New Gree :: of MGM :: 2008
New Gree is a dance on tour that not only happens anywhere, but is happening all the time. The fashions worn on the road are the costumes of the dance. The terrain of the performance is demarcated by props; flags, lights, tarps, mirrors, jibs and projections. MGM's rock band concept is transformed into a band of cow-boygirls and the New Gree group is always on guard, ready for long stillnesses, quick getaways, telepathy and remonstrance. An aim, but not goal of New Gree, is to dance in complete unison with eyes closed, navigating safely through densities of people and space. Ulteriorly, the choreography works with shifting formations of energy and hyper-reality in relation to the mobile audience, building additive layers of past and future performances, past and future influences, and linking everyone and everything in the accumulative journey of now.
Maynard of MGM (2005) was an experimental dance in a one-car garage turned into a theater, which went on tour (2006) to garages across the west coast. THIS DANCE IS CALED GREE. IT IS FROM BEDSTUY. (aka GREE) (2007) extended MGM from a dance that was made in Jmlly’s hallway in Brooklyn, NY to a tour where it could be performed anywhere, garages included, on any surface, with any music. The continuity of the dance was in the consist choreography, improvisation was used in relation to situation and landscape. GREE tried to be the copy of an underground rock band tour, with the start of the performances signified by a radical costume change, abruptly shifting every location into a proscenium. New Gree (2008) attempts to exploit the landscape by blending in and moving through it virtually unseen.
New Gree will follow the path of last year’s tour, performing over 35 times in 15 different U.S. cities, parks and locations through out California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, New York, North Carolina and Michigan.
New Gree is Theo Angell, Felicia Ballos, Biba Bell, Jmlly Leary and Robert McNeill
myspace.com/moderngaragemovement
DAY WORKSHOP in Portland, OR - Los Angeles, CA - Venice Beach, CA
for dancers and regular people
New Gree of MGM Class Description
Title: Dancing everywhere and all the time.
This class, taught jointly by Felicia Ballos, Biba Bell and Jmy Leary seeks to prepare an articulate, alert and non-neutral body, ready for precise dancing anywhere and everywhere. We will begin by examining our individual warm-ups, thinking about how we tune ourselves to participate in specific situations. Larger movement will be explored in improvisation exercises, experimenting with vision, visibility and sensory awareness. An aim of these exercises is to perform with others in complete unison with eyes closed. The goal of the class is to achieve clarity and simplicity while moving through the complexities of the many in/visible and un/known structures that surround us, the people that are near us, and of how we think we dance.
MGM Titles
2008 – New Gree (West and East Coast Tour)
2007 – THIS DANCE IS CALLED GREE. IT IS FROM BEDSTUY. (West and East Coast Tour)
2006 – MAYNARD (West Coast Tour)
2005 – MAYNARD, Paul Newman (San Francisco)
MGM Biographies
Modern Garage Movement (aka MGM) was started with four performances in a one-car garage summer 2005. The interest was in making work not in a studio; the garage rehearsals prompted ideas of a band and driving, so of course MGM went on tour. The first tour worked with the idea of a garage as a theater - using a blank space to create a production with a specific set that the dance depended on - but that wasn’t wholly efficient or mobile. Now MGM is outfitted with just a few lights, extension cords, a bose dock, cute dancing sandals, and the ability to dance a dance piece anywhere, anytime. No space is ever blank, every existing structure can be interesting, bodies are mobile, our dance is mobile. We create stable and healthy relationships with incalculable forces.
Born and raised a ballerina in Missouri, Felicia Ballos is now a Brooklyn based artist making dances. Her work focuses on the experience of the inevitable nature that reveals itself purely through the capricious gaps in the attempts towards order. Ballos’ collaborative projects, performances and installations have been presented in art galleries, theaters, in forests, and other public spaces throughout New York City, at Art Basel in Miami, and internationally in Japan, Morocco, France, and Belgium. Ballos has an ongoing collaboration with Flora Wiegmann and has worked within many other influential partnerships including those with Richard Aldrich, Anna Craycroft, Katie Eastburn, Nancy Garcia, Amy Granat, Montgomery Knott, Robert McNeill and Mark Morgan. As a performer, Ballos has toured with Modern Garage Movement (06 and 07), danced with Rebecca Brooks, Heather Kravas, Jmy Leary, WIL SWANSON/ DANCEWORKS, and White Oak Dance Theater.
Biba Bell is a dancer/artist/scholar. She likes to consider the encounters between people, objects and spaces as interstices between choreographies and improvisations, both in the studio and out. As a performer she has danced for Jmy Leary, Nancy Garcia, Mel Wong, Joshua Zimmermann, Kathleen Hermesdorf, David Hurwith, Kaya Nati, and her sister Gelsey Bell. She makes work under the moniker URISOV and has been involved with AUNTS and MGM since 2004. Biba is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU, working under the mentorship of Andre Lepecki. Biba grew up in Sebastopol, CA. (www.urisov.com) (www.bibayoga.org)
Jmy/JM/Jm/Jbird/Jamm Leary lives and works in Brooklyn. She has danced with Biba Bell, Felicia Ballos, luciana achugar, Mel Wong Dance Company, Merce Cunningham 2nd Company, Nancy Garcia, Nancy Meehan Dance Co., Dance by Neil Greenberg, Walter Dunderville. She has designed costumes for Anna Sperber, John Jasperse, luciana achugar, RoseAnne Spradlin. She produces AUNTS is dance events.
New Gree is a dance on tour that not only happens anywhere, but is happening all the time. The fashions worn on the road are the costumes of the dance. The terrain of the performance is demarcated by props; flags, lights, tarps, mirrors, jibs and projections. MGM's rock band concept is transformed into a band of cow-boygirls and the New Gree group is always on guard, ready for long stillnesses, quick getaways, telepathy and remonstrance. An aim, but not goal of New Gree, is to dance in complete unison with eyes closed, navigating safely through densities of people and space. Ulteriorly, the choreography works with shifting formations of energy and hyper-reality in relation to the mobile audience, building additive layers of past and future performances, past and future influences, and linking everyone and everything in the accumulative journey of now.
Maynard of MGM (2005) was an experimental dance in a one-car garage turned into a theater, which went on tour (2006) to garages across the west coast. THIS DANCE IS CALED GREE. IT IS FROM BEDSTUY. (aka GREE) (2007) extended MGM from a dance that was made in Jmlly’s hallway in Brooklyn, NY to a tour where it could be performed anywhere, garages included, on any surface, with any music. The continuity of the dance was in the consist choreography, improvisation was used in relation to situation and landscape. GREE tried to be the copy of an underground rock band tour, with the start of the performances signified by a radical costume change, abruptly shifting every location into a proscenium. New Gree (2008) attempts to exploit the landscape by blending in and moving through it virtually unseen.
New Gree will follow the path of last year’s tour, performing over 35 times in 15 different U.S. cities, parks and locations through out California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, New York, North Carolina and Michigan.
New Gree is Theo Angell, Felicia Ballos, Biba Bell, Jmlly Leary and Robert McNeill
myspace.com/moderngaragemovement
DAY WORKSHOP in Portland, OR - Los Angeles, CA - Venice Beach, CA
for dancers and regular people
New Gree of MGM Class Description
Title: Dancing everywhere and all the time.
This class, taught jointly by Felicia Ballos, Biba Bell and Jmy Leary seeks to prepare an articulate, alert and non-neutral body, ready for precise dancing anywhere and everywhere. We will begin by examining our individual warm-ups, thinking about how we tune ourselves to participate in specific situations. Larger movement will be explored in improvisation exercises, experimenting with vision, visibility and sensory awareness. An aim of these exercises is to perform with others in complete unison with eyes closed. The goal of the class is to achieve clarity and simplicity while moving through the complexities of the many in/visible and un/known structures that surround us, the people that are near us, and of how we think we dance.
MGM Titles
2008 – New Gree (West and East Coast Tour)
2007 – THIS DANCE IS CALLED GREE. IT IS FROM BEDSTUY. (West and East Coast Tour)
2006 – MAYNARD (West Coast Tour)
2005 – MAYNARD, Paul Newman (San Francisco)
MGM Biographies
Modern Garage Movement (aka MGM) was started with four performances in a one-car garage summer 2005. The interest was in making work not in a studio; the garage rehearsals prompted ideas of a band and driving, so of course MGM went on tour. The first tour worked with the idea of a garage as a theater - using a blank space to create a production with a specific set that the dance depended on - but that wasn’t wholly efficient or mobile. Now MGM is outfitted with just a few lights, extension cords, a bose dock, cute dancing sandals, and the ability to dance a dance piece anywhere, anytime. No space is ever blank, every existing structure can be interesting, bodies are mobile, our dance is mobile. We create stable and healthy relationships with incalculable forces.
Born and raised a ballerina in Missouri, Felicia Ballos is now a Brooklyn based artist making dances. Her work focuses on the experience of the inevitable nature that reveals itself purely through the capricious gaps in the attempts towards order. Ballos’ collaborative projects, performances and installations have been presented in art galleries, theaters, in forests, and other public spaces throughout New York City, at Art Basel in Miami, and internationally in Japan, Morocco, France, and Belgium. Ballos has an ongoing collaboration with Flora Wiegmann and has worked within many other influential partnerships including those with Richard Aldrich, Anna Craycroft, Katie Eastburn, Nancy Garcia, Amy Granat, Montgomery Knott, Robert McNeill and Mark Morgan. As a performer, Ballos has toured with Modern Garage Movement (06 and 07), danced with Rebecca Brooks, Heather Kravas, Jmy Leary, WIL SWANSON/ DANCEWORKS, and White Oak Dance Theater.
Biba Bell is a dancer/artist/scholar. She likes to consider the encounters between people, objects and spaces as interstices between choreographies and improvisations, both in the studio and out. As a performer she has danced for Jmy Leary, Nancy Garcia, Mel Wong, Joshua Zimmermann, Kathleen Hermesdorf, David Hurwith, Kaya Nati, and her sister Gelsey Bell. She makes work under the moniker URISOV and has been involved with AUNTS and MGM since 2004. Biba is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU, working under the mentorship of Andre Lepecki. Biba grew up in Sebastopol, CA. (www.urisov.com) (www.bibayoga.org)
Jmy/JM/Jm/Jbird/Jamm Leary lives and works in Brooklyn. She has danced with Biba Bell, Felicia Ballos, luciana achugar, Mel Wong Dance Company, Merce Cunningham 2nd Company, Nancy Garcia, Nancy Meehan Dance Co., Dance by Neil Greenberg, Walter Dunderville. She has designed costumes for Anna Sperber, John Jasperse, luciana achugar, RoseAnne Spradlin. She produces AUNTS is dance events.
