“A gestural language of tenderness and tension slips suddenly into contact-style athleticism. Full out dancing melts into interpersonal relations. Just when you think you know what It is, it’s not.”
- jill sigman, thinkdance
BOOMERANG is a fearlessly physical, poetically-nuanced dance and performance project created in 2012 by co-artistic directors Matty Davis and Kora Radella with founding member Adrian Galvin. Recognizing the body as an evolving repository for both physical and psychological life, BOOMERANG sifts through and siphons from the rich, eclectic histories that constitute the personhoods of the people with whom they work. Guided and provoked by Radella's gifts for idiosyncratic movement invention, unpredictable phrasing, and choreographic skills, BOOMERANG creates unfailingly committed, physically intense, vulnerable explorations of how human histories might be sensitively layered, distorted, and recontextualized so as to yield new movement vocabularies and articulate the complex breadth of intra- and interpersonal relationships. They have been referred to as the “punk Mozarts of dance.”
CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
Photograph by Marcella Hackbardt
KORA RADELLA is the choreographer and co-artistic director of BOOMERANG. In addition to her work with BOOMERANG, she is the artistic director of Double-Edge Dance, whose work has been performed in cities including Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Basel, Cleveland, London, and New York City. Noted for her use of "awkward grace," she researches being on the edge of control, pushing both physical and psychological balances. Radella's primary teaching interests include contemporary dance technique with dynamic release principles, improvisation, choreography, and movement for actors. She is also a certified yoga teacher (500RYT). Radella is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Kenyon College and a 2014 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient.
Photograph by Ryan Michael White
MATTY DAVIS
Matty Davis is the principal performer and co-artistic director of BOOMERANG. He is also a visual artist, jewelry-maker, and athlete. Within and aside from BOOMERANG, Davis has performed at the Parrish Art Museum, the Watermill Center, Judson Church, the United Nations, the Putney School, in Performa 13, and has staged guerilla-style performances in Death Valley, rural Oklahoma, and atop deserted tractor trailers in the Great Smokey Mountains. As a visual artist, he pits the body against often radical undertakings and journeys that explore physicality and endurance, archetypes and personal history, as well as the origins of materials and mark-making. He has studied at Kenyon College, the American Dance Festival, P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, Belgium, and is currently pursuing his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More information about his work can found at www.mattywdavis.com
Collaborators
Photograph by Sofya Weitz
WILL ARBERY is a writer, filmmaker, and theater artist who is working towards an MFA in Writing for the Stage and Screen at Northwestern University. His work has been produced or developed by Samuel French, Theater Masters, Dixon Place, #serials@theflea, Echo Theater Company, Tiny Rhino, Hearth Gods, Calliope Theater Company, Poison Apple Initiative and Teatro Vista. His writing has been published by Howl Round, Better: Culture and Lit, decomP, The Awl, Word Riot, and D Magazine. He's currently completing several short film projects.
Photograph by Mark Davis
ADRIAN GALVIN is a co-founder and dancer with BOOMERANG. He is a yoga teacher at Katonah Yoga in New York City and musician with his bands Poor Remy and Yellerkin. More information about Poor Remy, can be found at www.poorremy.com. Yellerkin's recent EP was received with critical acclaim and their music can be found via www.soundcloud.com/yellerkin. Galvin graduated from Kenyon College (2012), where he designed his own major in liberation theology and German Social Theory.
Photograph by Shaina Branfman
JORDAN HOLLAND hails from Detroit, Michigan. He performs as a guest artist with BOOMERANG. Since relocating to NYC, he has been working with Heidi Latsky and Bryan Strimpel. As a 2012 graduate of Wayne State University (B.S. Dance), Holland had the opportunity to work with Jeff Michael Rebudal, Biba Bell, Larry Keigwin, Ron de Jesus and Julie Bour among many others. His love for the art of teaching is fulfilled at the Vicky Simegiatos Dance School in Brooklyn. Holland has performed at venues including Judson Church, The Irondale Center, The West End Theatre, 100 Grand, Roulette, Joe’s Pub, Triskelion Arts, The Red Hook Arts Festival, and “Carmina Burana” opera with The Stonewall Chorale.
Photograph by Greg Parkinson
ADAM TENDLER has been called "an exuberantly expressive pianist" who "vividly displayed his enthusiasm for every phrase" by The Los Angeles Times, a “maverick pianist” by The New Yorker, a "modern-music evangelist" by Time Out New York, and an "intrepid" pianist" who "has managed to get behind and underneath the notes, living inside the music and making poetic sense of it all," by The Baltimore Sun, who continued, "if they gave medals for musical bravery, dexterity and perseverance, Adam Tendler would earn them all." His new memoir, "88x50," is a 2014 Kirkus Indie Book of the Month and Lambda Literary Award Nominee. www.adamtendler.com.