Gerard & Kelly

UCLA Open Studios

Please join us if you are in LA! 

OPEN STUDIOS
Saturday, December 10, 2011
6:00--9:00 PM
8535 Warner Drive
Culver City, CA 90232

Giving Thanks

I was journalling today, reflecting on the incredible experiences of this past year, and appreciating the presence of many different people in my life. One group stood out--the individuals with whom I worked on this project RP/El. I am full of gratitude for the talented people I worked with, who love what they do and approach it with such integrity. They have enriched my life. I am equally thankful for those individuals who took the time to give feedback on their experience, who wrote thoughtfully about it or shared it in a phone message or as a comment after a performance. This kind of reflection gives shape to what the work means and what its value might be. This kind of invested spectatorship gives me faith in the art world, in the possibility for meaningful exchange, despite the excesses we see in it everyday.

  - R.K.

Recent Press

Ruby Washington for The New York Times

"Returning One Kind of Kiss with a Kiss Off"|Claudia LaRocco for THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Hypothetical Arrangements" |Christine Hou

 

Tickets On Sale Now

Danspace Project Presents

Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly
REUSABLE PARTS/ENDLESS LOVE

Thursday, November 10 at 8pm
Friday, November 11 at 8pm
Saturday, November 12 at 8pm

Danspace Project | St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue | New York, NY 10003

Admisstion: $18 ($12 Dancepace members)

Tickets available at www.danspaceproject.org or call (866) 811-4111

LALALALANDIA

Our first contribution to The Brooklyn Rail on art and performance in Los Angeles just hit the stands today. Read it >>

 

Seeking Performers

Seeking NYC-based Performers for Performances at Danspace Project, November 10-12, 2011

....

We are looking for performers who identify as transgendered, gender-indeterminate or queer, and/or drag performers/performance artists trained in movement and dance techniques with professional performing experience to participate in an artistic project on November 10, 11 and 12 at St. Mark's Church in New York City. The project, a co-production of Danspace Project and Moving Theater, will require additional rehearsals November 7-9, October 25-29, and at one to two times in September. Performances and rehearsals are paid. The artists are interested in trained movement performers with experience in improvisation techniques. Additional experience in drag, pointe work, classical dance, and burlesque performance is appreciated. All ages are invited to contact if interested.

Interested performers should send a brief email with photo and resume attached to ryan@movingtheater.org.

A workshop will be held at Dance Theater Workshop on Tuesday, August 30 and Wednesday, August 31 by invitation.

Simone Forti's Dance Constructions

Brennan performing in See-Saw (1960), reperformance August 18, 2011 at The Box, LA

On August 18 and 19 we performed in reperformances of Simone Forti's "dance constructions" from 1960/61 at The Box gallery in Los Angeles. These works rely heavily on improvisation and chance occurrences. Forti had studied extensively with improvisation icon Anna Halprin in San Francisco and with John Cage in New York. The works came about during the Judson Dance Theatre days and presaged the emergence of Minimalist sculpture. Mara McCarthy, the gallery's director, produced the first reperformance of all the dance constructions since their premiere in the early 60s.

Ryan performing in Huddle (1961), reperformance August 18, 2011, The Box, LA.

Simone Forti and Brennan in Accompaniment for La Monte' Young's "2 Sounds" and LaMonte Young's "2 Sounds" (1961), reperformance August 18, 2011, The Box, LA

Looking Back: Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk in Education of the Girlchild (1972).

The iconoclastic performer and artist, Meredith Monk, who challenged notions of musical composition and discipline-specificity when she first emerged in the late 1960s, is making a retrospective glance in “Education of the Girlchild Revisited,” a “reconfiguration” of her 1973 work “Education of a Girlchild, an opera.”  This work, performed as a solo by the artist, is itself a look backwards through the life of an aged woman to her childhood.  In recent years, the 68 year-old artist has spent a lot of time considering the backward reflection that age and mortality provoke.  In 2006 she created “Impermanence,” a multi-disciplinary work that incorporated passages from the diary of her then recently deceased partner of many years.  Monk has said of this time, "There was something raw in my musical response; it puts your entire life in perspective." At the beginning of the process for “Impermanence,” Monk worked with a group of hospice patients. She observed that what was important to them at this significant moment of the end of their lives was the dependability of their old habits.

Going for the Jugular

Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris," 2011.

"Art is the antidote to the meaninglessness of existence."

The central line in Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, is delivered by Kathy Bates' convincing Gertrude Stein to Owen Wilson's equally persuasive nebbish Hollywood-screenwriter-turning-ex-pat-novelist, her hands strongly gripping his undeveloped shoulders. No, art is not a hack job executed by handsome hucksters jostling to keep up with the status quo. To keep a job. Or, to keep a Malibu home. No, art is the most serious of human endeavors, even when couched in comedy.  (Hemingway: Do you hunt?  Woody Allen: Only for bargains.)  

Human Directional (2011)

Gerard and Kelly, Human Directional (2011)
Performance, 10 minutes
Performance still, UCLA Warner Graduate Art Studios, June 2011 

Human

Directional

An empty

space. A man

appears in

uniform. He spins

a sign that is

not there. On his

entrance, music

is heard, music

he listens to

when he spins

signs as part of

his line of  work.

Another man

enters, also in

uniform, and

spins a sign,

also not there.

He stands in front  

of the first and

 faces the same

direction.

Different music is

heard as he enters,

on top of the music

already playing.

This is the music

the second

man listens to as he

spins signs for work. A third man enters and stands in front of the other two.

Ditto with spinning invisible sign and ditto with music. A fourth, a fifth,

a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth man enter, each man’s

“entrance music” added to the others’. They stand,

spinning signs that are not there,

in the formation of an

arrow pointing to

nothing

.