PERFORMANCES////
PERFORMANCES////
BODYSONNET returns to the Bay Area with Other/Self, a mixed bill of duets directed by Babatunji, Charmaine Butcher, and Moscelyne ParkeHarrison. Over the course of 2023-24 BODYSONNET will host a series of open rehearsals called BODYSONNETSessions with the creatives of Other/Self to share their process. BODYSONNETSessions, as well as the artists of Other/Self will be announced via Newsletter and Instagram @bodysonnet
Performances at CounterPulse August 22-24.
Other/Self
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
August 2024
Witness the New York City premiere of BODYSONNET’S "please come alone” created and performed live by Moscelyne ParkeHarrison and Mio Ishikawa.
From creator-performers Moscelyne ParkeHarrison and Mio Ishikawa of BODYSONNET, “please come alone" is a series of solo dance performances exploring what it means to be alone, and to come together. In the piece, performers participate in exercises to explore their artistic and narrative values as they devise movement solos. The soloists rehearse apart from each other, thus experiencing each other's work for the first time in performance. The work was originally performed in The Berkshires, MA in June 2021, and workshopped further with MFA drama students at Yale University in winter 2021 with Dramaturg Hannah Gellman.
May 9, 2024 from 7-8pm at 101 Reade St New York NY, 10013
BODYSONNET core members Mio Ishikawa, Sean Lammer, and Moscelyne ParkeHarrison unite for a creative residency in Cologne, Germany to plan a new production for the collective. Please support our residency and future production by making a tax deductible donation.
Art Tonic 3.0 is a celebration of our multimedia collaborators past and future. Enjoy an evening of performances, plus a gallery of our past projects and collaborators, librations + merriment, and silent auction - all in support of BODYSONNET’s 2023 season and beyond.
COLLECTIVE is an evening of dance co-presented by Madi Hicks’ Moving Forward Collective and BODYSONNET. The evening features solos and duets, including newave, a work created by Moscelyne ParkeHarrison with Chase Buntrock.
Commissioned for Satellite Collective's Rouge Film Unit Globe is a dance film exploring the dichotomy of containment and permeability of the body. Created by Mio Ishikawa, Olga Rabetskaya, Carlos Cardona and Tushrik Fredericks, Globe uses multiple mediums to highlight the effort to listen to the transaction between internal shifts and our external being.
Blue Hour is a mixed bill of new works created and performed by four women artists exploring themes of intimacy, aloneness, and evolution as both individual and collective. The four vignettes, created and performed by Mio Ishikawa (Japan), Moscelyne ParkeHarrison (USA), Sayer Mansfield (USA) and Sydney McManus (CA), weave emotional depth, internal conflict, and shared cultural phenomena. Blue Hour leads both performers and audience on a bold, vulnerable and beautiful odyssey.
neverover marks BODYSONNET’s West Coast debut and features new works by Bay Area based artists Mia J. Chong, Colin Frederick, and Moscelyne ParkeHarrison in an intimate evening of performances exploring youth, queerness, and what it means to be present in chaos.
The Mount is a short film made by Jake Nahor and Moscelyne ParkeHarrison in collaboration with videographer Alexa Carroll and composer McKinley Foster. A young conservator living in New York City continually encounters a man who seems vaguely familiar. The woman goes to The Mount to evaluate artworks at the deserted estate and garden. As the woman begins to lose herself in the amorous images and kaleidoscopic surroundings it becomes clear that the man is also inhabiting the mansion. As the figures bend farther from reality they begin to question: Is it more real to see or believe?
The Mount is a recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ New England Dance Fund.
THE MOUNT
THE BERKSHIRES, MA. BROOKLYN, NY
JANUARY 2022
BLUE VICE AT DEPART WINE
GREAT BARRINGTON, MA, US
OCTOBER 2021
Come over to the new kid on the block, Départ Wine for movie night. Berkshire-based dance company BODYSONNET will be hosting the first public premiere of their film Blue Vice on October 2, 2021. A glass of wine is included with admission and a chat with the artists follows the screening. It's going to be culture filled, bubbly, and oh so local. Bring your friends, partner, or mom, all are welcome.
newave was created and premiered live in August 2021 in Hudson, New York with BODYSONNET. This piece was inspired by photographer Adrianna Newell's project, "Sisters" and made in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Ashly Yang aka missexpandinguniverse and DJ Tushrik Fredricks. In partnership with Chesterwood, the work was filmed by visual artists Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison and photographed by Adrianna Newell.
MASS CULTURAL COUNCIL
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Local Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
please come alone: a canto celebrates vulnerability, connection, and intimacy performed by BODYSONNET with dramaturgy by Hannah Gellman. Join us for unique solos created through structured improvisation scores culminating on the final evening in which all of the performers unite for the first time in the process to investigate the dynamic of what it means to be alone together.
Supported by the Martha Boschen Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Powerhouse Square/Benchmark Development, and Berkshire Pulse.
BODYSONNET makes their New York City debut with a collaborative and intimate performance at High Line Nine’s gallery space in Chelsea, NY. With live music by jazz pianist and composer Isaiah J. Thompson and costumes by Samantha Pleet, BODYSONNET shapes a sensory evening in the spirit of youth, melding their movements with sounds of jazz and a sense of play.
New Movement at Mt. Sequoyah is BODYSONNET’s latest community-integrated residency in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Over the course of the residency, the artists created I woke up on Skyline Drive, an interdisciplinary evening-length work developed through the personal histories of the people whose lives have been shaped by Mt. Sequoyah and the Ozarks. This work invites performers and audience members alike to consider collective memory, how we construct and recall memories, and how it can inform our relationship with ourselves, others, and the ground on which we live.
ARTISTS 360
This project is funded by Artists 360, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance with support from the Walton Family Foundation. New Movement is produced in part by Jake Nahor of BODYSONNET, Katy Henriksen of Trillium Salon Series, and Creative Spaces NWA of Mount Sequoyah.
Blue Vice is a film created by BODYSONNET, with videography by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, and original sound by Dorothy Chan and Lucy Yao of chromic duo. The work is centered on four characters and their intimate experiences with winter and solitude. One by one they delve into the depths of waiting and the ecstasy of confession. With its cinematic beauty the Berkshires provide potent grounds for this meditation on how we survive winter.
MASS CULTURAL COUNCIL
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Local Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
OUR TREATY AT HUDSON HEMP
HUDSON, NEW YORK, US
OCTOBER 2020
Our Treaty and BODYSONNET invite you to explore the embodiment of the Hudson Valley landscape through dance. An acknowledgment of the hemp growing season’s end and the land’s heritage, the performance will take place in an interactive habitat for solitary bees designed by Harrison Atelier at Hudson Hemp. The experience includes a Treaty product of your choice, a box of foraged and wildcrafted foods prepared by Woodland Pantry, and hemp milk by Little Rico. Afterwards, a Treaty pop-up store in real life.
ZERO WASTE DANCE
While in process for our collaboration with Our Treaty, BODYSONNET took time to connect with the community of Hudson, NY outside of the studio. We are committed to ‘zero waste dance,’ an ethos we live by to reduce our environmental impact and carbon footprint. As a traveling dance collective, we locally source all of our materials for process, performance and collaboration. The same applies to food and nourishing ourselves throughout a week of rehearsals and performances. We sought out partnerships with Hudson based farms to participate in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) work exchange.
PS21: PERFORMANCE SPACE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY WITH DAVID MICHALEK
CHATHAM, NEW YORK, US
SEPTEMBER 2020
Residency with David Michalek. D-CELL: an Exhibition & Durational Performance presents an encounter with deceleration in both dance and visual art. The project is a hybrid between an exhibition and a performance. Utilizing PS21’s architecture, grounds, and trails as media canvas, dancers from BODYSONNET, Peridance, and Gallim will perform decelerated sequences on sand-covered raised platforms stationed throughout the landscape. Live music by the Neave Trio will accompany the movement with works by Morton Feldman, whose compositions “seldom rise above a whisper . . . glacially slow and snowily soft” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker).
CHESTERWOOD
BERKSHIRES, MASSACHUSETTS, US
SEPTEMBER 2020
An Evening at Chesterwood Garden explores the inherent intersectionalities of dance and sculpture. Our work starts at the contemplation of French’s distillations of the human form and understanding one inherent difference: these sculptures do not move. They do not transition. They are steadfast, indefinite, permanent, forever. It is this unflinching stillness which evokes a deep and dynamic expression. We realize, just as it is only through dark that one truly sees light, it is only from stillness that one truly experiences movement. Both mediums come with an inherent set of constraints which continually inform and accentuate one another in an unending, cyclical dialogue.
In Summer 2020, BODYSONNET worked with the directors of Walnut Hill School for the Arts to launch the School’s first Artistic Fellowship Program. Established with private major donors and the Head of School Innovation Fund, the fellowship recognizes time, space, and community as essential elements for emerging artists to pause and work under the freest possible conditions. This group has come together to build collaborative ties, and performance platforms for burgeoning artists, the first of its kind in the School’s history.
ARENA
BODYSONNET artists present an evening of dance theater and music exploring themes of atmosphere reconnaissance, empathy, negotiation, and authenticity. Audience members are encouraged to bring a picnic blanket or lawn chair.
VOLTA
Volta is a collaboration with BODYSONNET artists Moscelyne ParkeHarrison, Jake Nahor, Sean Lammer, and Neave Trio. The artists will present their new work ‘Volta’ as a part of Walnut Hill’s festival ‘A Summer of Art- Six Feet Apart’ alongside Boston Ballet 2. ‘Volta’ is a re-imagining of traditional approaches to proscenium performance. BodySonnet interprets the music of Rebecca Clarke, as played by Neave Trio artists violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura.
In 2020, The Peace Studio began commissioning creatives to generate peace offerings in response to the isolating COVID-19 pandemic.
This offering of work, I Will Chase The Shadows, is a creation born from the search for daily flecks of peace and the study of amplifying them through the simple act of reflection.
BARD COLLEGE AT SIMON’S ROCK
BERKSHIRES, MASSACHUSETTS, US
JANUARY 2020
Residency at Berkshire Pulse, performances at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, in collaboration with Daniel’s Arts Party, and the Harlow Chamber Players.
SEXTET: CONVERSATION WITH UNCONVENTIONAL SPACE
“These courts at first glance, we know, are plain. Seemingly humble and ordinary in appearance. Unadorned and unfit to accommodate a performance of this nature. But we ask you don’t underestimate them, for what you don’t know is how generously these courts have lent themselves to our imaginations. Their blank walls like canvases, eager to offer themselves to the vibrant voices of artists both past and present, whose humanity is the very foundation of this performance. We ask that for the next 50 minutes, you suspend your disbelief and allow this sentiment to gild your experience of this space.”