The extra sensory pedestrians + evidence CD release party

Thu 14 Aug, 2008, 8pm
Old American Can Factory

The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians (Jennifer Schmermund and Kimberly Young) present the first installation of “Boxed Dances” - a year-long series of site-specific dance installations. The E-SPs join Evidence (Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood) to celebrate the release of their new CD Receiver (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 035), with a re-imagined performance of their original installation at Wave Farm. Bring an FM radio with batteries! A limited number will be provided.

Kimberly Young, artistic director of the Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, is a dancer/choreographer based in Brooklyn. She has danced with Jen Schmermund/Fresh Blood Productions, Todd Williams of WilliamsWorks, The Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy and in her own work. Earlier this year, Young danced for Tere O’Connor in a restaging of his 2001 piece Winterbelly. In 2006, Young started her own dance company, The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, through which she has an ongoing collaboration with composer/sound artist Stephan Moore. The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians have presented Young’s work at venues including Movement Research at the Judson Church, SUNY Stony Brook’s Staller Center, and Roulette Intermedium. Young recently received a 2008 Choreographers’ Project Fellowship from Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy. In February 2009 The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians will present an evening of work at the Joyce Soho. Young’s most recent work for The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, Plenitude, was reviewed as “intriguing and ambitious” by Roslyn Sulcas of The New York Times.

Jennifer Schmermund is a certified yoga teacher through OM Yoga and holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As director of FRESH BLOOD, her work has been commissioned by Bucknell University where she was an adjunct professor. She has danced for KC Chun-Manning, Valerie Green and is now working on a project for Shannon Hummel.

Stephan Moore is a composer, audio artist, and sound designer in New York City. His creative work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. Recent performances and installation artworks make use of a large multi-channel array of his Hemisphere speakers. He performs regularly with Scott Smallwood in the electronic duo Evidence, and with a variety of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers. He has created custom music software for a number of composers and artists, and has taught extensively in sound art and electronic music. He is currently the Sound Engineer and Music Coordinator of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Scott Smallwood was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up at 10,000 feet in elevation in the Colorado Rockies. When Smallwood was 10 years old, his father gave him a cassette tape recorder, and ever since he has been fascinated by the possibilities of recorded sound. His work deals with real and abstracted soundscapes based on a practice of listening, improvisation, and phonography. Ranging from sonic photographs, studio compositions, instrumental pieces, and improvisations, the resulting pieces are often textural, always mindful of space and subtlety.