"Monster," by Rebecca Pappas

As part of Dance Under Construction IX events, please join us to our MFA Upstarts Series:

Monster,

an evening-length dance work by Rebecca Pappas

May 1, 2009 at 8 pm

*tickets included with registration.

About "Monster"

Mesmerized…Compelling…Combining halting, floundering movements with erratic, compulsive gestures, Pappas invoked the memory of former wars while detailing how the body remembers.—The Los Angeles Times

Dancers crumble and reform. Creatures with oversized breasts and prosthetic noses storm across the stage. Faceless fiends dart wildly, wielding office lamps like guns. Monster, an evening-length dance piece by Pappas and Dancers immerses viewers in a world where the line between human and monster grows increasingly thin. It weaves together theatrical, monstrous creatures, high-energy pseudo-folk dances, and probing questions about Jewish identity, shame, and what it means to be a victim and a victimizer to create a provocative picture of the Jewish body in Diaspora.
Inspired by sources as varied as the photos of Cindy Sherman, the “Zionist Body” and the invention of the Barbie doll, Monster has been in creation for three years and is the culmination of five shorter monster “portraits” that have been presented throughout California. Each probes an imagined intersection of Jewish heritage and shame, displaying the monster of the Holocaust, the monster of the shtetl, and the monster of Israeli aggression. Pappas is particularly interested in investigating how one brutal act justifies another, piling violence atop violence. Monster was choreographed with support from the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American and World Culture, the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, a commissioning grant from Saint Joseph Ballet and support from the World Arts and Cultures Upstart Series at UCLA.

About The Artists

Pappas recently moved to Los Angeles from the Bay Area where she was known for making intricate, detailed dances that transport viewers through imagistic landscapes. These works say no to other people’s pretty and put on stage images that are at once beautiful and grotesque, awkward and delicate. In San Francisco her work was presented at Dance Mission, ODC Theater and the Yerba Buena Gardens, and as part of the Women on the Way, Westwave and Monterey Dance Festivals. Pappas and Dancers has also presented Monster in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York at venues including Movement Research at Judson Church. In addition Pappas has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the Clorox Company Foundation and taught dance at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

Monster has been created in collaboration with performers Arletta Anderson, Harmony Bench, Genevieve Carson and Nguyen Nguyen along with composer Anthony Gatto and costume designer Leah Piehl. Gatto has received fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Fellowship program, the Bush, McKnight, and Jerome Foundations, Meet the Composer, the Minnesota State Arts Board, an Aaron Copland Award, Yaddo residencies, and an ASCAP Grant to Young Composers as well as commissions from The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Walker Art Center, the string quartet Ethel and guitarist Mark Stewart. Piehl has worked on short films including “Shelly Figg,” and “The Macabre World of Lavender Williams,” directed by Nick Delgado and produced/mentored by Robert Zemeckis (Christopher Lloyd, Rex Linn). More recently she completed her first feature length film, Buzzkill, directed by Steven Kampmann (Stealing Home, The Couch Trip) as well as a television pilot and the development of a new series for Comedy Central.

QUESTIONS Rebecca Pappas, (510) 599-2325, rkpappas@gmail.com, www.pappasanddancers.com