Major

Fri, Jun 13, 2008 | 7:30 PM

New Museum theater (directions)

Vangeline Theater and Ray Sweeten: Mesmerized

Part of New Museum Presents
 
Music/Performance

The artists in tonight’s program create dances and musical compositions that move at extremely slow speeds, aspiring towards profundity with near-microscopic subtlety. The culminating effect is mesmerizing and stunningly dramatic.

Vangeline Theater fuses the traditions of Butoh dance (characterized by exaggerated, even grotesque, isometric movement) with an aesthetic inspired by glammed-out science-fiction movies like Blade Runner and Liquid Sky. Ray Sweeten processes music through an oscilloscope—an instrument that allows voltage signals to be viewed graphically—translating shifting claustrophobic sonic environments into a mysterious new kind of sign language.

Performers: Pamela Herron, Mandy Caughey, Ellen Godena, Maki Shinagawa, and Vangeline

Photo by Joshua Weiner

Profiles TOP

Ray Sweeten

Ray Sweeten studied classical piano and theory at the University of Rhode Island. He studied at the Technology In Music And Related Arts program at Oberlin Conservatory. Sweeten has collaborated with Michael Galasso (ECM), Robert Wilson, and Chieko Mori (Tzadik). He has also produced music for MTV Japan and Italy, Benetton, and performed throughout Italy and Europe solo and with FabricaMusica, a collaborative ensemble comprised of musicians from diverse cultural and musical backgrounds. Sweeten is a recipient of the Van Lier Residency for experimental electronics and oscilloscope graphics. He has performed and screened his work at The Kitchen, Millennium Film Project, The New York Underground Film Festival, CinemaTexas, the Liverpool Biennial, Pacific Film Archive, and Chicago Filmmakers.

http://www.raysweeten.com

Vangeline Theater

Vangeline Theater’s works have been presented at Joyce SoHo, Chashama, White Wave, Dance Theater Workshop, Abrons Art Center, Galapagos Art Space, PS122, Theater for The New City, the New York Butoh Festival, Links Hall Chicago, the Howl Festival, the Puffin Room, Art in Odd Places, and the Lower East Side Festival for the Arts. Vangeline has taught Butoh workshops and classes at New York University, Brooklyn College, STAC, Stella Adler studios, and Battery Dance Company. She is founder of the “Dream a Dream Project,” a weekly movement workshop and performance project for incarcerated women currently in its second year at Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan.

http://www.vangeline.com