Novel Formats #3: Loop
In life, as in performance, we think our senses are right and true but so much is learned, habitual. Novel Formats aims to interrupt these patterns through novelty, immediacy, risk, and real time human connection.
Novel Formats is a seven-part performance cycle created by dance artist Rachel Bernsen. Each brings together artists across multiple disciplines and in different permutations to engage with a proposed theme and minimal choreographic structures. The work is rooted in improvisation and dependent on the individual artists' interpretation and the deliciously unpredictable dynamic of the group. It challenges us to attune to each moment as a continuous present, undoing reliance on memory and learned behavior.
Novel Formats #3: Loop is a quartet with dance artist Julian Barnett, electric guitarist Evan Patrick, vocalist and interdisciplinary artist Jean Carla Rodea, and Rachel Bernsen. With light design by Chico Eastridge
Other NF collaborators so far include dance artist Ellen Smith Ahern, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, visual artist Lindsay Packer, cellist Tomeka Reid, violist / electronic artist Mac Waters, dramaturg Rachel Kauder Nalebuff.
Novel Formats is made possible in part by support from JAM-Junction Arts & Media, NEFA's New England Dance Fund, and from individual donors.
Thursday, February 27, 2025
7pm
169 Bowery, NYC
Bio
Rachel Bernsen is a dancer and choreographer committed to interdisciplinary practice. She makes work in collaboration with musicians, writers, performers, and visual artists and has choreographed for theater, opera and large scale experimental performance projects including multiple works with composer Anthony Braxton, writer and playwright Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, and recently Noise, A Musical by César Alvarez, directed by Sarah Benson. She has done multiple collaborations with visual artist and scholar Megan Craig, has danced in the work of choreographer Yvonne Rainer, and many others. From 2011-2020 she was one part of the movement and music collective, Masters of Ceremony with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, multi-instrumentalist Abraham Gomez-Delgado, and dance artist Melanie Maar. Rachel is also a movement educator and an Alexander Technique teacher. Her projects, performing, and teaching have taken her across the US, throughout Europe, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico. rachelbernsen.com
Julian Barnett is a performer, choreographer, educator, and parent. As an artist, he works collaboratively across disciplines to create performances examining social-political possibilities for transformation and empathy. His work has been presented throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Turkey, and extensively across Europe. Julian has been fortunate to perform with Abigail Levine, Jeanine Durning, Steve Paxton, Wally Cardona, Doug Elkins, Kota Yamazaki, amongst others, and received a New York Bessie Award Nomination for Outstanding Performance. Born in Japan, he currently works between New York and Burlington, VT, where he teaches in the Theatre and Dance Program at UVM. julianbarnett.com
Evan Patrick is a Brooklyn-based musician and filmmaker who's performed and shared the stage with a variety of rock, pop and jazz artists including St. Vincent, Panic! at the Disco, Citay, Melvin Gibbs and MacArthur Award winner Anthony Braxton. He has also made numerous narrative shorts and music videos in both the US and Asia. Evan's recent future-set political thriller, Bad Apples, is available for streaming on the short film platform Kilpist. Evan is currently tracking a new album with Grammy-award winning producer Joshua Valleau (Arooj Aftab, John Legend) as well as self-producing a series of singles for release in the spring of 2025. He has also recently completed an experimental short film in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Will Alexander and award-winning photographer Aaron Cameron Muntz. It will be screening at various film festivals throughout the summer and fall of 2025.
Jean Carla Rodea is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born in Mexico City. Her work focuses on research-based practices and spans various disciplines and mediums, including music, sound, vocal performance, poetry, photography, video, and sculpture. She holds a BFA in Vocal Performance and an MFA from City College in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice. She's performed and recorded with notable artists such as William Parker, Darius Jones' ECU Vocal Quartet, Gerald Cleaver's Uncle June, and Anthony Braxton's Syntactical Ghost Trance Music Choir. She also leads multimedia projects "All Your Sojourns Have Led to This," "Buscando a Marina," and "Nine Easy Steps Toward Oblivion." Collaboration is a significant aspect of her practice and has worked with artists including Asiya Wadud, Miriam Parker, rebeca medina, Merche Blasco, Amirtha Kidambi, Patricia Nicholson, Jo Wood Brown, and Rachel Bernsen. Her work has been presented at Issue Project Room, Roulette Intermedium, Carnegie Hall, BRIC, Knockdown Center, Judson Church, Danspace, Center for Performance Research, Panoply Lab, The Clemente, The Lab, Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative, and Temescal Art Center.