(North Adams, Massachusetts) Choreographer, director, master-teacher and theatrical artist Alison Chase has challenged seven dancers and her technical team to help her create a physical retelling of Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s famed short story The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.
Summary: After a week-long residency, Alison Chase Performance will present the project as a work-in-progess showing on Saturday, September 25, 2010 at 8 PM in MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center. Tickets for Alison Chase’s work-in-progress showing are $10. Members are eligible for a 10% discount. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open from 11 A.M. until 5 P.M. Wednesdays through Mondays. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or online at www.massmoca.org any time.
Eventually the work will include dancers, musicians and projections sharing the narrative in an intricate interweaving of live video feed, projected film and photos, dance and live music. The work-in-progress will include portions of these elements.
Mysterious, enigmatic and widely popular, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World captures the events in a small fishing village when the body of an unusually tall and magnificent corpse washes ashore. The unknown man is named Esteban and is lovingly embraced by everyone, perhaps because he symbolizes for them the fragile beauty of life. Themes of community, myth, and the ideals of mankind are commonly ascribed to the work. It is sometimes viewed as a slice of 100 Years of Solitude, the famed novel that catapulted Garcia Márquez to fame, helped establish magical realism as a literary genre, and led to his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
In her production of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World Chase will create an impressionistic interpretation of the “magic” in Márquez’ narrative through a variety of media employed in unusual ways. She will blend the supernatural with the ordinary reality, drawing the audience into the heart of the movement. Effects include projected beams of sound that bounce off various surfaces (including the heads of the dancers) that will be heard differently by each audience member, as well as live video feed capturing the dancers movements and amplifying them in projections.
In this work, Chase’s collaborators include Sean Kernan (photography), Derek Dudek (cinematography), Vladimir Shpitalnik (sets and audio projections), Langdon Crawford (music technology) and Angeline Avallone (makeup and costumes).
A choreographer renowned for both acrobatic works and her narrative skill, Chase founded Alison Chase Performance to pursue her passion for multi-dimensional storytelling; fusions of film and dance; site-specific works; and museum installations. Until December 2005 she was co-artistic director and developer of Pilobolus Dance Theatre’s educational programs. In October 2008 Chase was named the Maine Arts Commission’s 2009 Performing Arts Fellow. She was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980, the Connecticut Governor’s Award in 1997, the Scripps Award in 2000, and the CINE Golden Eagle Award in 2002. Chase has choreographed for La Scala Opera, the Geneva Opera, the Ballet du Rhin, the Fete de l’Humanite and Radio City Music Hall.
