MCA Performances April 22, 2017

April 26, 2017  /  Boomerang

We had wonderful performances at the MCA! Merci to all folks who came out and saw the work! We are ready to show it other places and it works outside and inside on asphalt, concrete, metal...Contact us!!!

Photograph by David Kasnic

Photograph by David Kasnic

https://mcachicago.org/Stories/Blog/2017/04/Working-For-The-Toward

Kora's addition to the blog: "I am more kinesthetically in tune with the disorientation, shared weight, and rigor of contact improvisation and the movement classes I teach - CI, Riding Resilience, & Roller Coaster Motion - embrace athleticism and what I call 'wild calm' which makes plenty of sense within BOOMERANG and links me more with that primacy. I am not in a camp of codified dance styles. However, Cunningham did influence me in the ways I wrote within the blog. I experience my moving, teaching, and choreographic work as part of a life practice, living and learning through an enlivened not encoded body." - Kora Radella

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Will Arbery on "For the toward" and working with BOOMERANG

April 15, 2017  /  Boomerang

Soon to meet up again with the awesome playwright and theater/film artist Will Arbery for our BOOMERANG performances of "For the toward" with Arbery & Matty Davis. Check out what Arbery wrote about working with BOOMERANG below! Come out RAIN of SHINE to MCA in CHICAGO on Sunday, APRIL 22nd. FREE at noon, 1, 2, 3, & 4 PM. https://mcachicago.org/…/…/MCA-Live-BOOMERANG-For-The-Toward 

"The title for this piece comes from a poem I wrote about Alberto Giacometti: I don't know if to work, to do something... if this is working for something, towards something for the toward, or for the mere collection of mistakes. Or toward something in order to finally begin. Three years later, I still don't know why we work, why we do anything at all, and sometimes I can barely stand up, and sometimes I'm exhausted by the prospect of even opening my eyes. Another day & still no answer. But if the answer isn't an answer, if the question is allowed to stay a question, it starts to feel better. And I think the non-answer is in the title. We work for the toward. For the three years that I've been doing this dance, it has taken on the quality of a prayer. It pulls me out of myself. I offer it up for people in my life. This time, I think I'll offer it up for my collaborator Matty, performing despite the backward & for the toward of a recent injury. We're recalibrating the piece towards the spasming tenderness of his right hand. As we approach these upcoming performances, I think of another line in the poem: My stick was a knife, my arm was a knife, my head was a knife, my eyes. We are our own wounders & wonders, we're our own healers, our work is for our toward. It doesn't make sense. It's heavy & dirty. It's not going to end. We're always in it. " Also...Read what he wrote in HowlRound last year!

http://howlround.com/committed-to-not-knowing-lessons-from-boomerang

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March 21, 2017  /  Boomerang

"My strongest impression is of struggle, which to me the defining emotion of our time. These figures struggle; and we don't know if they are two brothers, lovers, figures in a dream, but we know that while they balance each other it is constant recalibration. At times there is tenderness, more often there is confrontation." 
- Jacki Lyden

"I felt, as I listened and watched, that that sky would never be repaired, and so I loved it when he ended with that loud, sad, Yoko Ono-style wailing. Massimiliano's evident pain combined with the desire implied by the [Jamaal May's] poetry to set a disorderly universe right gave the whole performance a complex moral significance that worked beautifully in part because it was not overly insisted upon." 
- Stephen O'Connor

"Choreographed by Ms. Radella (with input from her collaborator Matty Davis and the performers), “[This is a] Forge,” in keeping with its title, generated tension and heat. In ways that sometimes looked painful, the intrepid dancers wrestled with one another and the floor, accompanied live by the violin duo String Noise."
- Siobhan Burke

Can't please everyone for sure, but had many many comments at 92Y from people who loved "This is a Forge" and were quite articulate and perceptive. So grateful for the collaboration with the artistic team. We remain celebratory of the combination BOOMERANG offers of tender/charged/
detailed gestural work with visceral/athletic partnering and physicality.

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January 19, 2017  /  Boomerang

Feeling good about the duet work and the strong draft we finished with at the SILO dance residency with Massimiliano Balduzzi and Matty Davis. Onwards towards our premiere at 92Y's Harkness Dance Festival March 17 & 18 with the amazing violin duo String Noise. Massimiliano is bringing Jamaal May's piercing and lovely poetry to life in this work. Creation process with BOOMERANG & Choreography by Kora Radella. http://www.92y.org/Event/BOOMERANG-Dance 

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Chicago and BOOMERANG

November 01, 2016  /  Boomerang

The AUDIENCES were overwhelming positive about BOOMERANG's Repercussion at Steppenwolf in Chicago on October 29th & 30th. Only one person had issues but ya can't please everyone! THANK YOU to the wonderful dialogue with glowing audience members!!! We will be in Chicago again April 1st with our work For the toward at MCA! See more information about that here: 

https://mcachicago.org/Stories/Blog/2016/10/Spring-Program-Preview-BOOMERANG

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BOOMERANG selected for ENCORE performance of DANCE NOW FESTIVAL!!!

September 11, 2016  /  Boomerang

BOOMERANG's eponymous duet "Boomerang" was selected as one of 10 performances out of 40 for the Encore of the DANCE NOW Festival 2016 at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater in NYC. The Encore performance is on September 29, 2016 at 7pm The festival producers will select one out of the final 10 artists whose work best meets the festival challenge to participate in the encore performance. The overall challenge winner will receive a $1,500 development stipend and a weekl ong creative residency at DANCE NOW Silo on Kirkland Farm in Bucks County, PA. 
Encore Tickets: $25 advance / $30 at door. 
Online at joespub.com
 

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Collaboration with Greg Saunier, drummer of the band Deerhoof

November 15, 2015  /  Boomerang

BOOMERANG, hailed as the “punk Mozarts of dance,” and Greg Saunier, drummer in the internationally acclaimed band Deerhoof, have two work-in-progress performances of movement and sound this fall. One was at Roulette October 26th and the other is at Danspace Project November 21st.  This work, commissioned by Dixon Place, combines the kinesthetic artistry of dancers Matty Davis and Adrian Galvin, nuanced choreography by Kora Radella, and visceral percussion by Saunier. Saunier’s charged yet sensitive physicality as a percussionist mirrors the essential dynamics that have come to mark BOOMERANG’s oeuvre. Both his musical contributions and movement will be incorporated and developed as part of this new work that is being further created at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center and will premiere at Dixon Place in March 2016.

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