vaudeville performance that incorporates physical theater, puppetry, and live music, The Monkey Moo takes place in1920's Shanghai, a city of chaotic beauty with the smell of opium, crime, poverty, life with corruption and glamorous wealth. Drawing on her background in modern dance and mime, Creator/Performer Yoko Myoi constructs a character that is bi-sexual, bi-cultural and even bi-species: half human and half monkey! Directed by Kanako Hiyama; Designed by Karen Elizaga and Ayako Dean; Music composed by James Dellatacoma.

Christina Campanella and Stephanie Fleischman - Red Fly/Blue Bottle
This song cycle with video, created by Composer Christina Campanella and Playwright Stephanie Fleischmann (Orpheus @ HERE), investigates the ineffable fallout of a secret war. In an isolated house haunted by the buzzing of a lone red fly, a clock explodes and a man makes an abrupt exit, setting off towards destinations unknown. A compendium of songs pieced together from found sounds and interwoven with a collage of tiny narrative films chronicles an odyssey of absence through a world that has shifted off its axis - in which sunflowers carry telescopes, voices emanate from the mouths of bottles, and a secret code is embedded in a string of household objects. Featuring Video by Peter Norman and Direction by Mallory Catlett (Banana Bag and Bodice).

Pele Bauch - Ism
Performed right at the audience's feet, this new dance work by Pele Bauch offers a rare up-close performance experience. Sliding along the floor, the dancers move like cubist amoebas wrapped in plastic. The dancers crinkle and melt, shifting into twisted stretches and folding through flat tangles. As inevitable as evolution, they continually rearrange the audience seating as the performance progresses. Viewers find themselves inside the performance space, watching the dance unfold all around them. Choreography/Direction by Pele Bauch. Dancers: Pele Bauch, Donna Costello, Abigail Levine, Christine Sandifer. Ism will premiere at Joyce Soho in June 2007.

Heather Christian Ensemble
Rigorously classically trained, Heather Christian's plunk-prissy piano style is original, and her blues influenced text-heavy rock-outs come from a deep respect for musical and lyrical gravity. Paired with her trio of testosterone (Eric Legaspi & Felipe Torres), ballads of love and lack-there-of are pumped into romping stomping screechers. Christian has been called "The female Bruce Springsteen". She has no idea what that means. Dec 19th she will be playing with friend/cellist/virtuoso Trevor Exter; the 20th will be a full on band show. Her Band: Eric Legaspi (Bass), Felipe Torres (Drums), Ed Charruen (Guitar), Rob Bloom (Hand Percussion and Djembe).

William Cusick - What kind of coffin are you building?
A new multi-channel interactive video installation by William Cusick (Big Art Group, Dead City @ New Georges). combining audio, video and real-time interactions using MIDI triggers. Physical interactions and (im)personal memories rooted in the collective death drive architecture of technology. Artists/Programmers: William Cusick, Ryan Holsopple, Alex Koch.

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Live Sh-- Alternative Presenter Fair

1/10 & 1/11 2009

THROW

February 17 2009, 7PM