TWO: exploring duos

press release: 

Liz Sexe presents TWO: exploring duos on October 15th at 7:30 p.m. at the Madison Circus Space.  Tickets will be on sale for $10 at the door.  For this project Sexe invited seven female choreographers, all at different points in their career, to create a duet on her.  That is the only limitation.  How they chose to interpret the task was up to them.  For some of the pieces Sexe found her own dance partner but for others, the choreographer set her up with who or what they imagined would be a good fit for the piece. 

When asked why she is producing the show, Sexe said, “I wanted to give myself the opportunity to work with as many of Madison's Female Choreographers as I could.  I wanted to challenge myself to work with different dancers, different processes and different movement styles.”  This is also an opportunity to continue to build a stronger dance community.  Building community means putting in the work of building relationships.  This work is fulfilling work.  “With over two hundred hours of rehearsals for this project my appreciation for these amazing woman, who make up part of Madison’s dance community, has only grown stronger.  My hope is that it will inspire even more productions by individuals and more shared concerts.”  

In alphabetical by choreographer here is the list of works:

Kate Corby (Liz with Collette Stewart)

Maureen Janson (Liz with Olivia Rivard)

Heidi Krause (Liz with Heidi Krause and cast)

Li Chiao-Ping (Liz with text)

Liz Sexe (Lauren Gibbs and Emily Miller) 

Marlene Skog (Liz with Jessica Hoyt)

Collette Stewart  (Liz with Yun Chen Liu)

Lisa Thurrell (Liz with Alaina Keller and Alyssa Jendusa)

Lighting will be by Jim Vogel

Kate Corby re-developed her recent piece “Giving Way” for Sexe and Collette Stewart, a spiraling meditation exploring proximity and circularity to a hypnotizing score by composer Judd Greenstein. Originally made for two of Corby's Chicago company members, Giving Way is part of a larger project - the re-setting of dances across communities without sacrificing the agency of each cast.

Maureen Janson has been making dances for a broad range of performance works here in Madison since 1993. Much of her work is in theatre and opera, yet it is always the most refreshing and inspiring to be in the studio creating a concert dance work. She has always been drawn to collaboration, and her approach to TWO is of that--to create something in collaboration with the dancers and the composers.  “Together, we make something that no one of us would have created on our own.  We make an experience that is entirely new, and that experience pushes us farther as artists.”

Heidi Krause is a world traveling, freelance choreographer and performer who recently moved her home base from NYC back to her hometown of Madison, WI.  She teaches Sensation-Based Improvisation and Modern Dance Technique classes for the UW Continuing Studies Program and for her own company, SENSE.  Much of her work stems from the concepts of spiritual transcendence and emotional release, as so in her piece for TWO, which depicts unseen influences between relational conflict.

This piece, part of Li Chiao-Ping’s upcoming concert Weight of Things, has to do with consumption: needing, wanting, and having too much. Chiao-Ping said, “I challenged Sexe with a non-traditional duet concept. Instead of partnering with another human being, instead she would partner with an element of performance she was more unfamiliar with: thoughts, expressed through spoken word.  The process itself was a collaborative duet between myself and Sexe.” 

Opportunities such as these are important towards the development and growth of dance artists in the Madison community. This is one of the primary reasons I am looking into the challenges that face our dance artists here, and with the help of the Madison Community Foundation we will be launching our Professional Dance Mentorship Program this year.

Sexe’s work “Wound-Up” is a revisiting of the duet performed in her spring concert and was first conceived in 2012.  Sexe believes the work changes over time and needs to grow with the dancers.  Lauren Gibbs and Emily Miller have built a relationship with this work and with this new rendition they have grown into the rolls.  With Tim Russell’s driving music, the dancers are in a world of manipulation; manipulated by outside sources, each other and themselves.   

Although much of Marlene Skog’s work has not been seen in Madison it has been performed nationally and internationally for over 20 years.. Skog's signature style is a ballet and contemporary fusion that is not main stream, or fits into any one category. Each work defines itself.  Movement material she create belongs to the moment and to the surreal world that happens in that space, at that time and in that work. The layers in her dance, like the layers of life are complex yet clear. Her new duet creates its own playful world. You will take away what you want and enjoy the rest. 

Collette Stewart has been a part of the Madison Dance community for the past fifteen years as a performer and choreographer. Her recent work explores the relationship between meditation, somatic awareness and the beauty of dance. Stewart’s new work, “Crossing Hemispheres,” is a work inspired by the changing functionality of the brain as we age - from a brain skilled at storing multitudes of distinct facts to a merged, networked brain that extracts necessary information from integrated patterns of understanding.

Lisa Thurrell, Co Artistic Director of Kanopy Dance Company and Co Director of the Kanopy Academy for Contemporary Dance is a dancer, choreographer, director, and master teacher.  In this new work, Thurrell challenges the duet form by weaving three dancers through the piece.  Her choreography has been described by critics as “…like a Hieronymus Bosch painting spilling onto the floor of the theater” to “The work stresses the fragility of the human body and self-reflection.”