The Gilded Pony Performance Festival aims to capture and release all disparate elements existing under the general rubric of "performance" and set them into dynamic interplay with each other. Conspicuous, unlikely and provocative approaches to audience–performer relations will be the order of events, triggering questions, delighting audiences and expanding the boundaries of performance.

mission statement

The Gilded Pony Performance Festival is a community–based arts initiative which aims to present and foster current approaches in performance and installation art. Bringing in performers and audiences from near and far, the inaugural presentation of this annual event will:

The Gilded Pony Performance Festival is a co–production of ATLAS Dance and FO (A) RM Magazine.

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practical info

3 days, 2 locations, different performers each day!

A lively amalgam of dance, theater, performance art, music, poetry, sound art, video and installation — dozens of artists from all over the northeast — a pack–jammed weekend for all!

Friday, May 19, 8–9:30pm, "The Golden Predicament"
Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River Street, Troy, NY

Saturday, May 20, 8–9:30pm, "The Painted Palladium"
Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River Street, Troy, NY

Sunday, May 21, 12pm–6pm, "Ship of 1,000 Stamens"
The Old Brick Church, 12 Emily Street, Valley Falls, NY
Food, fair, outdoor/indoor series of performances
and conspicuous encounters (so be on the look–out)

Festival passes $40/$35
Tickets $15/$12. 

Tickets and passes available at the events or may be reserved in advance by emailing gildedpony@gmail.com or calling 845–417–3845. 

Seating is limited on Fri and Sat.  Reservations recommended.

Directions to Valley Falls from Troy (20 minutes):  Take Route 40 out of town heading north.  After about 13 miles (follow Rt. 40 signs through the intersections you encounter), you'll be in the town of Schaghticoke.  Turn right onto Rt. 67.  After 1.4 miles, you will cross a bridge into Valley Falls.  Take the first right after the bridge onto State St.  Take a left onto Emily Street and you will see the Old Brick Church!

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program

Friday, May 19, 8–9:30pm, "The Golden Predicament"
            Kristin Hapke
            SPINE/Kristin Revier
            ATLAS Dance/Hélène Lesterlin
            Steve Zultanski
            Vanessa Anspaugh
            RASTRO/Julieta Valero

Saturday, May 20, 8–9:30pm, "The Painted Palladium"
            Rebecca Davis
            Katie Martin & Jake Meginsky
            Clyde Forth
            Treva Wurmfeld & Micah Silver
            Ben Coonley
            Ursula Eagly

Sunday, May 21, 12pm–6pm, "Ship of 1,000 Stamens"
            Alethea Adsitt and Company
            Tom Bogaert
            Linda Gale Aubry & Mike Bullock
            Yanira Castro + Co
            Bethany Wright
            Peter Dobill
            Meg Duguid
            Brian Kim Stefans
            Sreshta Premnath
            Surajit Sarkar
            Savior Scraps/Haak
            Mary Suk

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artist bios

Alethea Adsitt
Alethea Adsitt has been choreographing and presenting work since 1996. In 2003, Adsitt relocated to New York from Seattle and formed Alethea Adsitt & Co, dedicated to experimental performance with a strong kinetic sensibility. Ms. Adsitt's work has been commissioned and produced in Washington, Massachusetts, New York and West Virginia, by venues including: On The Boards, Velocity Dance Center, The Yard, Dance New Amsterdam, The Flea Theater, NDA's Performance Mix at Joyce Soho, Tisch, WAX, White Wave and the Goose Route Dance Festival.

Vanessa Anspaugh
Originally from Los Angeles and currently in New York City, Vanessa Anspaugh has danced with Fly By Night, an aerial dance company, Artichoke Dance Company, and Annie Sailor Dance Company.  She holds a BA from Antioch College, and has studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and Instito Allende in Mexico.  In her own work, Aspaugh is interested in the simple and awkward nature of what it is to be human and to inhabit a human body.

Rebecca Davis
Rebecca Davis graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a BFA in Dance in 2000.  Her choreography has been shown at Joyce Soho Presents, Movement Research at Judson Church, The Chocolate Factory, WAX, HERE Arts Center, Hope Street Gallery, d.u.m.b.o. dance festival, the Old American Can Factory, and PS 122. She is the founder and curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts bi–annual Dance Forum series, and is the recipient of a BAX 2003 Passing It On award. Davis currently dances for Ursula Eagly.

Linda Gale Aubry & Mike Bullock
Linda Gale Aubry's first instrument as a child was an egg slicer. Her earliest memories include being fascinated with the sound of humming transformers, birds, the distant sound of the television which she references through her harp and electronics. Aubry studied music at Berklee, Boston Conservatory and Bennington but has developed a career in visual arts.

Tom Bogaert
Before becoming an artist, Tom Bogaert worked for the UN and Amnesty International, conducting Human Rights–field research in Europe, Asia and Central Africa. Though Bogaert often deals with difficult themes and subjects, he has tried to maintain a degree of lightness and humor in his work.  The seriousness of the work and subject matter are often masked by this humor and by an intentional lack of high–production values.  Tom Bogaert makes art that encourages viewers to interact and participate in serious scenarios.

Michael Bullock
is a bassist, composer, and multimedia artist from Somerville, Massachusetts, USA. He plays actively on the Boston improvised music scene and has toured extensively in the USA and in France. In addition to frequent solo appearances, he has an electroacoustic duo with cellist Vic Rawlings; The BSC, eight of boston's top improvisers who also specialize in performing indeterminate scores by Wolff, Cardew and Stockhausen; and electronic performance project rise set twilight. Other collaborators include Mazen Kerbaj, David Gross, Lê Quan Ninh, and David Chiesa.

Yanira Castro
Yanira Castro is the director/choreographer of Yanira Castro + Company.  Her work has been presented in a variety of venues in New York including:  Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, HERE, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Movement Reseach, and Dixon Place.  A graduate of Amherst College, she has been recognized with awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Multi–Arts Production Fund, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation amongst others.  For the work Beacon, she received a Bessie Schönberg/First Light Commission from DTW with funds from the Jerome Foundation.

Peter Dobill
Born in New Zealand, Peter Dobill is a Brooklyn based artist who has performed across the country. Incorporating physical endurance within his work, the focus is on the body in actions, seeking a communication within physical and mental limits. His video work that documents the performances has been shown in New York, Chicago, and Seattle.

Meg Duguid
Meg Duguid is a smiler, a laugher, and a joker. Utilizing the structures of comedy she explores the role humor plays in culture. Meg received her MFA from Bard College in 2005 and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. She has exhibited and performed at the Chicago Cultural Center, the DUMBO arts festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Galapagos Art Space, Flux Factory, and 667 Shotwell in San Francisco.

Ursula Eagly
Ursula Eagly has shown her work all over NYC and once in Houston at DiverseWorks.  She is grateful for the past support of The Chocolate Factory Visiting Artist Program, a Howl Festival commission, an UrCOUSIN residency, a Topaz Arts Space Grant, and two individual artist grants administered by the Queens Council on the Arts.  She's part of the current genius projects of Kathy Westwater and Yoshiko Chuma (for which she's leaving shortly for Macedonia!).

Clyde Forth
Clyde Forth Visual Theatre is a multidisciplinary performance company comprised of dancers, visual artists, musicians and interdisciplinary artists brought together by artist/performer clyde forth. Our mission is to bring daring, improvisational performance works with a strong visual component to the public through site specific and intimately staged presentations. The roster of artists continually evolves as new work is developed. CFVT has performed throughout the Northeast, in Canada and the UK.

Kristin Hapke
Kristin Hapke's work has been produced in Seattle, New York City, Washington DC, Portland, Eugene, as well as internationally in Vancouver and Amsterdam. Her recent collaborations with multi–media artist Marlon Barrios has received international recognition. Hapke has danced with Mary Sheldon Scott/Jarred Powell Performance, Maureen Whiting, Bebe Miller, Zvi Gottheiner, and Marlon Barrios–Solano, amongst others.  She holds an MFA in Dance from OSU, a BA from the University of Oregon and a Laban Movement Analysis certification.

Brian Kim Stefans
Brian Kim Stefans is the author of three books of poetry, including Free Space Comix (Roof, 1998). His most recent book is Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics, a collection of poetic essays. A new essay will appear in New Media Poetics: Histories, Institutions, and Audiences, published by MIT Press in 2004. He edits the website Arras, devoted to new media poetry.

Katie Martin & Jake Meginsky
Katie Martin is a movement artist based in Vermont, working within the spheres of choreography, performance, and education.  Her work has been presented at the 2003 d.u.m.b.o. Dance Festival (Brooklyn), ACDFA at Smith College, MA, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church (NYC), the 2005 Improvised and Otherwise Festival (Brooklyn) and at The Flynn (Burlington, VT). She has danced with artists as Mark Dendy, Ann Carlson, Keith Thompson, Dana Reitz, Susan Rethorst, and Meg Wolfe.  She holds a BA in dance and complexity studies from Bennington College.

Jake Meginsky's work encompasses percussion, composition, dance accompaniment, and videography.  He has performed at Free 103 (Brooklyn), The Hook (Brooklyn), The Flywheel (Easthampton, MA), Qville (Queens), The Bread and Puppet Theatre (Boxer, VT), 2005 Improvised and Otherwise Festival (Brooklyn), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), and The Neurosciences Institute (La Jolla, CA), amongst others.  Currently, Jake teaches percussion at Bennington College, where he is pursuing an MFA.

Sreshta Premnath
Sreshta Premnath lives and works in NYC. His work has been shown in various galleries including Gallery SKE, Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore, India; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH. He holds an MFA from Bard College and BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is the editor of Shifter Magazine.

RASTRO is a contemporary dance company founded in New York (1998) by Julieta Valero, Venezuelan dancer, urged by her creative impulse and her search for genuine dance language.  Featuring six accomplished dancers, RASTRO aims to promote the appreciation of contemporary dance by offering in addition to regular performances, opportunities for education, professional development and collaboration with the performing community here in the United States, in Venezuela and abroad.

Kristen Revier
Kristin Revier studied and trained in London for five years, where she received her Master's Degree in Choreography and Performing Arts at Middlesex University.  During which time she also co–founded performing group SPINE, and founded the dance theater company Sweet Nobody, currently based in Southern California.  Her choreography has been presented in London, San Diego and Los Angeles, and combines comedy and sensuality into a contemporary form largely inspired by physical theater.  She is currently working on projects for both companies to be presented in the fall, 2006.

Surajit Sarkar
Surajit Sarkar lives in New Delhi, India. He has been a photocopier salesman, a bank officer and a primary school teacher before working with TV and video. Since 2001, he has worked as a video artist for theatre and dance stage productions in India and abroad. He is a founding member of the Catapult Arts Caravan, a traveling video + arts performance troupe that travels in rural and small town India, performing/exhibiting in public spaces in the tradition of the traveling performer of an earlier era.

Savior Scraps/Haak
Savior Scraps is a collaborative encampment composed of objects scavenged from friends, family, and strangers. Their aim is to provide a tangible exchange of materials, establishing a continuous community dialogue through crafting.  Haak is a quartet of generational pioneers creating life–as–art scenarios and installations (hyper–reality).  Founded in 2004, Haak is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Micah Silver
Micah Silver studied music composition and art at Wesleyan University where his primary teachers were Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, and Ron Kuivila.  He has also studied privately with composers Lewis Spratlas and Earle Brown.  Recent projects include *asterisk for 12 broken grand pianos, loudspeakers, and transduced glass, commissioned by the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art;  Carousels, a commission by the James Joyce Centre, Dublin; and a six–month installation commissioned by the City of New Haven starting May 2006.

Mary Suk
Mary Suk has been creating and performing her own work in New York since 1983.  Her dances have been presented at the Queens Museum of Art, the 92nd St. Y, Willamsburg Art NeXus, Joyce SoHo, Merce Cunningham Studio, Aaron Davis Hall, Joe's Pub and Soundance Studio.  She has performed in the works of Jill Sigman, Jessica Reese Dessner, Alison Oakes, Maxine Steinman, and Joseph DeChiazza.  She holds a BA from Darmouth College and an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Treva Wurmfeld
Treva Wurmfeld lives in Brooklyn and is working toward an MFA in Combined Media at Hunter College in New York City. She received her BA in Studio Art with Honors from Hunter in 2000 and also had the opportunity of studying at the Slade School of Art in London in 1999, and the University of Vermont in 1997.  In 2005, she studied in Holland at the Frank Mohr Institute in their Interactive Media and Environments program.

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volunteers

Get involved!

We are looking for volunteers to contribute their skills, time, energy and ideas! Please contact us to learn more about volunteer opportunities.

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donors & sponsors

The Gilded Pony Performance Festival needs your support! Donations to ATLAS Dance, co–producer of the festival, are tax–deductible. Please visit the ATLAS Dance website to learn more. Donations can be made by credit card or check. The funds will go directly to cover festival costs and artist fees.

Sponsorships and ads are available to local businesses. Please contact us to see how your business can gain visibility while supporting your community's arts!

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about the curators

Hélène Lesterlin

Hélène Lesterlin is a French–American artist whose work encompasses dance, video, installation, costume and sound design. She holds a BA in sculpture and performance from Yale and an MFA from Bennington College. In 1999, she was awarded a Luce Fellowship to live and work in Taipei, Taiwan for a year, pursuing her work in performance and choreography. In 2004, she presented a new work, Caprices, as a Choreographic Fellow at Summer Stages Dance (Concord, MA), and participated in an Artward Bound Residency sponsored by the Field. She founded her dance and production company ATLAS Dance in 2004. Portions of her new work, The Predator–Prey Equation, were shown at Dance Conversations at The Flea Theater (NYC), HATCH (NYC), Deep Listening Space (Kingston, NY), the SWEAT Modern Dance Series (Hoboken, NJ) and Dance New Amsterdam (NYC). The piece premiered at the Velocity MainSpace Theater (Seattle, WA) in the fall of 2005. Hélène lives in Troy, NY, where she is curator for dance at EMPAC (the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute).

Bethany Wright

Bethany Wright is a poet / performance–installation artist living and working in rural Valley Falls, NY. Author of three chapbooks, Indeed, Insist (a mystery) [Ugly Duckling Presse, 2005], Report From Lower Telenasia and I'd Get Him to Swallow (Split/) Places [both self–published, 2002], her work has recently appeared in periodicals such as Swerve, The Brooklyn Rail, Unarmed, Bird Dog and Arson. Incarnations of Wright's current solo performance piece, Hark the Harbingers has been presented at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, PS122 and Zieher Smith Gallery in New York, and at Nocturnal in Portland, OR. Collaborations include co& remote, a multimedia operatic cycle with sound artist Seth Nehil [2004] as well as a weekly series of interventions with Portland–based multi–lalia performance collective AREA [2002]. She co–founded and continues to edit FO (A) RM magazine, a forum for interdisciplinary arts & research [see: www.foarm.artdocuments.org], and excited to be co–curating the first annual Gilded Pony Performance Festival in Troy and Vallley Falls, NY.

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ATLAS Dance and FO (A) RM

ATLAS DANCE

ATLAS Dance is a contemporary dance and production company dedicated to the creation and performance of new work at the crossroads of improvisation, choreography, performance and film. Founded in 2005 by Hélène Lesterlin as a vehicle for her creative and curatorial projects, ATLAS Dance aims to create work reflecting the visual and sensual complexity of the world today, braced in a time of political and social change.

ATLAS Dance is founded on the belief that the creation and performance of art, in a context of open exchange between artists and viewers, is a vital part of any community. To participate in the experience and activity of performance as an artist or a viewer is to participate in an act of faith and renewal.

www.atlasdance.org

 

FO (A) RM

FO (A) RM is an interdisciplinary arts and research magazine published once yearly. Each issue clusters around a given topic (such as "Topography," "Duals & Doubles" or "Autonomy"), gathering together a variety of perspectives, methods and articulations –– from the extravagant to the pedestrian (and the juncture between). The "A" is silent – it stands for the potential rupture within every form. FO (A) RM Magazine facilitates a dynamic interaction of cross–genre methods and investigative projects, with a special focus on sound–art, experimental poetics and social sculpture.

foarm.artdocuments.org

We are looking for volunteers to contribute their skills, time, energy and ideas! Please contact us to learn more about volunteer opportunities.

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contact

Contact: gildedpony@gmail.com

www.atlasdance.org

foarm.artdocuments.org

 

 

Pony image created by KT Taylor

Photos: 1.Katie Martin 2.Elizabeth Ward & Heather Vergotis 3. Ursula Eagly 4.Savoir Scraps 5.Kristin Hapke 6.Old Brick Church 7.Hélène Lesterlin 8.Surajit Sarkar 9.Savior Scraps 10.Bethany Wright 11.Elizabeth Ward & Heather Vergotis