Past EventS
2023
THE VISIONARY DANCE FESTIVAL
JOHNNY BUTLER / ALEX OLIVA / CALEB PATTERSON / MICHELLE THOMPSON ULERICH / ANNIE WHITE
DANCE / CHOREOGRAPHY / ORIGINAL LIVE MUSIC
AUGUST 12, 2023 8PM
For this inaugural Visionary Dance Festival Johnny Butler and Alex Oliva mentored three other outstanding choreographers / dancers while they created new works with Johnny’s original music.
2022
UNCONVENTIONAL DANCE
HOLLIS BARTLETT AND NATTIE TROGDON
DANCE / CHOREOGRAPHY / FILM
OCTOBER 7 & 8, 2022 8PM
Nattie and Hollis, are in the process of building a multi-year project with the working title Unconventional Dance, a collaborative series of dance films and live performances exploring dance in relationship to setting. This collaged duet-work places performances outside (and sometimes inside) traditional theatrical venues (e.g. grocery stores, abandoned malls, parks, museums, a Target bathroom). Questioning the context of dance and what is valued in performance, this work highlights societal themes like late-stage capitalism, climate change, decaying infrastructure, accessibility, gatekeeping, performativity and community.
As performing artists, their work is typically located in traditional theatrical venues that are often inaccessible and hierarchal. By locating themselves in spaces that don’t typically experience dance, they are re-examining the hierarchy of spaces and assumptions of dance performance.
Hollis Bartlett + Nattie Trogdon are performers, practitioners, and partners based in Brooklyn, NY. They create dance works and research-based practices around rigor and repetition, ghosts and vessels, objectivity and subjectivity, and their shared lineage and embodied relationship. Their collaborations have been presented at Gibney (Work Up Artists), Duo Multicultural Arts Center, No Theme Festival, Earthdance, School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, CPR, STUFFED at Judson Church; and they have been artists in residence at The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Visionary, The Dance Complex and the Tisch Summer Dance Residency at NYU. Their performing and teaching practices are deeply tied into their dance making. As performers, they’ve worked with Doug Varone, Brian Brooks, Joanna Kotze, David Dorfman, Keith Johnson, and Kimberly Bartosik. They’ve been guest artists at NYU, Swarthmore College, and SUNY Brockport and their work has been commissioned by Roger Williams University, University of Maryland, and Salem State University. Currently they teach through SUNY Purchase, MOtiVE Brooklyn, and freeskewl. Nattie holds a BFA in dance performance from SUNY Purchase and Hollis holds a BFA from NYU Tisch Dance. www.nattieandhollis.com
INVISIBLE LANDSCAPES
GRAYSCALE
Jessica Kondrath
Collaboration Dance / Wearable Art / Film / Video Mapping / Music
September 9 & 10, 2022 8pm
GRAYSCALE, a contemporary dance company based in Los Angeles under artistic director Jessica Kondrath, premiers an evening length piece titled Invisible Landscapes. This new work is an interdisciplinary piece combining dance, film, visual arts and architecture. Drawing inspiration from poems by Mary Oliver, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, repetitive geometry, and the juxtaposition of reality and imagination. Invisible Landscapes crafts an immersive environment for the viewer to investigate the terrains that exist between each of us.
GRAYSCALE has an active roster of creative collaborators across many artistic disciplines. Invisible Landscapes is featuring wearable art pieces by artist Marea Cordero, an original score by composer and percussionist Christopher Payne, guest choreography by Stephanie Liapis, films by Taso Papadakis, and performers Liz Hoefner Adamis, Jessica Kondrath, Stephanie Liapis, and Meg Madorin.
JESSICA KONDRATH | ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
JESSICA KONDRATH, originally from Oak Park, IL, holds a BFA in Dance from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach. She has shown work throughout Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and New York City, in particular at Dance Chicago, D.U.M.B.O Dance Festival, The Merce Cunningham Studios, and Baryshnikov Arts Center. Jessica has had works commissioned by CSU Long Beach, Santa Monica College, CSU Fullerton, and Momenta Performing Arts Company, among others; and has been a guest instructor at Loyola Marymount University, Colorado State University Fort Collins, University of Wyoming Laramie, CSU Fullerton, Cerritos College, and the University of Colorado Boulder. As a dancer, Jessica has most recently performed the works of Carol McDowell, Liz Hoefner Adamis/Immediate Action Dance, and Sarita Smith-Childs; and is part of an ongoing collaboration with Wyoming based visual artist Diana Baumbach showing work in art galleries nationally. She was a recipient of the Professional Artist Fellowship Grant from the Arts Council of Long Beach for her work as the Artistic Director of GRAYSCALE. Jessica is also an active lighting designer for dance, a Pilates Instructor, and is on faculty in the Dance Departments of El Camino College and Rio Hondo College.
grayscaledance.org
NOT SILENT FILMS
A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) with original music by Johnny Butler
THE SUNBATHER (2022) A new Dance Theater work by Alex Oliva and Johnny Butler
Silent Film / Music / Dance
August 27, 2022 8PM
A Trip to the Moon (French: Voyage dans la Lune) is a landmark of cinema: the first science fiction film, a special effects bonanza, and an international sensation after its release in 1902. Inspired by a pair of Jules Verne’s novels, A Trip to the Moon is a highly satirical look at nineteenth-century science and imperialism and is widely regarded as one of the most influential films in history. This screening featured an original score by Grammy-award winner Johnny Butler using The Visionary’s 1949 Hammond Model RT organ.
The Sunbather (2022) is a new dance theater work by Butler and Oliva (with costuming by Allison Dyke) that transports the audience into the bowels of an intergalactic starship. Using music by Butler and choreography by Oliva and drawing inspiration from Merry Shelly’s Frankenstein and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, The Sunbather immerses the audience in the story of a lone scientist who tinkers with a humanoid creation that suddenly comes to life and confronts its master.
Johnny Butler is a Grammy-award winning saxophonist, composer, audio engineer, dancer, and filmmaker. Over the years, he has worked with many of his idols, including Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder, Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule), Wynton Marsalis, The Levon Helm Band, Tune-Yards, Theo Croker, Kassa Overall, Joe Lally (Fugazi), and Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds.
Alex Oliva is a performer, director, choreographer and educator. Her creativity and captivating performance quality have influenced and inspired original works, live and on film, by The McKittrick Hotel, The San Francisco Symphony, House Of YES, Navarra Novy-Williams, Bill Hayward, BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance, and others. Alex regularly partners with saxophonist and mover, Johnny Butler, creating improvisational movement and sound stories that are performed at music venues, theaters, galleries, and other unconventional locations. Additionally, she is the co-founder/ co-director of emerging dance theater company, AnA Collaborations, whose works have been presented by The Tank, Gibney, Dixon Place, INSITU Site-Specific Festival, and more.
BECOMING WHOLE
A Look Inside the Process of Lake Arts Dance Project
Healing Through Art / Dance / Choreography
Saturday June 18, 2022, 8pm
Annually, Lake Arts Project (2013 - present) brings together community groups and arts educators to workshop, cleanse, share, and then create. Collaborators include Feast of Crispian, a non-profit organization that brings professional actors and veterans together to strengthen the emotional resources they need to overcome trauma and reintegration issues. Lake Arts Project also works with highschool art students, including THE ALLIANCE SCHOOL OF MILWAUKEE, a year-round school and a safe place for students regardless of sexuality, identity, appearance, ability, or beliefs. During the BECOMING WHOLE Visionary Retreat, the founders and directors of Lake Arts Project (Karl von Rabenau, Creative Director of the Minnesota Ballet) and his partner, Jennifer Miller, Milwaukee Ballet Faculty Master Teaching Artist) immersed themselves in the unique process that they have created for those around them, and recorded their actions, step by step, to create a manual for their process. Long time collaborators, dancers Barry Molina and Lizzie Tripp joined Lake Arts to explore and perform the final presentation of work. which was inspired by the experience: the positive, the challenging, and the breathtaking moments that are life-art.
2021
Not Silent Movies
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with original music by Johnny Butler and a prologue performed by Michelle Ulerich Thompson and Caleb Patterson
Silent Film / Music / Dance
Saturday, May 29, 2021, 8pm
Initially motivated by the coincidental existence of a 1949 Hammond Model RT organ at The Visionary and propelled by a fascination with the roaring 1920ties, a time that famously led the way out of the last major pandemic, we found a kindred spirit in Grammy-award winning musician, arranger, composer Johnny Butler who during a summer 2020 residency expressed interest in underscoring silent films. Who doesn’t cherish the range of emotion, expression and brilliant physical comedy, associated with the most famous works of this unforgettable genre?
Johnny Butler and dancers Michelle Ulerich Thompson and Caleb Patterson revisited the dark and twisted world of this cult classic through a contemporary lens while also allowing it to enter the third dimension through dance.
Tomorrow I Will Contradict Myself
Lisa Natoli
Aerial Performance / Theater / Dance
Saturday, June 12, 2021, 8pm
In this new work at the crossroads of Aerial Performance, theater and dance, the performer encounters the existential crisis of living inside an aging body and being conscious of its lack of safety or permanence. The work is a long form aerial piece that tangles theatre, dance, and pedestrian antics to stage a commentary with a subversive sense of raw honesty that peels away the layers of societal expectations.
Born of grit, Lisa’s work comes out tightly wound, highly skilled and wildly absurd. The artist has shifted the performance paradigm to echo the vibration of a world in disorder, casting the performer and the audience as the setting while the stage plays willing witness.
Warriors
Johnny Butler, Gwen Gussman, Xenia Mansour
Music / Dance
Saturday, July 03, 2021, 8pm
Johnny Butler, award winning saxophonist, recording artist, arranger, composer, dancer, filmmaker, and technologist visited us again with “Warriors,” a new dance-theater piece examining the concept of "the warrior" through music and dance, exploring the paradox of fearlessness/fear, control, discipline, aggression and love, made in collaboration with dancer-choreographers Gwendolyn Gussman and Xenia Mansour, and Lighting Designer Alex Taylor.
Some Clowns! Some Place!
Director: Virginia Scott
CLOWN THEATRE
Saturday, September 11, 2021, 8pm
Loner, Yoyo, Sven Sven Mt. Saint Andersson, Hope, and Jailbreak Yeasty Soousan came upstate. And the show went on somehow: full of loud noises and soft moments, courage, heartbreak, stupidity, mystery, love and thunder. Through it all the clown abides and will do everything they can think of to be beautiful and hilarious for you. Some Clowns! Some Place! is a brand new, original, family-friendly, comedy show for adults created by Some Clowns: a group of artists from the Northeast of the USA who came together during the pandemic to keep the comic world alive while the clowns were separated from their most fundamental compatriots, the audience. Catch their 3 episode short film series called We Are All ALone(r) parts 1-3 here.
True Voyage is ReturN
The Syndicate of Initiative
MULTI DISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE
Saturday, OCTOBER 2, 2021, 8pm
True Voyage Is Return is a multidisciplinary performance rooted in experimental jazz and improvisation, as well as an anarchist politics of mutual aid and solidarity. The project was first supported and presented by Loading Dock Theatre’s 2019 Forklift Series. The Syndicate of Initiative is predicated on non-hierarchical decision making and joyful disruption, and is inspired by the history of American improvisation as a tool of resistance against white supremacy, heteronormativity, and state violence.
Summer 2020:
A lot can be said about 2020. We are into the second half of August as we are beginning this review and the memory of the uncertainty of the early Spring months holds fast. What to tell our artists? That was a very difficult question for a long time. At this point, two of the earlier season programs will be rescheduled for 2021 and only one program had to be cancelled completely. We are glad, we dared ourselves out on thin ice and tried something new: On Saturday, August 15, we presented our inaugural live broadcast outdoor screening of three beautiful works of grounded and aerial choreography by Lisa Giobbi and Maxine Steinman out on the softball field by Mandy’s Bar and Grill. Amanda generously offered us the use of her field as her softball season has also been cancelled this year. We are grateful for the opportunity and overjoyed to have our artists and audiences back even if things are a bit different this year. We got to follow up with another project in September: Who better to draw inspiration from during these unsettling times than a character named Loner and her musician collaborator Johnny? Together, they introduced us to the concept of there not being a past or future, but just this moment and whatever you need from it. With charm, wit, a fair dose of nostalgia and a solid topping of love, they taught us how to be alone and not get too close.
Spring / Summer 2019:
The notion of avant-garde theater came to mind while watching the TRUX performance on May 25, culminating their week-long residency.Fueled by an aesthetic and performative crush on monster truck rallies, TRUX is a performance project focused on re-engineering our human components into a collaboratively designed machine that generates queer/art power.
On June 22, Dame DAda went to CHURCH. Her new program, finalized during here two week residency, filled THE CHURCH with thought and laughter alike. The character of Dame DaDA uses the framing devices of standup, storytelling, spoken word play and spontaneous interaction. Her performance is a playful and personal reflection on humanity and all its hypocrisies and at times, one could not help, but be reminded of medieval German Jester Till Eulenspiegel.
June 17, 18, 19 brought the long awaited performances of “The Night They Lit Up Wrigley”. Sarah Stuart Chapin’s brilliant stage presence commandeered the attention of her audience while leading them through this personal story of contemporary relevance. The audience showed their appreciation with laughs, thoughtful comments and quite a few tears of kinship.
Choreographer, dancer and filmmaker Thryn Saxon and her powerful company SAXYN/Dance Works closed out the season on September 14 with an inspiring evening dedicated to the exploration of pure physicality, relationships, exposed nerves, consumption of sensation and the disruption of the feminine ideal.
Kevin Johnson & Evvergreen beckoned Spring to come faster with an explosive night of humor and music by the brilliantly talented musicians: Margaret Uhalde - Guitar/Vocals, James More - Lead Guitar, Chris Scaduto - Bass/Vocals & Badass Cass - Drums/Vocals.
Winter Session 2019:
Guilty Pleasures does Carnival:
Guilty Pleasures Cabaret put on an explosive show to celebrate Carnival, the old European pagan tradition to usher out the winter. Later adopted by the Catholics as a food festival because it was the last time to eat abundantly before the 40 days of Lent. Gradually the tradition was created to go onto the streets to have a party together.Social conventions are turned upside down and it is all but required to pretend to be someone or something else.
Guilty Pleasures Cabaret photography by @_amberink
Beecher’s Fault:
After making their Mount Vision debut at THE CHURCH in July 2017, they returned this January to work on their live show and on new material. The band has recently undergone some changes and is looking forward to spend some distraction-free days rehearsing with their new lineup. Lead Ben Taylor and longterm members Max Maples and Serge Ruccolo are excited to introduce Ben Dobay on keys and Kayla O’Keefe on vocals. Even though the MLK weekend snow storm interfered with the public facing side of their stay, the band enjoyed the peace and quiet of wintry Mount Vision.
This was 2018:
You may notice that we have eliminated the word “summer” from the headline. Reason being that our focus of the 2018 improvements was on enhancing the “quality of life” at the venue. Many hours of work went into the wood finish floor and finally this fall and after master plumber Jeff Dietz’s well researched and implemented work, we became a year round venue! As we expand our activities, we have to limit the extent of our reflections and let the pictures speak for themselves. We are grateful to have experienced the company of many talented artists. With their encouragement, we have experimented with letting the audience experience THE CHURCH from various angles with Janessa Clark’s lobby installation, to live performance to dance film projection and back to live performance journey, we have experienced Jeanette Yew’s live camera miniature puppetry, we ventured into the world of cabaret skillfully lead by the ladies of Guilty Pleasures Cabaret and even added a strong point for The Dustbowl Faeries’ silk act. Later in the fall, we had a very informative evening on Civic Literacy led by the knowledgeable and engaged Chris Di Donna.
This was our summer of 2017:
A new roof over our heads and many exciting projects in store, we headed into the new season: During our Open House on Memorial Day Weekend, Laura Careless gave a presentation about the research and creation of her upcoming work "She Wolves" followed by Tommy Grasso and his band The Spins who heated up the room. A Jam with The Spins' Keyboardist Steve Lavner on the Hammond organ and Hank Coyote Wagner from Coyote Love joining in on vocals and the harmonica remains in mind as a special and wonderful moment. Laura Careless picked up research and choreography on "She Wolves" the following week. In early June the extremely versatile instrumentalists of Black Mountain Symphony treated us to an evening of musical delight. Later that month local comedian Kevin Johnson and Cooperstown's favorite funk / reggae group: Hanzolo brought down the house. Mid July, the Queens based band Beecher's Fault took up residency to rehearse and polish the live performance of their new album. Just in time for Induction Weekend, they were ready to take the local public on a beautiful and accomplished journey through the band's musical history. In August, Laura Careless was ready to give us a preview of She Wolves, a fantastic journey in word, song and dance through the lives of the women who ruled England before Elizabeth I.
This was our summer of 2016:
With initial renovations to the downstairs sleeping quarters and a new seating layout in the upstairs performance space complete, we were ready for our first resident artists, Brooklyn Puppetry Collective: "Eat Drink Tell Your Friends" the week after Memorial Day. Handmade puppet protagonist Phyllis and her colleagues brought to life a heartfelt and timely story about community and collective memory.
Back by popular demand, The Penny Knight Band entertained on the last Saturday of June.
In early July NYC's "Coyote Love" burnt off a musical fireworks of old school blues, funk, rock and soul.
On August 20, we closed out the season with an unforgettable evening of dance, music and video installation. Resident artists Esmé Boyce, Cori Kresge, Cody Boyce, Kit Boyce and Sue Julien premiered "Interrobang - Part II". Guest appearances by 2015 Resident Artists Ashur Rayis and Stivo Arnoczy rounded off the evening.
This was our summer of 2015:
Ashur Rayis opened our season in June working on Neighbor/Neighbor, a series of experimental folk songs based around the concept of communally-created music. Inspired by Irish and American folk music sessions, which depend on community participation, as well as John Cage’s piece, “Living Room Music”, a quartet played using objects commonly found in living rooms as instruments, these songs incorporate layers of “unintentional music” (keys jingling, footsteps, voices from the other room) and organize these layers around folk-based song forms, with the intention of playing back to the community space and thus creating an infinite music.
On June 27, the accomplished Penny Knight band helped the Church make its debut as a new and unusual performance venue.
In August, Stivo Arnoczy has been working on “green”, the first part of his short film trilogy with “white” and “red” to follow. Ultimately, it will be for the oculus rift, where the viewer will wear a headset and be able to choose what to watch, with most of the scenes playing simultaneously. Arnoczy explains: “It appears to want to be about the stages of 'the idea'. Maybe then these four characters: lamb, bride, dreamer, prophet represent four stages of the lifespan of an idea in a person's head: nativity, trial by fire, expansion, courage to share.”
Watch “green trailer 1”: https://vimeo.com/137898762
On August 15, the highly skilled double bassist Rich Mollin assembled an eclectic group of jazz instrumentalists for an evening of jazz.
Errin Delperdang on percussion - Otsego Music Festival 2010