archives
July 2010
Tacit
Press
"TimeOut Chicago"
"Chicago Reader"
"See Chicago Dance"
Inhabiting a shadow-world collaging magic show, 19th-century politesse, Rube Goldberg absurdism, and social dance decorum, Tacit examines the unspoken agreements that facilitate and constrict duet dance forms, theatrical performance, fantasy, and gender relationships. This show also features an unusual presentation format, with choreography by Julia Rae Antonick and by Jonathan Meyer and co-created by both, all co-existing as separate and overlapping vignettes within the larger world of the show. This work arises from the on-going duet collaboration between Julia and Jonathan, their last year of intensive studies in tango and swing dance forms, and their continued conversation about understanding and naming their various roles as independent artist, dancer, duet artist, collaborator, and dance company choreographer.
September 2009
Waking Room:
The Waking Room arises from the gleaming gaps in the dark veil of consciousness which blankets pre-cognition. Using a process of somatic meditation, Khecari's Jonathan Meyer has developed a movement palette generated by minute observation of and response to the process of perception. Lifting up the accidents and false starts otherwise lost to cognizance, this is an investigation of the physiological life and expression of the subconscious channels of sensory interpretation. Collaborator Christopher Preissing is using a parallel process of deconstructing recognized vocal and found sounds to create sonic cells; these are reconfigured and layered with live flute and vocal sounds in a multi-speaker score.
"I am ceaselessly fascinated by the apparently inherent need to translate the world of phenomena into human significance, and the beauty, and danger, of derailing this process. With The Waking Room, I have shifted this inquiry from a philosophical one to a somatic, from theoretical to experiential."
- Jonathan Meyer
This project was supported by the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Grant. Visit www.chicagodancemakers.org
December 2008
Project #4:
Taking the kinetic raw material of their previous partnering-intensive collaboration, Julia Rae Antonick and Jonathan Meyer return to the stage in an exploration of the value of dissatisfaction. Juxtaposing the inertia of rebellion and rest, Project #4 is a work about change and the hammering towards ease. With original live music from Joseph St. Charles.
Lacunae:
Jonathan Meyer will present work-in-progress excerpts of Lacunae (working title), an investigation of the perceptual process. From springboard research on psychotic, hallucinogenic, and ecstatic experience, this work reflects Jonathan?s exploration of how his own perception intersects with the phenomenal world. With original music from collaborating artist Christopher Preissing, Lacunae is slated to debut in spring of 2009. Funded in part by a grant from the Chicago Dancemakers Forum.
Guests:
Friday: Muffie Connelly
Saturday: Rachel Bunting and Precious Jennings as The Humans
Sunday: Julia Mayer and Marc Riordan in some. more.
November 2008
Epiphany Dance Experiment
Epiphany Episcopal Church
This kick off event of the Epiphany Dance Experiment (EDE) will focus on dance improvisation. A post-show talk will give the audience and the dance artists the opportunity to talk about each work. Performances by: Chicago Contact Improvisation Jam, Project #3 by Julia Rae Antonick, Jonathan Meyer & Joseph St. Charles (drums), an excerpt from Traitor by Lisa Gonzales & Darrel Jones, some more by Julia Mayer & Marc Riordan (drums).
November 2008
Links Hall
Julia Rae Antonick and Jonathan Meyer will show a work-in-progress excerpt of Project #4 at Poonie's Cabaret, a performance art extravaganza curated by Jyl Fehrenkamp.
May 2008
Project #2
Around the Coyote Gallery
Project #2 is a kinetic joy-ride composting habit and gender to yield a moment-to-moment choreographic negotiation of weight, balance, and momentum. This is the second phase of development in a long-term duet collaboration between independent choreographer Julia Rae Antonick and Khecari artistic director Jonathan Meyer. Also in this show we welcome special guest Asimina Chremos in a solo dance performance. Project #2 features original live music from Joseph St Charles and Patrick McCarthy and new dance wear costumed by Iris Bainum-Houle.
November 2007
THE WONDER-CABINET OF DR. WUNDERKAMMER
Hamlin Park Fieldhouse
Being a most Wondrous Exhibition, brought to the Public for the Edification & Delight of those persons of Learned & Inquisitive Ilk, not excluding those seeking Entertainment or Diversion, of divers Artefacts, movements of the Corporeal Body, and Thespian Phenomena, and accompanied by those vibrations of the Dense Airs in conjunction with the like circulations of the Humours, which, in the mirroring of the Celestial Rhythms, we are wont to call Music, by the Emminent Dr. Wunderkammer, and inclusive of such Rare & Incredible Specimens as Cordyceps Terpsichorius, wherein those notably shy & timorous Homo Terpsichorius are most Grievously Infected with Alien Spores which, in commandeering their autonomic & sympathetic Nervous Functions, do force them to effect dubious Choreographic Ends, or Exhibit A, Exhibit B, which offers to the Common View for the first time a male Elm Dryad, sequestered from its native woodland, and whose heretofore unseen Gyrations reflect a most Pathetic Mourning for its lost Arboreal Home, or that startling Dancing Duo, An Absence of Meaning Opens a Rift in Time, whose Perambulations & Convulsive Shudderings have accomplished, via the Propitious Intersection of an Hungarian Ray and Pure Silver, a veritable Alchemical Transmutation of That Which Is Known into Something Else, or those Four Aspects, Ex Nihilo, which, wanting only Quintessence, have nevertheless superseded Trivium & Quadrivium alike and have thus yielded a Transcendent Speculation on the Nature of the Simian Family as regards the Ancient & Sacred Precepts of Cecchetti & Vaganova, & etc.
June 2007
The Opal Door
Hamlin Park Fieldhouse
Structured as a series of disparate snapshots offering a multi-faceted vision of possibility, fear, cataclysm, and redemption, The Opal Door presents a world on the brink. From a precarious suspended moment – replete with grief and promise, blind violence and stubborn, transformative beauty – a community looks forward and back, ever returning, ever struggling to conquer the desperate present, ever grappling with the haunting presence of unseen forces operating in their midst. Guest artist Asimina Chremos joins eight Khecari dancers in this work set to music by Mandible Chatter with Encomiast and Toby Sinkinson and costumed by Iris Bainum-Houle.
March 2007
Rough Cut
Hamlin Park Fieldhouse
Khecari Artist Director Jonathan Meyer's work The Flesh of Flowers, set on Mordine & Company, will be shown at this concert. For more information visit www.mordine.org.
March/April 2007
LinkUp Residency Artists: New Works
Links Hall
Khecari will show a work in progress of The Opal Door. Other LinkUp artists: Kristina Fluty, Angela Gronroos, and Marysue Miller.
October 2006
Dyad
Links Hall
Dyad meant to juxtapose the human animal and the human cultural creature as they mutually contend with each other and the world they inhabit, and with the union of life-surge and death-drive that is intrinsic to love – the ceremonial sacrifice of the Beloved, and the simultaneous offering of the self for consumption. Dyad is an evening-length duet choreographed by Khecari's artistic director, Jonathan Meyer, with new music for guitar and cello from Nathaniel Braddock and Jason McDermott.
August 2006
Mnemosyne
Boulder International Fringe Festival
Gold medal winner for “best-in-dance”
United as a single organism, bodies share the space in scintillating intimacy: a conjunction sliding from tenderness to aggression, frustration to harmony with the same organic eddying that directs the flow of momentum from one to another. Gravity becomes a metaphor for love as intricate floor work articulates an inescapable force that is as impersonal as it is personally felt. Fierce athleticism and suspended stillness mirror the turbulence and serenity of relationship in all its richness and uncertainty. Including Meyer’s solo Gravity and the kung-fu-choreography inspired Dyad.
December 2005
Mnemosyne Has Won the Lottery But Lost Her Ticket
Taos Community Auditorium
Mnemosyne Has Won the Lottery But Lost Her Ticket presents dialogues between memory, identity, and desire through a multifaceted lens of gesture, repetition, and human relationship dynamic; it is an examination of our incessant delving backwards to wrest an ephemeral uniformity we can call the Self. Mnemosyne brings to the stage three of Khecari's finest dancers: Jonathan Meyer, Elizabeth Shuler, and Amber Vásquez. Performed to a score by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mnemosyne is at times a fierce pas de deux more resembling scenes from martial arts films than ballet and at other times a sweet lullaby uniting yearning humans. It presents us on stage as we are in life: beings struggling to meet each other in fulfilling needs we barely understand, and, when we least expect it, falling afraid into the redemption we couldn't foresee.
September 2005
Mnemosyne’s Dream
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Afro-American Cultural Center, Charlotte
Including excerpts from Khecari’s Dream, Meyer’s solo Gravity, and a sneak-preview of the work-in-progress Mnemosyne Has Won the Lottery But Lost Her Ticket.
June 2005
Luminous
Taos Community Auditorium
Luminous offers new choreographies of light, humor, joy, and playful speculation. Meaning Factory is a wry exploration of the inescapable human penchant for finding meaning in all we perceive, incorporating movement, text, live music, and a decrepit typewriter. Freedom takes place in, on, and below a large light-suffused steel and bullet-proof glass box suspended eight feet from the ground. Freedom plumbs the psychological significance of freedom, insisting that our external limitations are often fluid, depending upon our internal resources for their meaning: a cage can be a womb, a womb a jungle gym. Soloists Elizabeth Shuler and Amber Vásquez, a new-comer of Alvin Ailey fame, are joined by Lindsey Drury, Jes Grimes, Sonja Mayer, and Sare Rane in High Tea. With music from Hanged'Up, High Tea is a relentless choreographic whirlwind punctuated by tongue-in-cheek humor. Secret, a duet for two women to music by Iceland's dreamy Múm, is a tribute to the hidden palaces, enchanted gardens, and private kingdoms of childhood.
December 2004
Rapture
Taos Community Auditorium
Rapture is an evening-length choreography to Henryk Górecki's "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." An expansion of Jonathan Meyer's solo Gravity, set to the second movement of the symphony and seen in Khecari's past June show Nexus, this new work brings seven of Taos' finest dancers to the stage. Górecki's lush score of oceanic string orchestra and piercing soprano encompasses a paradoxic balance of darkness and light, weight and buoyancy, grief and joy. Using this, the choreography celebrates the rapture that awaits us when we voyage through the shadowlands. Image by Jaap Vanderplas
June 2004
Nexus
Taos Community Auditorium
Nexus is a collection of eight new pieces exploring the musical, movement, and psychological aspects of rhythm. Repetition, surprise, tension, denöuement, habit, transformation: accompanied by an unusually wide range of ecclectic musical genres, these phenomena become devices in elucidating the internal rhythms of relationship, ritual, and desire. Including a solo by Meyer accompanied by text written and performed by Taos' Paul Scallon.
December 2003
Immanuel
Taos Community Auditorium
Eighteen Khecari company members and children from the community will take the stage in an original choreography telling the story of the first Christmas Eve in the hour before Christ's birth. Johann Sebastian Bach's glorious "Christmas Oratorio" will be sung live by Taos' Opera Tazza.
May 2003
Dream
Taos Community Auditorium
Dream is a voyage into the nether realms of the psyche, creating and inhabiting the droll world of dreams where context is inverted: the illogical seems fitting, the unexpected surprising. With sumptuous costumes by KC Weakley and a lush score by Mandible Chatter, this evening-length work slides from the comic to the sensual to the somber. Cast members include Taoseños Jaimie Henthorn, Elizabeth Shuler, and Jonathan Meyer and special guest Giacomo Zafarano appearing courtesy of Moving People Dance Theater in Santa Fe.
November/December 2002 & January 2003
Lorca
El Museo Cultural, Santa Fe
Taos Community Auditorium
X Theatre, Albuquerque
Lorca is a theatre and dance event using poems, poetic prose, and plays written by Federico Garcia Lorca. Khecari explores and illuminates layers of meaning in text and subtext, embellishing subtleties and underscoring simplicities, yet always embracing the centrality of Lorca's poignant irrationality. The first half includes excerpts from Gacela of the Flight, Play Without a Title, The Public, Chimera, and others. The Evil Curse of the Butterfly forms the second half of the piece. Generally considered a children's play, this is a tragicomic love story set in a meadow people by insects. Including original music created Natalie Farr and over thirty masks from costume designer K.C. Weakley.
May 2002
Moths To the Flame
Plan B, Santa Fe
Taos Community Auditorium
A group of moths are hovering around the edges of a candle, discoursing on the nature of the flame; each flies in successively closer and returns; each claims a deeper knowledge of the flame. Only the eldest and the youngest remain silent in the discussion. After some time, the youngest, still saying nothing, flies directly into the center of the flame: in a flash of light, the moth is gone, leaving only a foul wisp of smoke. Finally the eldest
speaks: "That moth, he understands the flame." Khecari Dance Theatre's company debut features ten dancers in five original choreographies, including guest choreographer and dancer Clyde Smith, former Kirov Ballet prima Ludmilla Lupokhova, and Artistic Director Jonathan Meyer's first publicly presented work in the United States. Centered around Meyer's 18 minute solo Ascent, Moths To the Flame is a meditation on the blissful rewards and dangerous fruition of spiritual passion.