Choreographer Rachel Bernsen is interested in presenting dances within an experimental, surrealistic narrative context that still explores her basic motivations for moving her body. She investigates movement from an emotional and physical standpoint, and in making choices she is activating personal history, perceived style, and her emotional and often subconscious connections to one way of moving over another. Bernsen often uses music as a means of inquiry to foster a deeper connection to her own impulses and responses.
At Issue Project Room Bernsen will present two movement and sound collaborations; an excerpt of the quartet Unicorns Were Horses II, a concept album masquerading as a performance; and a new solo Glimmer Glint Glisten, exploring luminosity as a form of truth.
The evening’s collaborators include: Lindsey Bauer, Taylor Ho Bynum, Anne Rhodes, Carl Testa, and Matthew Welch.
Rachel Bernsen
Rachel Bernsen is an independent dance artist based in New York City and New Haven, CT. In NYC her work has been shown at Dance Theater Workshop as a 2005/06 Fresh Tracks artist-in-residence, Danspace Project DraftWork series, the 2008 Movement Research Spring Festival Somewhere Out There, Issue Project Room, Body Blend and Brink at Dixon Place, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Chashama, Deitch Projects, and The Chocolate Factory. She is the recipient of a 2007 NEA Honorary Fellowship from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
Bernsen has collaborated extensively with composer/performer Taylor Ho Bynum. Their work has been shown at The Free Music Festival in Antwerp, Belgium, and in Cologne and Berlin, Germany. In NYC they’ve performed at various venues including Dixon Place, Chashama, Chez Bushwick, and the Cornelia Street Café. She also collaborates with other musicians and artists including vocalist Anne Rhodes and bassist/composer Carl Testa, and composer and bagpipes player Matt Welch. From 2002 to 2006 she performed and toured with the performance art group and recording artists Fischerspooner. She has also performed with RoseAnne Spradlin, Juliette Mapp, Sam Kim, Risa Jaroslow, Urban Bush Women, and Minneapolis based dance artists Morgan Thorson, Wynne Fricke, and Leah Nelson.
Bernsen is also a certified Alexander Technique teacher. She is a volunteer faculty member at the American Center for the Alexander Technique (ACAT); teaches the Technique to dancers at Movement Research; and has a private practice in New York and New Haven. She currently serves on the board of the American Society for Alexander Teachers (AmSAT). In 2007-2008 Bernsen was an editor and managing editor of the Movement Research Performance Journal. She holds an MFA in Dance from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in English Literature from Macalester College.
www.rachelbernsen.com
Lindsey Bauer is a dance artist and educator, living in New Haven, Connecticut. She is a co-founder of Elm City Dance Collective, a nonprofit organization, which aims to provide access and opportunity for dance artists in New Haven. Lindsey holds an MFA in performance and choreography from Arizona State University (2007). Her work has been presented throughout CT and across the US.
Taylor Ho Bynum is a performer on cornet and various brass instruments, composer, bandleader, and interdisciplinary collaborator with artists in dance, film, and theater. Bynum is committed to the further exploration of the extensions of composition and improvisation pioneered by 20th century masters like Ellington, Ives, and the AACM, but with a third millennial flavor and a trickster sensibility. He presently leads his Trio, his Sextet, the chamber ensemble SpiderMonkey Strings, and the little big band Positive Catastrophe, and has developed a body of solo music for cornet and duo work with dancer/choreographer Rachel Bernsen. In addition to leading his own groups, Bynum regularly performs with some of the most innovative figures in creative music, such as Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Dixon, and has ongoing collaborations with such artists as Bill Lowe, Jason Kao Hwang, and Joe Morris. His work with Anthony Braxton spans over ten years and ranges from duo to orchestra, with recent tours throughout Europe and North America and over a dozen recordings; their collaborative CD Duets (Wesleyan) 2002 received wide critical acclaim. Other recent recordings as a leader include Other Stories (Three Suites) with SpiderMonkey Strings, True Events with drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and two albums with his Sextet and Trio: The Middle Picture and Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths.
Anne Rhodes (b. 1976) grew up in Portland, Maine, where she began studying voice at the age of 16. She holds a B.M. in Voice Performance from Boston University’s School for the arts and an M.A. in Music Performance from Wesleyan University, where she focused on experimental music, improvisation and collaborating with composers, studying with Anthony Braxton, Neely Bruce, Alvin Lucier, Ron Kuivila, B. Balasubrahmaniyan, and Jay Hoggard. She has performed with Connecticut Opera, Yale Opera, Portland Opera Repertory Theatre, the Crane School of Music Opera Ensemble, the Boston University Chamber Choir, the New England Conservatory Continuing Education Opera Studio, MIT Gilbert and Sullivan Players, the Anthony Braxton Large Ensemble, the FLUX Quartet, New Haven Improvisers Collective, and the hip-hop duo Mirror Boiyz, and has premiered works by composers including Anthony Braxton, Neil Leonard, Taylor Ho Bynum, Mikael Karlsson, and Alvin Lucier. Anne currently studies voice with Elizabeth Saunders. As a day job, she serves as Research Archivist for Yale University’s Oral History of American Music.
Carl Testa is a composer, bassist, bass clarinetist, and electronicist who has been composing and performing creative music since 2000. He is best known as one of the members of multi-instrumentalist/composer Anthony Braxton’s Sextet, Septet and 12+1tet. He is featured on the 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 box set on Firehouse 12 records, on 12+1tet (Victoriaville) 2007 on Victo Records, as well as the Quartet (GTM) 2006 box set on Important Records. His debut recording as a leader, Uncertainty, was released in Fall 2008. Testa is a native of Chicago and currently lives in New Haven, CT where he runs the Uncertainty Music Series, which presents monthly concerts of original music. Go to http://carltesta.net for more information.
Regarded as “a composer possessed of both rich imagination and the skill to bring his fancies to life” by Time Out New York, composer and bagpipe virtuoso Matthew Welch (b.1976) holds two degrees in Music Composition, a BFA from Simon Fraser University (1999), and an MA from Wesleyan University (2001), having studied with noted composers such as Barry Truax, Rodney Sharman, Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. Since moving to New York City in 2001 he has worked with a host of other artists such as John Zorn, Julia Wolfe, Zeena Parkins, and Ikue Mori. The eclectic breadth of his interests in Scottish bagpipe music, Balinese gamelan, minimalism, improvisation and rock converge in compositional amalgams ranging from traditional-like bagpipe tunes to electronic pieces, improvisation strategies and fully notated works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra and non-western instruments. Since 2002, Welch has been running and composing for his own eclectic ensemble, Blarvuster, whose repertoire the New York Times has claimed as “border-busting music; originial and catchy.” Welch has recorded for the Tzadik, Mode, Cantaloupe, Leo, Porter, Muud, Avian, Newsonic, and Parallactic record labels.