2012 was an amazing year for Norte Maar with a number of stellar programs, exhibition, and events. Cage Transmitted Series, The Brodmann Areas, CounterPointe, To be a Lady. And much, much more all recapped here!
All posts tagged The Brodmann Areas
It is hard to believe that Norte Maar’s original ballet The Brodmann Areas has finished its final run at the Center For Performance Research. With a cross-genre, multi-media collaborative approach to developing the original ballet – and its accompanying visual and audio components – the countdown to opening was highlighted in the advance press:
Bushwick Daily featured a preview that included a conversation with choreographer Julia Gleich, which can be found here. Joined by director Jason Andrew, as well as the Brodmann‘s crew of dancers, Gleich also spoke with WNYU’s CityWide arts and culture program. CityWide stopped by during the last day of rehearsal to get the details on what host Lucas Green calls “a particularly visceral collaborative product.” For audio, please click here.
Norte Maar thanks all who attended, and appreciates the overwhelmingly positive reviews of the project. As ARTINFO‘s Benjamin Sutton commented after attending opening night, “the resulting brain (and eye) candy forms a wildly varied but consistently nourishing whole that manages to integrate contemporary ballet, classical and modern (and postmodern) music, visual and performing art wonderfully.”
Critic James Panero of The New Criterion also found plenty to ponder in this brainy performance. His review of Brodmann Areas in the May Issue of the publication offers a comparison with last years ballet:
“With visual artists, sound artists, and dancers all coming together, last year was something of a celebratory free-for-all, a sprawling jam session with one guitar hero after the next compounding the awesomeness until your thoughts turned to the line at the Porta-John. “Brodmann,” in contrast, took on the subject of cognition and didn’t dance around the big thoughts. Tight, far more spare than a year before, the performance brought the dance up front while still collaborating with Bushwick artists such as Paul D’Agostino, who created rapid projections out of his triptych cardboard collages. This time Ryan Anthony Francis, as musical director, also arranged a score to link the various parts into a coherent theme.”
Panero ends with a nod to the collaboration between director/choreographer Julia Gleich and neural scientist Denis Pelli on peripheral vision. Panero’s complete review can be found here. For Panero’s review from last year’s production, In the Use of Others for the Change click here.
The Brodmann Areas‘ complete program, including more information about the artists and performers involved, can be found here.
Board President Julia K Gleich addresses supporters of Norte Maar hosted at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Chelsea
photo: Benjamin Sutton
On Monday, April 2, Norte Maar held its first public benefit event at the Mitchell-Innes & Nash. The evening celebrated eight years of Norte Maar’s unique programming and collaborative mission. The night also honored Julie Martin of E.A.T. who was introduced by noted curator Barbara London.
Curator extraordinaire Barbara London (right) introduces our evening’s honoree Julie Martin (left)
photo: Kerosene Rose
“Long before the founding of Norte Maar, myself and the choreographer Julia K Gleich, searched to define the many various artistic projects we partnered to program and present,” explained Norte Maar’s director Jason Andrew in his opening remarks, “Collaboration was always at its core. Applying equal weight to the visual, literary and performing arts, we set out to start an organization that would build community, foster artistic expression and raise the imaginative energy in us all. Now, eight years since our beginning, our commitment to the spontaneous, our concentration on the unique, and our avoidance of the ordinary has never wavered.”
The benefit included pre + post music by DJ JoJo, performances by Andrew J Nemr + CPD Plus with Gordon Au on the horn, David Tudor’s electronic environment masterpiece Rainforest I (1968) performed by Composers Inside Electronics, and a preview of Norte Maar’s upcoming ballet The Brodmann Areas danced by Dylan Crossman, Jace Coronado, Morgan McEwen, and Abbey Roesner. The Brodmann Areas opens April 12. Tickets available here.
Tap dancer Andrew J Nemr performs with Gordon Au
photo: Kerosene Rose
Composers Inside Electronics play Tudor’s Rainforest I (1968)
photo: Kerosene Rose
Dancer Dylan Crossman (formerly of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company) performs a scene from the upcoming ballet
photo: Kerosene Rose
“The crowd couldn’t help laughing when the final dancer, Dylan Crossman, raced into the main gallery space filled with [Catherine] Opie’s photographs wearing football pants and a very short tank-top with the American flag printed across its chest,” wrote ARTINFO‘s Benjamin Sutton.
“The evening was simply lovely,” wrote Katarina Hybenova of Bushwick Daily, accompanied by some great photos of the evening.
Norte Maar would like to thank all those who contributed their time and talents to make this benefit such a success. We are also very gratefully to all who showed their extraordinary support by donating and contributing to our organization. A special thanks goes out to Lucy Mitchell-Innes and David Nash, Jay Gorney, Lucy Dew, Robert Grossman, and the entire staff at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.
We raised $7,900! Which will go to support our children’s literacy and art collaboration with Bushwick Library, the collaborative ballet, our various exhibitions, and our Cage Transmitted program.
“If you like what you’ve seen tonight please tell your friends,” Jason Andrew said in his closing remarks,”It’s not only money that is critical to what we do, it’s people.”
To see more images from the evening’s festivities, please visit our Facebook page here.
Norte Maar would like to thank the following for their special contributions and donations:
Board of Directors:
Julia Gleich, Board President
Jason Andrew, Director
Trevor Carlson
Jessica Duffet
Veken Gueyikian
Maggie Waterhouse
Donation of Services:
Mitchell-Innes & Nash
DJ Jojo
Andrew J Nemr + CPD plus
Composers inside Electronics
Gleich Dances
Pernod Absinthe
Bodega Wine Bar
Vinos en Wyckoff
Project Assistants:
Hannah Daly
Lauren Denitzio
Ida Josephsson
Andrew Szobody
Volunteers:
Ryan Michael Ford
Ben Godward
Alice McKenzie
With only a week until opening night, people are already talking about Norte Maar’s original ballet The Brodmann Areas. “You can’t go wrong with so many brilliant artists working together,” says our director Jason Andrew, as quoted by reporter Aaron Short in his preview for The Brooklyn Paper.
The Brodmann Areas, choreographed by our president Julia Gleich, thinks conceptually the gaps and synapses that define the 52 areas designating the regions of the cerebral cortex of the brain. Conjuring a cross-disciplinary vision as Norte Maar continually pursues, Brodmann combines the work of not only a team of dancers, but the visual artsits on set and costumes design. In his piece for The L Magazine, “This Is Your Brain on Dance,” Paul D’Agostino asks, “sounds like a mindful mind-full, no?”
The Brodmann Areas runs April 12 through 15, at the Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Avenue 11211. TICKETS still available.
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