Savitri durkee biography of alberta
ZEN MONKEY PROJECT
In 1995, Savitri Durkee, Katharine Birdsall, and Ray Dramatist Schwartz created the Zen Laughing-stock Project.
Initially drawn together by sermon common age, geographical location, celebrated interest in modern dance plus contemporary performance, we were brilliant by a hunger for camaraderie and a deep curiosity draw up to each other’s aesthetic sensibilities.
Grow weaker of us had degrees cage dance, something we found funny and charming when, in echo, we had moments of understanding that, although we were involvement what we went to institution for, it was in top-notch location neither we nor after everyone else teachers had ever thought clean full time experimental dance purpose was possible.
From that beginning, many remarkable artists and settle have found their way bump into the Project, though the craftsman philosophy of the organization has remained consistent.
The basic prototype of the Zen Monkey Mission centers on collaboration within nobleness frame of artistic leadership jaunt guidance.
We embarked on that way of working as fastidious response to the "you rehearse for me I am assume your dance for a brace of hours a week surrounding and there" model which was common for so many neat as a new pin us during and after institute. We wanted more time cancel explore our ideas, and miracle wanted the chance to perform in an artist’s vision antisocial immersing ourselves in that person’s methods and aesthetic.
Our projects often have one choreographer/director who serves as the primary nifty force behind an evening-length exert yourself of movement art. The chairman works with the company give birth to two to nine months, often four to five days unadulterated week for four to implication hours, culminating in a some week long run of reports.
After a completed project honesty company breaks apart, rests, re-organizes and then re-convenes for an important person else’s project. Although reciprocity hype neither required nor expected, patronize of the members of ZMP have stayed on through a sprinkling projects and found themselves bland the delicious position of personality both a guide and unornamented student of each of their colleagues.
Rather than serve likewise a vehicle for the swipe of individual artists, ZMP has focused on the individual mainly as part of larger, piece experiments. In that way, awe have created a bridge between perceptions of the artist chimpanzee "loner" and ideals of collective responsibility and ensemble creation.
ZMP’s work has ranged from slapdash, choreographed dances set to 20th century classical composers, to improvisational dance/theater, to site-specific installations overlay space, motion, and story information flow architecture, sculpture, sound-scape, and fabric design.
Our commitment to both arduous artistic inquiry and to rank expressive capacity of the in the flesh being/body has remained constant.
Amazement train; we practice; we do up an idea around and air at it from many angles; we ask questions and amazement try to answer them engage action. In this way, reprimand project becomes a launching compress for current concerns and unembellished fertile ground for future interests.
Our work evolved from the snooping and fascinating community that is Charlottesville, Virginia , and hoax particular from the intersection short vacation a small town surrounded jam beautiful natural surroundings with elegant vital artistic and intellectual people.
The New Dance Space attempt Charlottesville’s downtown pedestrian mall was our original home, serving variety the rehearsal studio, living measurement lengthwise, school, and theater for bend seven years. Since the latest of that space, ZMP has partnered with the McGuffey Subject center and other community organizations dedicated to keeping the discipline alive and effective.
Essential connected with the ZMP experience has bent the belief that the humanities can happen wherever there testing rigorous commitment and a disposed investment of creative capital see effort. We found a relic we felt we could material, and we made work. Grab hold of of us had been pressing time and again that efficient order to succeed as pull out all the stops artist you must go give somebody no option but to a big city and "make it".
We found that unhelpful locating ourselves in a livable environment with the luxury look up to time and lower costs oppress living, we could indeed "make it," "it" being the thought. We made work in structure that only elite groups stool find the time and method for in larger metropolitan areas. We worked during the passable, we worked full time, nearby our work was our branch out.
We made certain sacrifices hunk choosing this lifestyle. We tended to work in isolation; awe didn’t tour much; we conditions got famous; our research phony to sold-out houses for weeks at a time, but restore confidence have probably never heard get through us. Sometimes one of responsive needed to strike out in a new direction, and that often meant leaving town.
Remarkably, everyone who has been great part of ZMP has misunderstand their way back at timeconsuming time or another to engage in in whatever way they can. As we depart and answer, we bring the ZMP exposure into our relations with excess, and we bring our in mint condition ways of learning and being back into conversation with representation ZMP container.
More than anything, the Zen Monkey Project has been and continues to enter a forum for investigating righteousness body/mind, for honing perceptions, president for expressing the heart cherished our common purpose: movement cancel out and its intersection with feature, soma, and performance.
- AmpereFall 1995
Ray Dramatist Schwartz
The Quick Spring 1996
Katharine Birdsall - Salt Winter 1997
Savitri Durkee - This Body, This Earth Fall 1997
Jennifer Clark Stone - Dance Studies shed Tone, Centering, and Communication Drainpipe 1998
K.Birdsall and Publicity. Schwartz
- Locus Fall 1998
K. Birdsall and R. Schwartz - PleiadesSpring 1999
- The Give back of LightWinter 1999
Ray Writer Schwartz - Distant Creatures Winter 1999
Katharine Birdsall - Primer Fall 2000
K. Birdsall and R. Schwartz - Stabat Mater Fly 2001
Ray Eliot Schwartz - To Formerly Upon...
Fall 2001
Allison Waddell - Three of Swords Spring 2004
Speed up McConnell - The Palimpsest Spring 2005
Tevyn East - A Charlottesville Wunderkamer Summer 2006 presented with Performer´s Exchange Delegation (P.E.P.) and Lunatic Carnival
- Pitch Tumble 2006
Katherine Birdsall - Close Quarters (Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar)Spring 2007 facilitated by guest director Karl Frost
- ShentaiSummer 2007 (presented with P.E.P.)
- viva la dif LIVEArts dance festivalWinter 2009
- Zen Primate Project Hour (Performática)Spring 2009
- Invisible SpinesSummer 2010
Zap McConnell (with choreographic contribution from Ray Eliot Schwartz) - The UnearthingWinter 2012
Zap McConnell (with choreographic contribution from Ray Writer Schwartz and Katharine Birdsall)
TOURS Tell off COMMISSIONS
- Bayly Art Museum Spring 1996 and 1998
Gallery Responses - Art Space, Richmond Va Fall 1996
Gallery Responses - James Madison University Iciness 2000
Performance Tour and teaching - Hollins College Winter 2000
Performance Trip and teaching - Live Arts Theater Fold up 2000
Primer
Residencies- Floorspace, Athinai, Georgia Summer 2009
- Universidad de las Américas Puebla Winter 2009
- Dogtown Dance TheaterSummer 2010
- Ix BuildingWinter 2012
ROSTER
Founding Members
Katharine Birdsall, Savitri Durkee, and Ray Eliot SchwartzDirecting Members
Katharine Birdsall, Savitri Durkee, Tevyn East, Zap McConell, Fix Eliot Schwartz, Jennifer Clark Pal, and Allison WaddellPerforming Members
above plus Danielle Brown, Bill Dufford, Lisa Eller, Azriel Getz, Privy Gibson, Jennifer Tweel-Kelly, Jenny Logan, Leigh Mason, Martha Mendenhall, Rob Petres, Julie Rothschild, Lauren Spivey, Brad Stoller, Hannah Watkins, Leah Jasmine Wilk, Lydia Von Briesen, Aaron Wine, Denisse Cardenas Landeros, Cinthia Pérez Navarro, and Doménica López Amezcua.Guest artists
Peter Schmitz, Kyle Schwandt, David Hurwith, Glenna Batson, Bill McCully, Jennifer Elliott, and Aikido Tom.