11/13: Chew on This: Laurel Tentindo

Please join us for our next Chew on This

Laurel Tentindo
Tuesday, November 13 at 12pm
Kaufman Room 280
Freedom through Systems of Choreography: Trisha Brown's Early Works

Judson Church transformed the aesthetics of contemporary dance by redefining the value system and movement vocabulary dancers employed from then on.  In Chew On This I will focus on Trisha Brown's (a member of the Judson Church) Early Works - performed on rooftops, parks, and on the sides of buildings.  Trisha described herself as a brick layer with a sense of humor.  These pieces are methodical and often involve a rule game.  I will show how these pieces allowed Brown to develop a basic language that she then took to the proscenium stage to create pieces like Glacial Decoy, Set and Reset, and her current work.  I am asking questions about form/freedom, the preference for abstraction, the source of movement vocabulary and about what our generation's relationship is to the discoveries of the Judson Church.  

Laurel Jenkins Tentindo’s dances are energetic drawings on which costumes, objects, and puppets ride to evoke aesthetically rich and emotionally resonant worlds.  Laurel’s choreographic and dancing practices are deeply influenced by the Skinner Releasing Technique, Improvisation, and Trisha Brown’s movement vocabulary.  As an acclaimed member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, she performed repertory spanning Ms. Brown’s 40-year career, and developed original roles in Brown’s three most recent pieces.  Laurel also worked closely with choreographers Vicky Shick, Sara Rudner, and Liz Lerman.  She appeared in Harry Partch’s opera, Delusion of the Fury, directed by John Jesurun at the Japan Society, NYC, and The Mad Dancers, Washington DC.  Laurel developed choreography for Poe (and the museum of lost arts), directed by Elise Kermani.   Laurel’s independent choreography has been performed internationally and in NYC at Danspace St. Marks Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon Place and Joyce SoHo.  Working with puppet theater director Luis Tentindo since 2007, Laurel has collaboratively created two evening length experimental puppet theater pieces exploring the interaction between bunraku puppetry and dance.  Would You Still Be You? and The Mud Angels received support from the Jim Henson Foundation. This spring 2012 Laurel was a guest faculty member at the New School and created an original dance with the students inspired by the underlying principals of Trisha Brown’s choreography.  Laurel is a certified Skinner Releasing teacher. 

More information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQhi_7xa9s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocIg5y_4ZRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ru_7sxvpY8&feature=related