Maida Withers Dance Construction Company  

MaidaWithers
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   A Choreographer's Life
   Thresholds Crossed
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   Aurora/2001
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Current Projects

NAKED TRUTH (Work in Progress, 2011)

Riveting trio created by Maida Withers and performed by seasoned dance artists interacting in real-time with stunning visual animations, laser floor grid, and electronic music. "There's a zest and ease to Naked Truth with its restful, friendly partnerships intertwining and separating and then re-aligning." (Lisa Traiger, Dance View, Washington, DC, November 2010) Computer images create a responsive environment for sound and movement (data) based on free interpretation of physics algorithms. Electronic music and movement disturb and alter the visual environment.

Naked Truth from Maida Withers on Vimeo.

Produced by Maida Withers Dance Construction Company
Documentary of first performance of Naked Truth at Dance Place, Washington, DC, as part of their 30 Anniversary Celebration Season.

All Rights Reserved (c) Maida Withers

GW’s DIMOCK GALLERY PRESENTS:

MAIDA WITHERS: A CHOREOGRAPHER’S LIFE

THRESHOLDS CROSSED Friday, April 21st 8pm

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.