TRISKELION ARTS
118 N. 11 ST. • 3RD FL. • BROOKLYN, NY 11211 • 718.599.3577
HOME OF ABBY BENDER SCHMANTZE THEATRE AND ANDREW DICKERSON'S CIRQUE THIS!
From The Brooklyn Rail, July/ SWARM at WAX: KICK STAND DANCE Maybe you had a crew back in college or in high school that made a pact to reconvene after some requisite years of furtune seeking. Maybe it was to start a rock band or a macrobiotic restaurant or an experimental school. Part anxiety talk and even half-believed, those collective daydreams you entertained before setting out into the world would just serve as fodder for reunion chitchat. That is, unless you are one of the founders of the KICK STAND DANCE Company. Abby Bender, Layla Childs, Anna Luckey, Cary Baker and Sonya Robbins might have made such a pact a decade ago when they were students in the dance department of Bard College. Although they split up to pursue different dreams following their graduation, they reconvened in Williamsburg back in 1997 to establish the KICK STAND DANCE collective and nobody's doubting them. SWARM, their most recent effort ran through six performances earlier this June at WAX and demonstrated the unique gifts of these five choreographers through five dances (one in two parts). Sonya Robbins'"Flicker" began the evening with Robbins and Childs, two waking figures in country dresses, lulling and lusty in a half-dream behind a white picket fence and underneath the circular flapping of mechanical doves hovering. Anna Luckey followed with "Interstice", an alert and stark voguing of the considered technical competence of the entire company. Cary Baker's two-part "I am Twice," first pit two self-winding automatons against the whiles of ceiling-hung weighted balloon pendulums swinging around them. Then, after intermission the pair return as dis-embodied legs and torsos in search of each other in the eye-tricking black light. "Highly Inflammible, Perfectly Unnatural" came to Layla Childs "in the quiet calm of Baratpur, a bird sanctuary in northern India," according to the program notes. Two matched pairs dance - one backgrounded, collecting rags and meticulously stowing them in pockets, the other foregrounded, lily clean, unvexed, disrobes and wanders off while the poor gatherers pocket or adorn the discarded tops. Both return for a brief but stunning pas de quatre. The hands down crowd-pleasingest grand finale was Abby Bender's "3 Piece Suit/ In October of 2000, the KICK STAND DANCE Company opened the doors of Triskelion Arts, a full service studio on Williamsburg's north side, which serves as the company's headquarters and which also serves as an affordable rehearsal and performance space for other working artists. With this new development, KICK STAND hopes to contribute to the performing arts community while solidifying the reality of a decade-old collective daydream in brick and mortar. --John Merchant |
From Paper Magazine, June 2001 DANCE TROOPERS The members of the modern dance collective KICK STAND DANCE have arms cut like diamonds and brains full of innovative movement. Forced out of Manhattan studios, Layla Childs, Anna Luckey Cary Baker, Abby Bender, and Sonya Robbins (clockwise from the top) joined the artistic exodus across the river to Williamsburg where they create and present modern dance pieces. Their recent show SWARM, included works employing up to 25 dancers at a time as well as a healthy dose of theatrics. The scenes evoked a range of experiences - from the frenzy of the business day to a suburban fantasy complete with a white picket fence on stage. The members of the company met in the dance department of Bard College almost 10 years ago and reunited in 1997 as choreographers with a wide range of influences. They occasionally participate in showcases but their focus is producing their own work. Last fall the group opened Triskelion Arts, a beautiful space in Williamsburg that their fellow artists instantly began clamoring to rent. The collective keeps doing whatever it wants - which sometimes includes putting non-dancers on stage. ’(They are) regular people who want to get on stage and bust a move,’ Childs says. ‘I think there’s a real hunger for this sort of freedom in the dance world right now’.” --Meghan Sutherland K I C K S T A N D D A N C E P E R F O R M A N C E H I S T O R Y Built on Stilts Dance Festival, August 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, new work by Abby Bender and Anna Luckey annually, guest appearances by KSD, Martha’s Vineyard, MA The Yard, Abby Bender Schmantze Theatre's' Septic Crisis, Piqued, and Sleeping Giants, July 24th, 2006, Martha's Vineyard, MA Autumn Skate Bowl, robbinschilds' Seriously Heavy, June 15th-17th, 2006, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, Abby Bender Schmantze Theatre's ZOO May 11-13th and 18th-20th, 2006, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, robbinschilds' C.L.U.E. December 19th, 2005, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, annual benefit auction, What's Behind Door #3, Company excerpts, December 10th, 2005, Brooklyn, NY Dance Theater Workshop, 40 Forward Celebration, excerpt from robbinschilds' Broque and Cary Baker's sculptures from Mimesis, November 7th, 2005, New York, NY Triskelion Arts, annual benefit auction, Bathtub Gin, Company excerpts, May 15th, 2005, Brooklyn, NY Martha's Vineyard's Chilmark Community Center, Anna Luckey's (and Laura Sargent Hall's) Lightness and Dark, April 29-30 and May 1, 2005. Sundown Salon Project at the Fritz Haeg Studio in Los Angeles, robbinschilds' site-specific work, April, 2005. Dance Theatre Workshop, robbinschilds' half space, March 16-19, 2005, New York, NY University of Western Ontario, Abby Bender's Piqued, March 19, 2005, London, Ontario Triskelion Arts, Abby Bender's Dig Deep, June 9th-13th, 2004, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, Anna Luckey's Other Hours, Separate Doors, April, 2004, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, Sonya Robbins' and Layla Childs' Broque, March 5-7, 12-14, 2004, Brooklyn, NY St. Mark's Church, Food for Thought series, Company excerpts, January 30, 2004, New York, NY Triskelion Arts, KSD annual benefit auction, à la carte, Company excerpts, December 6, 2003, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, Cary Baker's MIMESIS, October, 2003, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, Abby Bender's Monsters & Mirrors; heavy at play, June 6-8, 13-15, 2003, Brooklyn, NY Avery Arts Center, Bard College, Company works, December 7, 2002, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Triskelion Arts, KSD Annual Benefit Auction, Snowball, Company performance, December, 2002, Brooklyn, NY Triskelion Arts, Sonya Robbins' and Layla Child's Part and Parcel/ October 17, 18, 25 and 26, 2002, Brooklyn, NY Family Matters, Dance Theater Workshop, Cary Baker's work, October 26, 2002, NY, NY Triskelion Arts, Open, Company show, June 6-9, 2002, Brooklyn, NY New Dance Alliance Performance Mix Project at the Joyce Soho, Cary's Baker's work, March 2002, NY, NY Triskelion Arts, KSD Annual Benefit Auction, Monkeyshine, Company performance, December, 2001, Brooklyn, NY d.u.m.b.o Arts Festival, October 2001, Sonya Robbin's work, Brooklyn, NY Bryant Park Dance Festival, Layla Child's work, August 8, 2001, NY, NY P.S. 1 Summer Dance Warm Up, Cary Baker's work, July 28, 2001, Queens, NY Williamsburg art neXus, swarm, Company show, June 6-10, 2001, Brooklyn, NY Dance Space Project at St. Marks Church, Food for Thought Series, Anna Luckey's work, January 28, 2001, NY, NY The Field Day Performance Marathon at HERE, Cary Baker's work, December 10, 2001, NY, NY Galapagos Art and Performance space, annual benefit auction Diamonds in the Rough, work by Abby Bender, November 16, 1999, Brooklyn, NY Mulberry Street Theater, New Steps Showcase, Cary Baker's work, November 16-18, 2000, NY, NY D T W's Bessie Schönberg Theater, Five Finger Discount, Company show, May 24-27, 2000, NY, NY Triskelion Festival, July 23-25, 1999, Company excerpts, Knoxville, TN Milton Avery Arts Center at Bard College, May 16, 1999, Company show, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Context Studios, Lump Sum, Company show, April 1-3, 1999, NY, NY Evolving Arts at Dance Space, October 1, 1998, NY, NY Bridge for Dance Attitude Free Series July 20-21, 1998, NY, NY |
|
