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THRESHOLDS CROSSED Friday, April 21st 8pm (PHOTOS)
World premiere of Thresholds Crossed - music, dance,
visual installation - Russian and American dancers
April 21, 2006, Lisner Auditorium, 21st & H Streets NW - Washington, DC
Tickets available at the Lisner Auditorium Box Office (Tues-Fri, 11 am-5 pm);
$30, $25, $20, $15 (students)
Ticket Master Outlets, Phone Charge (301) 808-6900 and ticketmaster.com.
Download Information on PDF.
Concurrent with Thresholds Crossed is the exhibition, Maida Withers: A Choreographer's
Life, four decades of dance, April 11 thru April 21, 2006, Dimock Gallery, 21st
and H Streests NW, Lisner Auditorium Lower Level. FREE.
Thresholds Crossed is an evening-length multi media dance work, a
kinetic fusion of East and West, that fearlessly explores the events, ideology
and humanistic issues that link the U.S. with the former Soviet Union and contemporary
Russia. Colored by the implied humor of propaganda art, old scars of the Russian
gulag system, terrorism, and recent events in America, Thresholds actively
explores the moment when society crosses the line. With this international project
with U.S. and Russian dancers, the DC-based Dance Construction Company celebrates
its 30th anniversary. Thresholds Crossed was created in the capital
cities of Moscow (2005) and in Washington, DC (2006). (http://www.lisner.org)
Pioneering
choreographer, Maida Withers, is known locally and internationally for her innovative
and prolific choreography and for her intensity as a dancer. She has been called
the “iconoclast of Washington dance.” Maida Withers and The Dance
Construction Company recently received the 2005 D.C. Mayor’s Arts Award
for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline. Maida and the Company have toured
extensively internationally, over seventeen tours worldwide.
Two Great Monuments for Two Great Nations
Statue of Liberty (1886) - Liberty Island New
York Harbor
Motherland is Calling (1967)- Mamayev Hill Volgograd (former Stalingrad)
For Thresholds Crossed, Withers collaborates with electronic composer/musician,
Steven Hilmy (Washington, DC), Audrey Chen, experimental vocalist/cellist (Baltimore),
filmmaker, Linda Lewett (Washington, DC/New York City) and light design, William
DeMull, to create this provocative four-part work of dance, new music, and visual
installation. Thresholds Crossed includes dancers Dan Joyce, Anthony Gongora,
Rob Bettmann, Jen Stone, Megan Thompson, and Maida Withers (USA), and Nikolai
Schetnev, Anastasia Oleynik, Konstantin Grouss, Ekaterina Zharinova (Russia);
Vitalii Sozoniuk (Ukraine).
The new music score, performed live to heighten the interactive aspect, references
Russian Civil War and patriotic songs as well as contemporary pop music. The
visual installation features footage shot at the first gulag site (forced labor
camps) in the 15th Century Monastery and surroundings on Solovki Islands, Russia;
propaganda poster art; memorials to war; political words and text; graffiti
art, and other images from Russia and America today.
Thresholds Crossed is made possible by the establishment of contemporary
dance in Russia following Perestroika in 1991 and is a direct result of eleven
tours and residencies by Maida Withers and the Dance Construction Company in
Russia since 1997 (see attachment). Important for the development of Thresholds
Crossed was the Company’s performance during the 300th anniversary celebration
of the founding of St. Petersburg in 2003, the performance residency in Solovki
Islands, the site of the first Soviet Era gulag in 2004, the creation of LENIN
for the Lenin Museum in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia in 2005, and others. Thresholds
Crossed has been generously supported by the Ford Foundation in Russia,
the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Dallas Morse Coors Foundation, and the DC
Commission on the Arts / National Endowment for the Arts, among others.
Russians and Americans share deeply held values inherent in honor and patriotism,
values often won through struggles associated with conflicts and war, both historic
and current. In Thresholds Crossed Russians and Americans dance together in
charged physical performance about our shared experiences with the violence
of war, love of country, passion for freedom, and sorrow for loss. We ask, “What
remains of the long history of fear and distrust between Russia and America,
feelings we understand from the Cold War years? Whom can we trust and who can
trust us? How do we reconcile our need for privacy and the government’s
need for surveillance and security? What about displacement of values –
the value of displacement? How do we surrender to the will of the majority while
protecting the voice of one? How are propaganda art and political slogans in
Russia and America, often couched in humor, used to persuade?
Russian/American Residency, April 1-24, 2006
Calendar of Events – April 2006
April 9, 2006 Contact Movement Improvisation Workshop and Jam
11:30 – 1:30 Marvin Center Dance Studio, 800 21st Street NW, Washington,
DC
$15 and $20 to be paid at the door for non-GW participants; Lead by Nikolai
Schetnev, and assisted by Konstantin Grouss (Russia) and Vitalii Sozoniuk (Ukraine).
April 12, 2006 Panel discussion, “What Russia’s Young Artists Know
and Think
6:30 – 8:30 pm about Their Country’s Past.” Moderated by Hope
Harrison, director, GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs’
Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; Maida Withers; GW professor
and director of Maida Withers Dance Construction Company; Konstantin Grouss,
Anastasia Oleynik, Ekaterina Zharinova, Nikolai Schetnev, Russian dance artists.
Free.
April 11 to 21, 2006 Maida Withers: A Choreographer’s Life - Dimock Gallery,
Lisner Auditorium Lower Level.
An exhibit featuring four-decades of creative work by Maida Withers with The
Dance Construction Company. Maida Withers was a leader in the post modern revolution
in dance through her early work in Washington, DC. Selections in the exhibition
showcase the Company’s history of innovation and experimentation, new
music and media, science and technology along with local, national and international
collaborators. The exhibition opening for the press is April 11, 2006 between
11am – 1pm. Open to the public Tuesday through Thursday, 11am-1pm and
Friday through Saturday, 11am-3pm. Extended gallery hours will be held on April
21st to accompany the world premiere of Thresholds Crossed. The gallery
is closed on Mondays. For further information visit: http://www.gwu.edu/~bradyart/dimock/exhibitions.htm
April 21, 2006 Thresholds Crossed - world premiere,
8:00 pm GW’s Lisner Auditorium, H and 21st Sts NW, Washington, DC; Tickets:
$30, $25, $20; Students: $15 (http://www.lisner.org)
April 21, 2006 Reception following the premiere in GW’s Lisner Auditorium
– Lower
9:30 pm Lounge; GW faculty, students, staff; DC dance community. Free.
Photos below: American dancers in production,
February 2006

Photos below: Maida Withers
and Anthony Gongora, Solovki Islands, Art Angar Center, July 2004

Photos below: Russian/American Exchange, Moscow,
Russia, July 2005 (photos by Eric Withers).
Touring and residencies in Russia by Maida Withers and the Dance Construction
Company:
“Isadora” International Festival of Dance in Krasnoyarsk,
Serbia, Russia (April 10-17, 2005)
• Maida Withers performs Shocked and Odd – Live Art II with Nikolai
Schetnev, Russia, and Jack Gallagher, American living in The Netherlands.
• Create site-specific performance for the Lenin Museum
• Teach workshops in improvisation, technique, and dance and technology
Report: http://www.maidadance.com/current_projects.html
ArtAngar “Solosphere” Project in Solovki Islands, Russia
(July 17- 24, 2004)
• Create and perform five site-specific events with the Dance Construction
Company artists (dance, music, film) in collaboration with Russian and Finnish
dance companies. Important for this project was the opportunity to explore the
15th Century Solovetsky Monastery, cathedrals and monastic living quarters and
chapels that housed the gulag, the first such experiment established in Solovki,
Russia.
• Linda Lewett, filmmaker and the DCCo artists (dance and music) shoot
footage for an art video in various locations on the islands. (DVD excerpt enclosed)
Report: http://www.maidadance.com/current_projects.html
TOUCH 3 International Dance Festival in Arkhangelsk, Russia (July 12-16
2004)
• Performed trio Thresholds Crossed (Work-in-progress)
• Created site specific work with Russian, American and Finnish dancers
(downtown street in the location of Café Merci)
5th OPEN LOOK International Dance Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia
(July 1-10, 2003)
• Perform Dance of the Auroras – Fire in the Sky. Performance included
collaborators, Tania Fraga, cyber world artists from Brazil; original music
by Oystein Sevag and the Global House Band, Norway; Dance Construction Company
dancers; Sasha Kukin, Russia, Iwona Olszowska, Poland; Part II section performed
by Kannon Dance Company of St. Petersburg;
• Maida Withers was in residence for two weeks in St. Petersburg in March
2003 to reconstruct Part II on the Kannon Dance Company;
• Company taught four workshops daily.
Report: http://www.maidadance.com/current_projects.html
5th OPEN LOOK Festival, Touch2 Festival, Touch3 Festival, and ArtAngar
Festival
• During the festivals Maida Withers and Linda Lewett, filmmaker, interviewed
over sixty Russian dancers, administrators, dance patrons about views on life
and dance in Russia and America. A thirty-minute documentary video, Under the
Radar, is in progress.
TOUCH 2 International Dance Festival in Arkhangelsk, Russia (July 11-15,
2003)
• Perform Dance of the Auroras – Fire in the Sky (see description
above)
• Company taught two workshops daily.
Kannon Dance School and Company in St. Petersburg, Russia (June 2000)
• Maida Withers created Part III of Dance of the Auroras – Fire
in the Sky with Iwona Olszowska, dancer from Poland, and Sasha Kukin, dancer
from Russia, and Vincent Cacalano, USA/Netherlands, during a residency sponsored
by Kannon Dance. Daily teaching for the school and community was part of the
exchange agreement.
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