Out-Front! is a series of multidisciplinary new works curated by Pioneers Go East Collective.
RSVP at pioneersgoeast@gmail.com OR Eventbrite: pioneersgoeast.eventbrite.com
Free events & all are welcome!
Filmed at Center for Performance Research (March 25-26, 2021). Out-Front! brings together thought-provoking & radical artists – choreographers, dancers, in collaboration with visual artists - one virtual evening (3 works + 6 lead artists). Featuring Annie Wang & Michael Wilson/ Aimee Plauche/ Azmi Mert Erdem & Kalliope+Symara
Curated and hosted by Pioneers Go East Collective lead artists - Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Beth Graczyk, Philip Treviño, and Daniel Diaz, the intent with Out-Front! is to create a safe space for thought-provoking artists to explore new works and to share their creative practices with multigenerational and cross-cultural audiences. Pioneers Go East Collective is committed to empowering the next generation of Bipoc, Latinx, Immigrant and LGBTQ artists, and their allies.
Held Space by Company AnAn - Choreographer and performer - Annie Wang. Text - Annie Wang with Angela Schöpke-Gonzalez and David Yates. Sound - David Yates with Angela Schöpke-Gonzalez and Annie Wang.
Annie Wang is a freelancer based in New York. She is a member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and has also danced with Same As Sister, Emily Johnson, Daria Fain, and Company Stefanie Batten Bland. Her choreography has been presented at Five Myles, the Exponential Festival, the Center for Performance Research, the 92Y, BKSD, WestFest Dance, Triskelion, and BRIC. Annie has been artist-in-residence at BRIClab, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Marble House Project.
Angela Schöpke Gonzalez is a director, choreographer, and dance theater artist based in Detroit, Michigan. Her work engages with deep investigations of the stories that each body holds. She has directed and choreographed at venues in New York City, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington, DC. She has also supported choreography for opera, performed nationally and internationally, and completed her first dance film, "Skeleton & Me".
Hailing from Baltimore, Maryland, david yates is an itinerant choreographer, composer, and fire engineer who has contributed sound design to dance and theatre works during his time in the US, Northern Ireland, Hungary, the UAE, New Zealand, and presently Edinburgh, Scotland. The use of texture as a conceptual framework to describe and define spaces is a fixture of david's work, both as a choreographer (lobster anxiety, cat) as well as sonically (AKL Babel, Lilly's Magical Garden). david produces music under the moniker pancakesandplutonium, with 2020's ausencias offering meditations on the negative space created by the enforced nonlocality of this period.
spider/wolf/goddess conceived and Performed by Michael Wilson. Directed and Choreographed by Aimee Plauche, Cinematography and Editing by Azmi Mert Erdem
spider/wolf/goddess is a movement study of performer Michael Wilson’s journey toward beauty, grappling with shame and embracing pleasure along the way.
Michael J. Wilson is an artist and educator focused on gender and social justice. Their company Man Question uses theatre-based workshops and an annual performance festival to re-imagine masculinity. Michael earned an MA in Applied Theatre at the CUNY School of Professional Studies in 2011, where they are now a faculty member. Michael offers coaching and photography for creative people at michaelcoachandphoto.com.
Aimee Plauche is a dance-theater choreographer living and working in Brooklyn, New York since 2011. A former bunhead from the South, Aimee has found liberty in short hair, skeletal momentum, the diversity of New York, and the endless creative possibilities in dance theater. Her work has appeared in various showcases around New York, including Westfest: All Over Westbeth, the Comedy in Dance Festival at Triskelion Arts, the DUMBO Dance Festival and the Director's Choice showcase at Spoke the Hub. Since 2015, she has produced four evening-length shows, which have been featured as part of the New Work Series at Emerging Artist Theater, Triskelion Arts Studio Theater Series, and Take Root at Green Space. Aimee was nominated and selected for MANCC Forward Dialogues, the 2017 inaugural choreographic lab for emerging movement-based artists at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a dance residency site housed within the Florida State University School of Dance in Tallahassee, Florida. Her 2018 work she sang like she was crying was sponsored in part by Brooklyn Arts Council, and she was an Artist in Residence at Lake Studios Berlin in November 2018. Most recently, she premiered her first solo evening-length work, haunted, at the Tank NYC in November 2019. Aimee holds a BFA in Dance from Florida State University, teaches Pilates, and eternally hopes to be brave.
Azmi Mert Erdem is a New York-based, Turkish multidisciplinary artist, working with video, photography, performance, and installation. Mert has worked as a director, assistant director, and cinematographer in television series, feature and short films. He has written and directed award-winning short films featured in international film festivals. His photography, video art, and installations have been exhibited internationally. He has also created short documentaries for artists and art institutions. Mert graduated with a B.A. in Film and Television with honors from Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. He attended the One Year Filmmaking Program at the New York Film Academy, where he worked as a Teaching Assistant upon graduation. Mert completed his M.A. in Liberal Studies from the City University of New York, Graduate Center focusing on film studies and LGBTQIA+ representation in the cinema of Turkey.
Kalliope+Symara. Kalliope+Symara have been working as a movement duet rooted in improvisational practices with a focus in score making. This piece is the culmination of their experiments in performance over the past four years. This work demonstrates exciting research in the foundations of score making.
Kalliope+Symara began their creative relationship at SUNY Purchase in 2015, and have continued making work that prioritizes using information yielded by interdisciplinary discourse that challenges the traditional foundations of dance. Symara is a Portland, Oregon native who received her associates in modern choreography from the Beijing Dance Academy and her BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase. She has studied dance in Trinidad and Tobago, and is currently a freelance dance artist based in Astoria. Kalliope grew up in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and received her classical training from the JKO School at American Ballet Theater. She has been involved in productions with the Construction Company and frequently participates in workshops at the Merce Cunningham Trust. Together they have been a part of BadDance Festival, Spitball, Culture Shock/Fall Fest Music Festivals, and have performed at DIY music spaces: The Glove, Silent Barn, Whitsons, and the Forum Art Space. Their work “Two and Four” was selected for the Collaborations in Dance Festival at TriskelionArts. They have created movement installations for gymnasiums, outside amphitheaters, galleries, living rooms, beaches, and racquetball courts. Kalliope+Symara were most recently resident artists of Gibney’s 6.2 Work Up program.